@article {7408, title = {Finding the force: How children discern possibility and necessity modals}, year = {2022}, abstract = {

This paper investigates when and how children figure out the force of modals: that possibility modals (e.g. can/might) express possibility, and necessity modals (e.g. must/have to), necessity. Modals raise a classic subset problem: given that necessity entails possibility, what prevents learners from hypothesizing possibility meanings for necessity modals? Three solutions to such subset problems can be found in the literature: the first is for learners to rely on downward-entailing environments (Gualmini and Schwarz 2009); the second is a bias for strong (here, necessity) meanings; the third is for learners to rely on pragmatic cues, stemming from the conversational context (Dieuleveut et al. 2019, Rasin and Aravind 2020).\  This paper assesses the viability of each of these solutions, by examining the modals used in speech to and by 2-year-old children, through a combination of corpus studies and experiments testing the guessability of modal force based on their context of use. Our results suggest that given the way modals are used in speech to children, the first solution is not viable, and the second unnecessary. Instead, we argue that the conversational context in which modals occur is highly informative as to their force, and sufficient, in principle, to sidestep the subset problem. Our child results further suggest an early mastery of possibility, but not necessity modals, and show no evidence for a necessity bias.

}, keywords = {corpus study, Human Simulation Paradigm experiment, Language Acquisition, Modals, negation}, author = {Dieuleveut, Anouk and van Dooren, Annemarie and Cournane, Ailis and Hacquard, Valentine} } @article {7409, title = {Finding the force: How children discern possibility and necessity modals}, journal = {Natural Language Semantics}, year = {2022}, pages = {1{\textendash}42}, keywords = {corpus study, Human Simulation Paradigm experiment, Language Acquisition, Modals, negation}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s11050-022-09196-4}, author = {Dieuleveut, Anouk and van Dooren, Annemarie and Cournane, Ailis and Hacquard, Valentine} } @unpublished {6192, title = {Acquisition en Fran{\c c}ais L1 des syntagmes interrogatifs pr{\'e}positionnels}, year = {2017}, month = {06/2017}, publisher = {Universit{\'e} Paris-Diderot}, address = {Paris}, abstract = {

In this thesis, I focus on the relationship between the preposition and its Wh- complement in French partial interrogatives, and on how much the production of such interrogatives is affected by prepositions. I investigate this in a quantitative as well as qualitative manner, by contrasting adult with early French data, both retrieved in spoken corpora such as CHILDES transcriptions.

If the fronting of the Wh- element in French questions is a movement from an underlying argument position, moving a Wh- phrase introduced by a preposition appear to be more costly than it is for a bare Wh- phrase. This applies even more strongly to children, who we already know encounter difficulties with Wh- movement in the early stages of their linguistic development.

Both French adults and children favor in situ constructions when using prepositional Wh- phrases, as compared to their use of bare Wh- phrases. Though similar in some aspects to that of bare Wh- phrases, the acquisition process for prepositional Wh- phrases also appears to be more complex: it is delayed, it does not follow a clear pattern, \‘try-out\’ strategies are found among children productions, and in situ constructions are used even more.

}, keywords = {Acquisition, complexity, corpus study, movement, preposition, questions}, author = {Thiberge, Gabriel} }