Parameterizing Negation: Interactions with Copular Constructions in Italian and English children

The main goal of this study is to provide a more precise picture of the pattern of copular omission attested in Italian and English child grammar through a closer investigation of negative contexts. If copular omissions could be considered as a reflex of a " defective " inflectional system, in the sense that certain functional projections could be left underspecified in the first stages of linguistic development, then looking at them in negative utterances will give us other material helpful to understand the shape of the early IP system and of the principles governing it. In the next section the results of two recent studies will be presented, in order to illustrate the phenomenon of copular omissions in Italian and English and to give a general idea of its consistency. The picture which emerges is of a fundamental symmetry between the two languages in declarative contexts. In the following section a new count will be made, in order to assess if the same behaviour could be found also in negative utterances. Quite surprisingly, the omission rate varies considerably between the two languages, and an interesting alchemy arises between those principles responsible for omissions in declarative contexts and the additional projection NegP, considered as one of the loci of parametrical variations. A good account for the difference found in Italian and English negative utterances must then consider both the common principle responsible for omissions in declarative utterances and the variations in the syntax of negation. This result can be achieved adopting a developmental theory along the lines proposed in Rizzi (1994) combined with a well documented cross-linguistic difference in the structural realization of NegP.