Interactions Between the Acquisition of French Object Drop and the Development of the C-System

Abstract

Abstract In the present article, we assume that adult French is an object-drop language in which the complex object clitic + verb licenses and identifies a pro object. In an analysis of the speech of a German-French bilingual boy, we observed two major developmental phases. The first phase was characterized by object drop similar to that seen in Chinese. The second phase was characterized by the acquisition of the object clitic paradigm and a shift: to an adult-like morphological licensing mechanism. This coincides with the development of the C-system (Complementizer System) in its target form. Our account, which is based on the Continuity Assumption (Pinker (1984)), relates these "coincidences" in a principled way. In particular, we do not rely on the postulation of the setting of an independent object-drop parameter. Instead, we suggest that the child exploits the possibilities offered by Universal-Grammar-constrained intermediate grammars, which become illicit by independent acquisitional steps, namely, the development of the C-system.