Our argument rests on the crosslinguistic work exploring the syntax
of possessor questions in a variety of languages: Tzotzil (Aissen 1996),
Mohawk (Baker 1996), Chamorro (Chung 1991), the Germanic and Slavic
languages (Corver 1990), Hungarian (Szabolcsi 1983/4, 1994). The existing
work suggests that there is a three-way division between languages with
overt wh-movement, that is, possessor questions can appear in one of the
three forms:
(a) split (as in Chamorro), which means that a wh-possessor is obligatorily
extracted;
(b) optionally split (as in Hungarian, Tzotzil, or Russian), which means
that either a wh-possessor is extracted or the entire whose-phrase is
pied-piped;
(c) only pied-piped (as in the Germanic languages), which means that
the entire whose-phrase must appear in the matrix CP.
We assume that this three-way split between the surveyed languages reflects
the parametric values of the possessor extraction parameter. Thus, it is
logically possible that children's acquisition of whose-questions will be
consistent with each of these values. This is exactly what we found in the
L1 and L2 data. Of 12 native English-speaking children, four kids split
all possessor questions, six kids produced both split and pied-piped
questions, and two pied-piped exclusively. Two Russian kids acquiring
English as L2 produced only split whose-questions, despite the fact that
their native language allows both a split and a non-split option. Thus,
both sets of data support the analysis of the patterns in (1) as reflecting
a UG-compatible grammatical option. This conclusion is contrary to Snyder
et al. (1997, 1998) who argue that left-branch violations in child English
(and split whose-questions count as such) have no linguistic motivation.
The split possessor questions in child L1 and L2 English have
several characteristics that raise a host of interesting theoretical and
developmental questions. First, native English-speaking children utilized a
wh-possessor extraction option only when asked to produce long-distance
questions. This finding can be interpreted in at least three of the
following ways:
(a) it reflects a more advanced developmental stage, where possessor
extraction is restricted to long-distance contexts (the stage at which
children split matrix whose-questions remains to be empirically determined);
(b) it reflects another parametric setting which permits possessor
extraction only in long-distance contexts (this is consistent with Baker's
(1996) observation that possessors in Mohawk are allowed to extract in
long-distance but not in matrix questions);
(c) it reflects the fact that the presence of the medial COMP in a
syntactic configuration is somehow crucial for possessor extraction to be
allowable.
We will argue that the interpretation in [c] is theoretically plausible in
the feature-checking theory of movement (Chomsky 1995). We will suggest
that wh-possessors can be extracted in long-distance questions because the
medial C0 provides an alternative checking domain for the Case/D-feature of
the wh-possessor 'who' in child English. We argue that the C0 in child
English can be optionally assigned a [-Interpretable] strong D feature as
it is drawn from the lexicon into the numeration (Chomsky 1995). The
strong D feature on the medial C0 needs to be checked/eliminated before
Spell-Out. This checking operation is performed by the wh-possessor 'who'
which carries Case/D-feature. The overt 's in split questions in (1) is
then a morphological spell-out of the strong D-feature in COMP, as shown
schematically in (2):
(2) [CP Who do you think [CP t' ['s=strong D [TP Spiderman [vP saved [VP
[DP t cat]]]]]]].
The structure in (2) shows that 'who' proceeds to move to the matrix CP to
check its [+wh] feature. This analysis accords with recent syntactic
analyses of successive-cyclic wh-movement that propose the presence of
strong D feature on the medial COMP (Fanselow & Mahajan 1996). The data on
split possessor questions provide additional empirical evidence for such
proposals as well as suggest that wh-possessor extraction in child English
proceeds via successive-cyclic movement.
Thus, we propose that there are two possible ways for the wh-possessors to
check their Case/D-features in child English: (a) in the checking domain of
the medial C0 and/or D0. The proposal is supported by the distribution of
the morpheme 's in split whose-questions. The data show that 's is
consistently spelled out as a clitic on the matrix verb think. The
questions where 's is spelled-out on the lower verb are unattested in the
child data ("*Who do you think Spiderman saved 's cat?").
Finally, we will consider a number of developmental questions concerning
(a) the default setting of the possessor extraction parameter; (b) how
children unlearn the checking of D-feature in the domain of C0.
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About the PLC23 Committee
Previously held Penn Linguistics Colloquium: PLC22 (1998), PLC21 (1997)
Penn Department of Linguistics
University of Pennsylvania