Omission des déterminants : Contraintes d’alternances rythmiques ou contraintes liées aux niveaux supérieurs de la structure prosodique

Abstract

AbstractThis article focuses on whether determiner omission by two-year-old children is constrained at the level of the prosodic foot or whether it is a function of the different levels of the prosodic hierarchy. Nine French-speaking children aged 2;0 to 2;7 were asked to repeat 54 four- or five-word sentences of the form “Pronoun V NP” with three conditions: a) det + monosyllabic noun; b) det + bisyllabic noun; c) det + monosyllabic adjective + monosyllabic noun. The results show 1) more determiner omission in condition b than in a; 2) more determiner omission in c than in b. It is shown that determiner omission is not accounted for by a low-level stress-alternation constraint and that the level of prosodic structure to which the determiner is attached plays a role in determiner omission.