Early Peripheries in the Absence of C

Conclusion

A careful examination of longitudinal data from child French has shown that in keeping with Hyam’s original ideas the acquisition of subjects is linked to the setting of Agreement parameter(s). The view presented here is also generally in keeping with Roeper and Rohrbacher’s 1999 ideas concerning early English; however, it does not require us to posit the possibility that children can omit projections intermediate between VP and CP. It is thus more in keeping with Rizzi’s 1998 view of truncation, though it does not attribute the development of overt subjects to maturation but to data-driven structure building. Though largely compatible with Rizzi’s current view of truncation, the data presented here shows clearly that his approach to child null subjects is untenable. Furthermore, the claim that (even child) wh-questions require the projection of CP is undermined by the pattern of emergence of wh-structures.

We conclude instead that left-peripheral elements are not in the CP domain in early child French; the consistent realization of CP begins only when the null subject phase is at an end. This phase is posited to consist of several sub-stages in which the grammar specifies increasing numbers of agreement features, resulting in incremental acquisition of the subject pronominal system.