This volume includes a selection of papers that address a wide range of acquisition phenomena from different Romance languages and all share a common theoretical approach based on the Principles and Parameters theory. They favour, discuss and sometimes challenge traditional explanations of first and second language acquisition in terms of maturation of general principles universal to all languages. They all depart from the view that language acquisition can be explained in terms of learning language specific rules, constraints or structures. The different parts into which this volume is organized reflect different approaches that current research has offered, which deal with issues of development of reflexive pronouns, determiners, clitics, verbs, auxiliaries, inflection, wh-movement, ressumptive pronouns, topic and focus, mood, the syntax/discourse interface, and null arguments.

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Table of contents

The acquisition of syntax in Romance languages Vincent Torrens and Linda Escobar ix–xii The production of SE and SELF anaphors in Spanish and Dutch children Sergio Baauw, Marieke Kuipers, Esther Ruigendijk and Fernando Cuetos 3– 21 On the acquisition of ambiguous Valency-Marking Morphemes: Insights from the acquisition of French SE Isabelle Barrière and Marjorie Perlman Lorch 23–49 Definite and bare noun contrasts in child Catalan Anna Gavarró, Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux and Thomas Roeper 51–68 Null arguments in monolingual children: A comparison of Italian and French Natascha Müller, Katrin Schmitz, Katja Cantone and Tanja Kupisch 69–93 Prenominal elements in French-Germanic bilingual first language acquisition: Evidence for cross-linguistic influence Maren Pannemann 95–114 A cross-sectional study on the use of “be” in early Italian Claudia Caprin and Maria Teresa Guasti 117–133 Patterns of copula omission in Italian child language Elisa Franchi 135–158 Looking for the universal core of the RI stage Manola Salustri and Nina Hyams 159–182 The acquisition of experiencers in Spanish L1 and the external argument requirement hypothesis Vincent Torrens, Linda Escobar and Kenneth Wexler 183–202 Early operators and late topic-drop/pro-drop Jacqueline van Kampen 203–223 The acquisition of A- and A’-bound pronouns in Brazilian Portuguese Elaine Grolla 227–250 Acquiring long-distance wh-questions in L1 Spanish: A longitudinal investigation María Junkal Gutiérrez Mangado 251–287 Evidence from L1 acquisition for the syntax of wh-scope marking in French * Magda Oiry and Hamida Demirdache 289–315 Acquisition of focus marking in European Portuguese: Evidence for a unified approach to focus João Costa and Kriszta Szendrői 319–329 Subject pronouns in bilinguals: Interference or maturation? Manuela Pinto 331–350 Is the semantics/syntax interface vulnerable in l2 acquisition? Focus on mood distinctions clauses in L2 Spanish Claudia Borgonovo, Joyce Bruhn de Garavito and Philippe Prévost 353–369 The development of the syntax-information structure interface: Greek learners of Spanish Cristobal Lozano 371–399 Beyond the syntax of the Null Subject Parameter: A look at the discourse- pragmatic distribution of null and overt subjects by L2 learners of Spanish Silvina A. Montrul and Celeste Rodríguez Louro 401–418 Index 419–421