Bibliographie
International workshop on the L1 and L2 acquisition of Information Structure
Background
In recent years, the study of Information Structure in child language has gained significant interest.
Many authors have investigated how the accessibility level of referents (given vs new) influences
children’s referential choices (pronoun, indefinite or definite lexical NP...) (Gundel & Johnson, 2013 ;
Hendriks, Koster, & Hoeks, 2014 ; Hickmann & Hendriks, 1999) or word order (Dimroth & Narasimhan,
2012 ; Bhuvana Narasimhan & Dimroth, 2008 ; Bhuvana Narasimhan & Dimroth, 2018 ; Schelletter &
Leinonen, 2003 ; Stephens, 2010). Children’s prosodic and syntactic choices to encode the topic and
focus of their utterances have also been studied in some detail (Arnhold, Chen, & Järvikivi, 2016 ; A.
Chen, 2011 ; H. C. Chen, Szendrői, Crain, & Höhle, 2018 ; De Cat, 2009 ; Moscati, Manetti, Belletti, & Rizzi,
in press ; Moscati, Manetti, & Rizzi, 2015).
Little consensus has however been reached on the development of Information Structure in child
language and its interaction with the development of syntax (Höhle, Berger, & Sauermann, 2016).
While some studies suggest that morphology and syntax are acquired before pragmatics and
Information Structure (Schaeffer & Matthewson, 2005), others show that at least some of children’s
constructions encode an adult-like Information Structure configuration. For example, French and
Italian children use dislocations to encode the topic of the utterance from the onset of the
development of the construction (Belletti, 2005 ; De Cat, 2002, 2007, 2009 ; Manetti & Belletti, 2017) ,
and Russian children use SVO and OVS word orders in an adult-like way as early as age 2 ;10 depending
on the information status of the subject and the object (Dyakonova, 2004).
Several authors have also shown that children do not develop all aspects of Information Structure at
the same rate. Dutch children from the study of Chen (2011) acquire the intonation contour to mark
topic before the contour for focus, and Portuguese children from the study of Costa and Szendroi
(2006) acquire the syntactic marking of focus while they still struggle with the computations required
to interpret stress shift as a focus marker. Besides, research suggests that the comprehension of focus-
marking intonation is acquired after production in child language (Gualmini, Maciukaite, & Crain, 2003 ;
Paterson, Liversedge, Rowland, & Filik, 2003 ; Szendrői, 2004) (For opposite conclusions, see A. Chen,
2010 ; Szendrői, Bernard, Berger, Gervain, & Höhle, 2018)
The study of L2 acquisition of Information Structure has also developed recently (Colonna, Schimke,
de la Fuente, Kuck, & Hemforth, 2018 ; Park, 2018), and reevaluates former findings. According to
Fuller and Gundel (1987), the interlanguage of L2 learners is characterized by an early topic-prominent
stage and a late subject-prominent stage, even if their L1 is subject-prominent, which suggests that
some aspects of the development of Information Structure might be universal. More recent research
however suggests a transfer from L1 characteristics(Jin, 1994 ; Jung, 2004). Some authors consider that
L2 learners have difficulties acquiring the syntax-pragmatic and Information Structure interface
(Dominguez & Arche, 2014 ; Sorace, 1993 ; Sorace & Filiaci, 2006). Some find that L2 learners, as they
become more advanced, manage to acquire syntactic constructions with the appropriate Information
Structure function (Donaldson, 2011a, 2011b ; Hugues, 2010).
Aim of the workshop
The aim of this workshop is to gather researchers working on different aspects of the L1 and L2
acquisition of Information Structure in different languages, using experimental protocols or corpus
research, to gain a better understanding of the development of Information Structure.
The questions which can be addressed include, but are not restricted to :
– Which prosodic, morphologic or syntactic means are used by children to encode Information
Structure ? What is the developmental pattern of these means ?
– Are some means to encode Information Structure (prosody vs syntax) acquired earlier than
others ?
– How does the division of labor between syntax/prosody and Information Structure in the
target language impact on its acquisition ?
– Are some aspects of Information Structure (referential vs. relational) easier to acquire by
children ?
– Are there early stages in L1 or L2 language development exhibiting more topic-prominent or
subject-prominent characteristics ?
– Which aspects of Information Structure are acquired in production before comprehension ?
Keynote speakers
Aoju Chen (Utrecht Institute of Linguistics)
Carla Soares (Université Paris VIII) & Maria Lobo (Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
Kriszta Szendrői (University College London)
Abstract submission
We invite you to submit proposals for 20-minute individual presentations. Abstracts should not
exceed two pages in length, 12-point type, Times New Roman, single line spacing, 2.5cm (1 inch)
margins, including examples and tables.
Abstracts should be submitted in PDF format via EasyChair :
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ais2019
Abstract submission deadline : Friday 1 February 2019
Notification of acceptance : Friday 22 February 2019
Organizers
This conference is organized as part of the research project on the First Language Acquisition of
Information Structure (FLAcIS, https://www.arts.kuleuven.be/ling/is-acquisition )
Karen Lahousse (KU Leuven)
Emmanuelle Canut (Université de Lille)
Cécile De Cat (University of Leeds)
Morgane Jourdain (KU Leuven)