Romance Linguistics: Theory and Acquisition (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Romance linguistics: Theory and acquisition ed. by Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux and Yves Roberge Natalya I. Stolova Romance linguistics: Theory and acquisition. Ed. by Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux and Yves Roberge. (Current issues in linguistic theory 244.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2002. Pp. viii, 388. ISBN 1588114309. $150 (Hb). This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the 32nd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (University of Toronto, April 2002). The first part is entitled ‘Theory’. Six of its contributions analyze specific properties of Romance at the syntax/semantics interface. Gabriela Alboiu discusses the asymmetrical behavior of Romanian operators. J.-Marc Authier and Lisa A. Reed offer a structural analysis of the French faire-par construction. Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach and Chad Howe argue for a reconsideration of Spanish discourse connectives. Marie Labelle addresses the French sequences [End Page 691] of verbs in the imperfect where the events are understood as following one another. Karen Lahousse analyzes the types of adverbs that license NP subject inversion in French and the structural difference between VS and SV word order. Marie-Thérèse Vinet compares the distribution of the deficient form ça in Swiss French to the distribution of other French object clitics. Four of the theoretical articles address morphosyntactic issues. Susana Béjar and Milan Rezac present a minimalist approach to Romance person licensing. Ana Castro and João Costa corroborate the hypothesis that tripartite classification of pronominal forms is transcategorical, amplifying this typology and extending it to the possessive and adverbial systems of European Portuguese. María Cristina Cuervo provides an analysis of Romance ‘seem’+ experiencer constructions in terms of control structures. Heloisa Maria Moreira Lima-Salles compares the interaction between the syntax of (inflected) infinitives and finite subjunctive/indicative clauses in Brazilian and European Portuguese. Two of the articles focused on theory explore Romance morphophonology within the framework of optimality theory. Gary K. Baker and Caroline R. Wiltshire discuss palatal fortition in Argentinian Spanish, and Jean-Pierre Montreuil looks at the interaction of prosody in Central Romansch with the phenomenon of obstruentization. The theoretical part of the collection also takes up historical issues. The focus of Andrea Calabrese’s contribution is the evolution of the short high vowels of Latin into Romance and Paul Hirschbühler and Marie Labelle employ the diachronic perspective when addressing clitic distribution in French dialects. The second part of the book concentrates on first, second, and bilingual language acquisition. Larisa Avram and Martine Coene examine the early omission of articles and auxiliaries in child Romanian. Bernadette Plunkett focuses on data from European and Canadian varieties of child French in which the majority of null subjects occur with morphologically finite verbs. L2 acquisition is addressed by Barbara Bullock and Gillian Lord regarding the role of analogy in the case of Spanish stress, as well as by Philippe Prévost who writes on the nature of root infinitives in adult L2 French. Juana M. Liceras compares the processes that lead to native-like and nonnative competence in Spanish. Bilingual language learning is discussed by Julia Berger-Morales and Manola Salustri, who present German/Italian evidence to support the separate systems hypothesis, and by Aafke Hulk, Janneke Peet, and Leonie Cornips, who discuss the acquisition of beaucoup in the ‘quantification at a distance’ constructions by bilingual French/Dutch children. Natalya I. Stolova Colgate University Copyright © 2006 Linguistic Society of America