Under current assumptions, the structural representation of a clause consists of three kinds of structural layers, each layer an instantiation of the X-bar schema: 

1.

The lexical layer, headed by the verb, the structural layer in which theta assignment takes place.




2.

The inflectional layer, headed by functional heads corresponding to concrete or abstract morphological specifications on the verb, and responsible for the licensing of argumental features such as case and agreement.




3.

The complementizer layer, typically headed by a free functional morpheme, and hosting topics and various operator-like elements such as interrogative and relative pronouns, focalized elements, etc.






In the mid eighties, each layer was identified with a single X-bar projection (VP, IP, CP), but this assumption quickly turned out to be too simplistic. Under the impact of Pollock’s (1989) influential analysis of verb movement, IP dissolved into a series of functional projections, each corresponding to system (Agr, T, Asp,…). Kayne’s (1984) binary branching hypothesis naturally led to the postulation of multiple VP layers for multi-argument verbs, e.g. along the lines of Larson (1988) and much related work.

The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery

Child psychiatrists, pediatricians, and other child clinicians need to have a solid understanding of child language development. There are at least four important reasons that make this necessary. First, slowing, arrest, and deviation of language development are highly associated with, and complicate the course of, child psychopathology. Second, language competence plays a crucial role in emotional and mood regulation, evaluation, and therapy. Third, language deficits are the most frequent underpinning of the learning disorders, ubiquitous in our clinical populations. Fourth, clinicians should not confuse the rich linguistic and dialectal diversity of our clinical populations with abnormalities in child language development. The challenge for the clinician becomes, then, how to get immersed in the captivating field of child language acquisition without getting overwhelmed by its conceptual and empirical complexity. In the past 50 years and since the seminal works of Roger Brown, Jerome Bruner, and Catherine Snow, child language researchers (often known as developmental psycholinguists) have produced a remarkable body of knowledge. Linguists such as Chomsky and philosophers such as Grice have strongly influenced the science of child language. One of the major tenets of Chomskian linguistics (known as generative grammar) is that children’s capacity to acquire language is “hardwired” with “universal grammar”—an innate language acquisition device (LAD), a language “instinct”—at its core. This view is in part supported by the assertion that the linguistic input that children receive is relatively dismal and of poor quality relative to the high quantity and quality of output that they manage to produce after age 2 and that only an advanced, innate capacity to decode and organize linguistic input can enable them to “get from here (prelinguistic infant) to there (linguistic child).” In “Constructing a Language,” Tomasello presents a contrasting theory of how the child acquires language: It is not a universal grammar that allows for language development. Rather, human cognition universals of communicative needs and vocal-auditory processing result in some language universals, such as nouns and verbs as expressions of reference and predication (p. 19). The author proposes that two sets of cognitive skills resulting from biological/phylogenetic adaptations are fundamental to the ontogenetic origins of language. These sets of inherited cognitive skills are intentionreading on the one hand and pattern-finding, on the other. Intention-reading skills encompass the prelinguistic infant’s capacities to share attention to outside events with other persons, establishing joint attentional frames, to understand other people’s communicative intentions, and to imitate the adult’s communicative intentions (an intersubjective form of imitation that requires symbolic understanding and perspective-taking). Pattern-finding skills include the ability of infants as young as 7 months old to analyze concepts and percepts (most relevant here, auditory or speech percepts) and create concrete or abstract categories that contain analogous items. Tomasello, a most prominent developmental scientist with research foci on child language acquisition and on social cognition and social learning in children and primates, succinctly and clearly introduces the major points of his theory and his views on the origins of language in the initial chapters. In subsequent chapters, he delves into the details by covering most language acquisition domains, namely, word (lexical) learning, syntax, and morphology and conversation, narrative, and extended discourse. Although one of the remaining domains (pragmatics) is at the core of his theory and permeates the text throughout, the relative paucity of passages explicitly devoted to discussing acquisition and proBOOK REVIEWS

Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition

In his analysis of action sentences, Donald Davidson drew a clear distinction between arguments and adjuncts. Neglecting temporal relations, sentences like 

(1)

We bought your slippers in Marrakesh.

Severing the External Argument from its Verb

The biolinguistic perspective regards the language faculty as an “organ of the body,” along with other cognitive systems. Adopting it, we expect to find three factors that interact to determine (I-) languages attained: genetic endowment (the topic of Universal Grammar), experience, and principles that are language- or even organism-independent. Research has naturally focused on I-languages and UG, the problems of descriptive and explanatory adequacy. The Principles-and-Parameters approach opened the possibility for serious investigation of the third factor, and the attempt to account for properties of language in terms of general considerations of computational efficiency, eliminating some of the technology postulated as specific to language and providing more principled explanation of linguistic phenomena

/pdf/three-factors-in-language-design-3ui5wze9cz.pdf

Three Factors in Language Design

Null objects in Italian and the theory of 'pro'

Psych-verbs and Th-theory

The Case of Unaccusatives

http://www.ciscl.unisi.it/doc/doc_pub/Friedmann%20Belletti%20Rizzi%202008%20-%20relativized%20relatives%20Lingua.pdf

Relativized relatives: Types of intervention in the acquisition of A-bar dependencies

This article reports the results of experiments targeting the production and interpretation of postverbal subjects, and null and overt pronominal subjects, by near-native speakers of Italian whose native language is English. The results directly bear on both theoretical issues and developmental acquisition questions. It is argued that properties related to the null-subject parameter are sensitive to discourse factors that determine the use of both postverbal subjects and pronominal subjects. More specifically, it is claimed that the availability of null pronominal subjects and the availability of postverbal subjects do not necessarily correlate. The near-native grammars analyzed here illustrate a special instance of this lack of correlation. Furthermore, near-natives show non-native-like behavior in the use of postverbal subjects, and in the overuse of overt pronominal subjects in tensed clauses. The proposal is put forward that, although resetting of the null-subject parameter has taken place in the speakers’ L2 Italian grammar, the relevant L1 computations are preserved and accessed in L2 use, without violating any formal conditions; this is the source of non-target behavior. The analysis proposed exploits cartographic insights on discourse-related computations, and suggests that the principles of economy may be instantiated differently in native and near-native grammars.

Adriana Belletti

Papers

Psych-verbs and Th-theory

The Case of Unaccusatives

Relativized relatives: Types of intervention in the acquisition of A-bar dependencies

Theoretical and developmental issues in the syntax of subjects: Evidence from near-native Italian

Structures and Beyond. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, vol.3