Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T18:28:54.965Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Les infinitifs racines en langage enfantin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Marie Labelle*
Affiliation:
Université du Québec à Montréal

Abstract

This article is mostly devoted to a critical review of the main analyses of root infinitives. Confronting these analyses to acquisition data from French, it is shown that an analysis in terms of a “null auxiliary” is more compatible with the data than the alternative hypotheses. However, an analysis in terms of a null or deleted auxiliary raises some difficult questions with respect to the existence and the nature of null elements in child language. Rather than appealing to null or deleted elements, it seems more appropriate to assume that children utterances do not include an auxiliary or a modal and that the corresponding node is simply not projected. An analysis along these lines is developed in the last section of the article.

Résumé

Résumé

La majeure partie de cet article est consacrée à une revue critique des principales analyses des infinitifs racines, en les confrontant aux données d’acquisition du français. Il est montré qu’une analyse du type «auxiliaire nul» est plus compatible avec les faits que les hypothèses concurrentes. Une analyse avec auxiliaire nul ou effacement de l’auxiliaire soulève cependant des questions difficiles quant à l’existence et à la nature des éléments nuls en langage enfantin. Plutôt que de postuler la présence d’un élément nul ou l’effacement d’un élément, il semble préférable de supposer que les énoncés enfantins en question ne comportent tout simplement pas d’auxiliaire ou de modal et que le noeud correspondant n’est pas projeté. La dernière section de l’article comporte une proposition d’analyse en ce sens.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Références

Armon-Lotem, Sharon. 1996. What Hebrew early verbs teach us about root infinitives. In Proceedings of the Groningen Assembly on Language Acquisition (GALA) 1995, sous la dir. Koster, de Charlotte et Wijnen, Frank, 7786. Center for Language and Cognition, Groningen.Google Scholar
Bassano, Dominique. 1998. Sémantique et syntaxe dans l’acquisition des classes de mots: l’exemple des noms et des verbes en français. In L’acquisition du français langue maternelle, sous la dir. Martinot, de Claire. Langue Française 118:2648.Google Scholar
Boser, K., Lust, Barbara, Santelmann, L. et Whitman, J.. 1992. The syntax of CP and V-2 in early child German: The strong continuity hypothesis. In Proceedings of the Northeast Linguistic Society 22, 5165. Graduate Linguistic Student Association, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Clark, Eve V. 1996. Early verbs, event-types, and inflections. In Children’s language 9, sous la dir. de C.E. Johnson, et Gilbert, J.H.V., 6173. Mahwah: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Cowper, Elizabeth A. 1991. A compositional analysis of English Tense. In Actes du Congrès annuel de l’Association canadienne de linguistique 1991, sous la dir. Wilson, de Tom, 5364. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics, University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Cowper, Elizabeth A. 1993. Syntactic morphology: A third option. In Proceedings of the Ninth Eastern States Conference on Linguistics, sous la dir. Bernstein, de Michael, 2231. Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Cowper, Elizabeth A. 1994. Intervals and schedules: The English progressive. In Actes du Congrès annuel de l’Association canadienne de linguistique 1994, sous la dir. Koskinen, de Päivi, 107117. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics, University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Cowper, Elizabeth A. 1995. English participle constructions. Revue canadienne de linguistique 40:138.Google Scholar
Crisma, Paula. 1992. On the acquisition of Wh-Questions in French. Geneva Generative Papers 0(1-2): 115122.Google Scholar
Curat, Hervé. 1991. Morphologie verbale et référence temporelle en français moderne. Genève: Droz.Google Scholar
Demirdache, Hamida et Uribe-Etxebarria, Myriam. 1998. The syntax of temporal relations: A uniform approach to Tense and Aspect. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth West Coast Conference of Formal Linguistics 16, sous la dir. Curtis, de Emily, Lyle, James et Webster, Gabriel, 145159. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.Google Scholar
Ferdinand, Astrid. 1995. Semantic verb types and the acquisition of verb movement in French. In Proceedings of ESCOL ’94, sous la dir. Fuller, de Janet M., Han, Ho et Parkinson, David, 128139. Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Cornell University.Google Scholar
Ferdinand, Astrid. 1996. The development of functional categories: The acquisition of the subject in French. Dordrecht: Holland Institute of Generative Linguistics, ICG Printing.Google Scholar
Friedemann, Marc-Ariel. 1993/94. The underlying position of external arguments in French: A study in adult and child grammar. Language Acquisition 3:209255.Google Scholar
Giorgi, Alessandra et Pianesi, Fabio. 1997. Tense and aspect. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Guasti, M.T. 1992. Verb syntax in Italian child grammar. Geneva Generative Papers 1-2:145162.Google Scholar
Guasti, M.T. 1993/94. Verb syntax in Italian child grammar: Finite and nonfinite verbs. Language acquisition 3:140.Google Scholar
Grinstead, J. 1994. Consequences of the maturation of number morphology in Spanish and Catalan. Mémoire de maîtrise, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Guéron, Jacqueline. 1993. Sur la syntaxe du temps. Langue française 100:102123.Google Scholar
Guéron, Jacqueline. 1996. Cohérence et économie dans la grammaire du temps: remarques sur la variation des structures temporelles. In Anaphores temporelles et (in-)cohérence, sous la dir. De Mulder, de Walter, Tasmowski-De Ryck, Liliane et Vetters, Carl, 5977. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Guéron, Jacqueline et Hoekstra, Teun. 1988. Les chaînes-T et les verbes auxiliaires. Lexique 7:6185.Google Scholar
Haegeman, Liliane. 1995. Root infinitives, tense and truncated structure. Language Acquisition 4:205255.Google Scholar
Hamann, Cornelia, Rizzi, Luigi et Frauenfelder, Uli H.. 1996. On the acquisition of subject and object clitics in French. In Generative perspectives on language acquisition, sous la dir. Clahsen, de Harald, 309334. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Hoekstra, Teun et Hyams, Nina. 1996a. Missing heads in child language. In Proceedings of the Groningen Assembly on Language Acquisition (GALA), sous la dir. Koster, de Charlotte et Wijnen, Frank, 251260. Center for Language and Cognition, Groningen.Google Scholar
Hoekstra, Teun et Hyams, Nina. 1996b. The syntax and interpretation of dropped categories in child language: A unified account. In Proceedings of the Fourteenth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 1995: 123136. CSLI, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Hoekstra, Teun, Hyams, Nina et Becker, Misha. 1996. The underspecification of Number and the licensing of root infinitives. Communication présentée au 21st annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston.Google Scholar
Kramer, I. 1993. The licensing of subjects in early child language. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 19:197212.Google Scholar
Kratzer, Angelika. 1995. Stage-level and individual-level predicates. In The generic book, sous la dir. Carlson, de Gregory N. et Pelletier, Francis Jeffry, 125175. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Labelle, Marie. 1994. Acquisition de la valeur des temps du passé par les enfants francophones. Revue québécoise de linguistique 23(1):99121.Google Scholar
Labelle, Marie et Valois, Daniel. 1996. The status of post-verbal subjects in French child language. Probus 8:5380.Google Scholar
Legendre, Géraldine, Vainikka, Anne, Todorova, Marina et Hagstrom, Paul. 1998. Optional finiteness in early child grammars. Communication presentee au Workshop on Optimality Theory, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Lightbown, Patsy. 1977. Consistency and variation in the acquisition of French. Thèse de doctorat, Columbia University.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, Brian et Snow, Catherine. 1985. The child language data exchange system: An update. Journal of child language 12:271296.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, Brian et Snow, Catherine. 1990. The child language data exchange system. Journal of child language 17:457472.Google Scholar
Meisel, Jürgen. 1985. Les phases initiales du développement de notions temporelles, aspectuelles et de modes d’action. Étude basée sur le langage d’enfants bilingues français-allemand. Lingua 66:321374.Google Scholar
Miller, Philip H. et Sag, Ivan A.. 1995. Une analyse lexicaliste des affixes pronominaux en français. Revue québécoise de linguistique 24(1): 135171.Google Scholar
Phillips, Colin. 1996. Root infinitives are finite. In Proceedings of the 20th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, vol. 2, sous la dir. Stringfellow, de Andy, Cahana-Amitay, Dalia, Hughes, Elizabeth et Zukowski, Andrea, 588599. Somerville, Mass.: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Pierce, Amy E. 1989. On the emergence of syntax: crosslinguistic study. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Pierce, Amy E. 1992. Language acquisition and syntactic theory: A comparative analysis of French and Encash child grammars. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Platzack, Christer. 1996. The initial hypothesis of syntax: A minimalist perspective on language acquisition and attrition. In Generative perspectives on language acquisition, sous la dir. Clahsen, de Harald, 369414. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Plunkett, Bernadette. 1991. Inversion and early WH questions. In UMOP Special Edition: Papers in the acquisition of WH. Proceedings of the University of Massachusetts Roundtable, May 1990, sous la dir. Maxfield, de Thomas L. et Plunkett, Bernadette, 125–153. Graduate Linguistic Student Association, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Poeppel, D. et Wexler, Ken. 1993. The full competence hypothesis of clause structure in early German. Language 69:133.Google Scholar
Rasetti, Lucienne. 1996. Null subjects and root infinitives in the child grammar of French. Geneva Generative Papers 4(2): 120132.Google Scholar
Reichenbach, H. 1947. Elements of symbolic logic. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1993/94. Some notes on linguistic theory and language development: The case of root infinitives. Language Acquisition 3:371393.Google Scholar
Sano, Tetsuya. 1996. Maturation in inflectional morphology. Communication presentee au 21st annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston.Google Scholar
Sano, Tetsuya et Hyams, Nina. 1994. Agreement, finiteness, and the development of null arguments. In Proceedings of NELS 24, sous la dir. Gonzàlez, de Mercè, 543558. Graduate Linguistic Student Association, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Schütze, Carson T. et Wexler, Kenneth. 1996. Subject Case licensing and English root infinitives. In Proceedings of the 20th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, vol. 2, sous la dir. Stringfellow, de Andy, Cahana-Amitay, Dalia, Hughes, Elizabeth et Zukowski, Andrea, 670681. Somerville, Mass.: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Schonenberger, Manuela, Pierce, Amy, Wexler, Ken et Wijnen, Frank. 1995. Accounts of root infinitives and the interpretation of root infinitives. Geneva Generative Papers 3(2):4771.Google Scholar
Shirai, Yasuhiro et Andersen, Roger W.. 1995. The acquisition of tense-aspect morphology: A prototype account. Language 71:743762.Google Scholar
Stowell, Tim. 1996. The phrase structure of Tense. In Phrase structure and the lexicon, sous la dir. Rooryck, de Johan et Zaring, Laurie, 277291. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Travis, Lisa deMena. 1994. Event phrase and a theory of functional categories. In Actes du Congrès annuel de l’Association canadienne de linguistique, sous la dir. Koskinen, de Päivi, 559570. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics, University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Varlokosta, Spyridoula, Vainikka, Anne et Rohrbacher, Bernhard. 1996. Root infinitives without infinitives. In Proceedings of the 20th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, vol. 2, sous la dir. Stringfellow, de Andy, Cahana-Amitay, Dalia, Hughes, Elizabeth et Zukowski, Andrea, 816827. Somerville, Mass.: Cascadilla Press Google Scholar
Weist, Richard M. 1986. Tense and aspect. In Language acquisition, 2nd ed., sous la dir. Fletcher, de Paul et Garman, Michael, 356374. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Weist, Richard M., Wysocka, H. et Lyytinen, P.. 1991. A cross-linguistic perspective on the development of temporal systems. Journal of child language 18:6792.Google Scholar
Wexler, Kenneth. 1994. Finiteness and head movement in early child grammars. In Verb movement, sous la dir. Lightfoot, de David et Hornstein, Norbert, 305350. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zagona, Karen. 1990. Times as temporal argument structure. Communication presentee au colloque Time in language , Cambridge, Mass.Google Scholar
Zagona, Karen. 1992. Tense binding and the construal of present tense. In Studies in Romance linguistics, sous la dir. Laeufer, de Christiane et Morgan, Terrell, 385398. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar