Growing trees: The acquisition of the left periphery

We suggest here a Growing Trees approach for the description of acquisition various syntactic structures in Hebrew, based on main results reported Friedmann and Reznick (this volume) our own research corpus natural productions. The heart account is that stages follow geometry tree, along lines cartographic analysis clause, with early corresponding to small portions adult which keeps growing growth child. lower parts tree are acquired first, higher later. propose three connected development functional layers tree. In first stage, IP acquired, including lexical inflectional layers. This allows appearance A-movement structures, SV/VS alternations unaccusative verbs, alongside SV sentences unergative/transitive verbs. second stage involves part left periphery, up QP, subject object Wh questions, some adjunct yes/no sentence-initial adverbs. third rich structure periphery completely CP field. sentential embedding (of finite declarative interrogative clauses), relative clauses, why topicalization appear. A further, different type occurs already-grown independent building, intervention configurations, allowing mastery involving movement lexically-restricted across an intervening subject. paper illustrates fruitful dialogue between science syntax cartography structures.