EARLY SYNTACTIC ACQUISITION IN GERMAN - EVIDENCE FOR THE MODAL HYPOTHESIS

Poeppel and Wexler (1993) present the Full Competence Hypothesis, whic h claims that German children very early (circa age 2) acquire finiten ess, verb agreement, and verb movement. They also propose the Grammati cal Infinitive Hypothesis, which states that children have the option of using either a finite or nonfinite form and randomly select verbs f or one or the other. The data on which these claims are based consist of 282 sentences from a German child at 2;1. We present a more conserv ative alternative, the Lexical/Semantic Hypothesis, which proposes tha t early learning is more lexically oriented, and that early word combi nations can be explained by more semantically oriented accounts. To re place the Grammatical Infinitive Hypothesis, we put forth the Modal Hy pothesis, which states that the distinction between finite and nonfini te forms can be accounted for by the modality of the sentence. Nonfini te forms occur in modal contexts, and finite ones occur in nonmodal on es. Data to support this alternative are presented from the analysis o f 1084 sentences from four German children, including the subject stud ied in Poeppel and Wexler.