This volume contains a collection of studies that survey recent research in developmental linguistics, illustrating the fruitful interaction between comparative syntax and language acquisition. The contributors each analyse a well defined range of acquisition data, aiming to derive them from primitive differences between child and adult grammar. The book covers cross-linguistic and cross-categorial phenomena, shedding light on major developments in this novel and rapidly growing field. Extensions to second language acquisition and neuropathology are also suggested.

Series list vList of contributors IXEditors' acknowledgements X1 The acquisition of syntax: introductionMarc-Ariel Friedemann and Luigi Rizzi2 The acquisition of the Determiner Phrase inGerman child language 26Sonja Eisenbeiss3 Early French postverbal subjects 63Marc-Ariel Friedemann4 Split inflection in neurolinguistics 84Na 'ama Friedmann and Yosef Grodzinsky5 An excursion into interrogatives inEarly English and Italian 105Maria Teresa Guasti6 Adult null subjects in non pro-drop languages 129Liliane Haegeman7 The acquisition of constituent questions andthe requirements of interpretation 170Cornelia Hamann8 Accounting for morphological variation insecond language acquisition: truncation ormissing inflection? 202Philippe Prevost and Lydia WhiteNull subjects and root infinitives in the childgrammar of French 236Lucienne Rasetti10 Remarks on early null subjects 269Luigi Rizzi11 The acquisition of verb placement inLucernese Swiss GermanManuela SchonenbergerIndex