Title
Adriana Belletti (University of Siena): Answering strategies: A view from acquisition.

CASTL colloquium

Date:  07.09.2006

Time:  19:15

Venue:  E010 1

Description
When we look at question-answer pairs concerning the subject of the clause, a striking fact emerges. Different languages adopt different ways to answer the very same question concerning the identification of the subject. It appears that seemingly unrelated and different languages essentially follow the same few patterns: (clause internal) subject inversion, leading to the order VS; (reduced) Cleft sentence, clefting S; focalization of S in situ (or in the left periphery). At least the following questions naturally arise concerning the identified strategies:
How can they be analyzed?
What can acquisition data reveal about the existence and (some) properties of the different strategies?
Are (exclusively) grammatical reasons at the source of the existence and prevalence of the different strategies in the different languages?

In the talk I will address these questions and some issues directly related to them.
As discussed in part in previous work, I will propose that principled reasons lead to the selection of the partly different preferred strategies in the languages considered (Italian, French, English; German will also be touched upon) which, despite their visible difference, have more in common than it may appear at first sight. The analysis highlighting similarities and differences, will be developed in terms of the structural cartography of the low area of the clause. A proposal will be developed according to which the languages considered do not, and in part cannot, make the same use of the discourse related low VP- periphery of the clause.

Acquisition data will be discussed against this background. In particular, adult L2 experimental results will be shown to reveal some deep similarities of the different strategies typically adopted in the different languages considered, in a peculiar and interesting way. Indeed, these data uncover the very operation of the different answering strategies. Whenever no formal principle is violated, the different strategies could in principle all be available to the speakers of different languages. However, this is not what happens: different strategies become prominent at different degrees in different languages in ways which will be discussed. The adult L2 experimental data indicate that the different strategies are relatively readily available in the bilingual setting, where the L2 target and the L1 strategies may coexist to some extent, but the L1 strategy tends to remain prominent even at advanced levels of L2 attainment.

The following questions will be further addressed in some detail:
- How early in (first) language acquisition does a strategy take priority and qualify as the preferred one?
Why does one strategy ultimately take priority over the other(s) in different languages, even in those cases where use of a different one would not involve the violation of any formal principle?

Preliminary search on data (from the CHILDES database) on child (monolingual) acquisition of
Italian, French and English clearly indicates that the different answering strategies are in place very
early on. As for the second question, I will provide some speculation according to which
prevalence of one strategy over the others in the different languages could ultimately be due to
economy considerations, leading to “forgetting” the other possibilities in the course of
acquisition.