Functional Categories and Verb Movement: The Acquisition of German Syntax Reconsidered

Recently, various authors have argued within a Universal Grammar framework (Chomsky 1986) that the form of early child language is determined in part by the nature of the vocabulary available. Guilfoyle & Noonan (1988), Lebeaux (1988), and Radford (1990) for English, and Platzack (1989) for Swedish assume that functional categories, particularly the Isystem, are initially absent in these languages. Clahsen (to appear) and Tracy et al. (1990) for German; Pierce (1989) for French, and Penner (1990) for Bernese Swiss assume that in these languages certain functional categories, (e. g. complementizers, agreement) are initially missing. Other properties of early child language, like missing subjects, the absence of verb movement, the absence of case assignment, VP-internal subjects, and so on, follow from this type of analysis.

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