H1 gisako urruntasun luzeko NZ-galderen jabekuntza haur euskaldun batengan

Abstract

In this article we present data from the first language (L1) acquisition of Long-distance (LD) wh-questions. The subject's age at the begining of the experiment was 5;1. The main aim of the investigation was to examine the development of this structure longitudinally and on the other hand to compare the results obtained with similar experiments reported in the literature. Our results show that the acquisition of this structure in Basque is consistent with the findings from other L1s such as English (Thronton 1990), French (Oiry 2003, Jakubowicz 2004), Dutch (van Kampen 1997) and Spanish (Gutierrez 2006). The main finding from these investigations, also confirmed for L1 Basque, revealed that in the process of acquisition children produce structures which are absent in the adult language, that is, in the language they are acquiring. However, this non-adult structures known as Partial wh-movement and wh-copying structures can be found in several natural languages and as such are part of Universal Grammar (UG). The main contribution from our experiment lies in the longitudional nature of the experiment, shedding light in the development of these types of questions through time.