Acquiring optionality in french wh-questions: an experimental study
Revue québécoise de linguistique, (2002)Abstract
This paper presents an experimental study of the acquisition of root wh-questions in French, in which wh-movement is optional. Thirty-two wh-questions were elicited from 33 French-speaking children and 22 adults to allow for a quantitative and qualitative comparison with respect to the various word orders. A comparison reveals the following findings: 1° Children produce more wh-in-situ structures; 2° Children produce no subject-verb inversion structures while adults use them often; 3° The choice of question-structure is related to the wh-word that is used, for all subjects; 4° Children are aware of adults’ preferences but do not imitate them; 5° They acquire the various structures for each wh-element separately; 6° The acquisition of optional rules reflects an interaction of external factors (the input) and internal factors (economy).