The position of interrogative words in child French is constrained

What is it about?

French, contrary to English, displays both in-situ wh-questions (e.g., tu vis où? ‘you live where’) and preposed wh-questions (e.g., où tu vis? ‘where do you live’). The study examines the distribution of the wh-words in a new corpus of child French in order to evaluate if the position of the wh-words is random or constrained. Results indicate that there is a correlation between the wh-in-situ position and the Fixed be form c’est ‘it is’.

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Why is it important?

The study sheds new light on a long-standing area of research in French syntax, by providing a statistical investigation of a new child dataset. The Fixed be form c'est 'it is' is identified as the component that leads to wh-in-situ utterances, in contrast to other languages such as English. Overuse of the Fixed be form in child speech could also account for the predominance of wh-in-situ in child object questions compared to adjunct questions, and child wh-questions in general compared to adult questions.