Partial Constraint Ordering in Child French Syntax

Reanalyzing production data from three French children, we make three basic points. First, we show that tense and agreement inflection follow independent courses of acquisition (in child French). Tense production starts and ends at near-adult levels, but suffers a “dip” in production at the second stage. Agreement develops linearly, going roughly from none to 100% over the same time. This profile suggests an analysis in which, at the second stage, tense and agreement compete. Second, using a mechanism of grammatical development based on partial rankings of constraints (in terms of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993)), our analysis successfully predicts, over three stages, the frequency with which children use tensed, agreeing, and nonfinite verbs. Third, looking at several other constructions (including null and postverbal subjects), we find support for our agreement data and our analysis from the frequencies with which agreement and/or subject clitics appear.