How does knowledge of a first or second language develop, and how is that knowledge used in real time comprehension and production of one or two languages? Language development and processing are the central topics that this book explores, initially in terms of first language(s) and then in terms… read more
This volume contains a selection of nineteen peer-reviewed papers from the 40th annual Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL) held at the University of Washington in March 2010. In addition to overviews of Romance linguistics by the editor and by Jurgen Klausenburger in the keynote… read more
Edited by Julia Herschensohn, Enrique Mallén and Karen Zagona
This volume brings together new research on theoretical Romance Linguistics; its intended audience is scholars in the field of formal grammar, especially those specializing in Romance languages. It represents the latest work on the structure of Romance languages, with relevant comparisons to other… read more
Linking recent advances in theoretical syntax and empirical research in language development, the book claims that second language acquisition is not totally distinct from first language acquisition, but rather is a replay, a relearning of language. It argues that Universal Grammar is a template… read more
Adopting the theoretical framework of the minimalist program, this study of syntactic limitations on complement configuration investigates the link between thematic external arguments and case. Using evidence from pronominal, psychological experiencer, and inalienable constructions, it argues that… read more
This chapter evaluates methodological inquiries to L2 acquisition (L2A) of French syntax and approaches used to carry them out. Over four decades, a range of theoretical approaches to L2 French syntax have prevailed in North America, Asia and Europe. For example, the generative or Universal… read more
We provide a snapshot of childhood morphology development in our investigation of two profiles of bilinguals (age 9–10) in an English-Spanish dual immersion academic setting: Spanish heritage language (SHL, n = 21) and second language (SL2, n = 41) children. Three tasks were given to the 62… read more
Sáez (2011), to account for Spanish definite articles in ellipsis contexts, such as mi libro y el [e] de Juan ‘my book and that of John’, proposes the Stress Condition on Remnants (SCR), which disallows unstressed syntactic elements to be anaphoric, while allowing definite articles to license empty… read more
This paper considers two types of genitive constructions in Old French (OF), one in which the possessor is introduced by a preposition (type un ami à moi “my friend”/l’ami du roi “the king’s friend”) and another, in which no overt preposition is found (type la niece le duc “the duke’s niece”), the… read more
The present study examined the processing of grammatical gender in second language (L2) French as a function of language background (Experiment 1) and as a function of overt phonetic properties of agreement (Experiment 2) by examining Event Related Potential (ERP) responses to gender discord in L2… read more
This paper reconsiders the nature of second language grammars—whether a language learner’s ability can be characterized as I-language or E-language (Chomsky 1986)—and how the nature of second language compares to that of first language grammars. It responds to these questions by arguing that… read more
This article confirms that two classes of psych-verbs in French, amuser-type ("accusative") and manquer-type ("unaccusative"), involve movement into the subject position. However, the two classes are distinguished by their ability to assign accusative Case: the former assign accusative Case and… read more
