Abstract for Diane Lillo-Martin's talk

What acquisition data can tell us about focus and wh-structures in ASL and LSB
Diane Lillo-Martin (University of Connecticut)
March 2, 2006 (Thursday)
4:15 PM - ; Room 6417, the CUNY Graduate Center

In this talk (representing research done in collaboration with Ronice Mueller de Quadros), I will present questions concerning the structure of Focus and WH-constructions in American Sign Language (ASL) and Brazilian Sign Language (LSB). In brief, on one analysis focusing of both non-WH and WH-constituents can be accomplished by using either a 'doubling' or sentence-final construction. On an alternative analysis, doubling and sentence-final constructions are independent of each other and of focus. I suggest that the competing analyses make different predictions concerning the nature of the acquisition of these constructions. Acquisition data collected from children acquiring each language is presented, strongly supporting the focus hypothesis over the other.