The emergence of syntactic complexity. The first language acquisition of cleft sentences in French as a window onto the syntax - prosody - Information Structure interface.

This project will investigate how complex language is acquired. We will focus on how children, in their first language acquisition, produce and understand meaning making use of complex form (syntax), pronunciation (prosody) and discourse context. To this extent, we will analyze the emergence and development of two types of “cleft sentences” (1-2) in French, with children between ages 2 and 8. (1) Child (age 2;9): C'est toi qui m(e) fait les tortues. ‘It’s you who does the turtles for me.’ (1’) ~ Tu me fais les tortues. ‘You do the turtles for me.’ (2) Child (age 3;11): Il y a quelqu'un qui vole un parapluie. ‘There is somebody who is stealing an umbrella.’ (2’) ~ Quelqu’un vole un parapluie. ‘Somebody is stealing an umbrella.’ Clefts pose an intriguing puzzle for linguistic research on first language acquisition and the interaction between syntax, prosody and interpretation, because they communicate the same basic information as the corresponding simple sentence (1’ and 2’), but have a more complex form, and a specific interpretation and prosody. They consist of two clauses (a main clause and an embedded clause) and emphasize that one part of the sentence (toi ‘you’ in (1)) or the whole sentence (in (2)) constitutes new information for the hearer. Moreover, c’est clefts (1), but not il y a clefts (2) often have a special (contrastive and exhaustive) interpretation, and imply that ‘it’s you and nobody else who will do the turtles’.