Acquisition of wh-movement in German

Bursey, Angelina (2004) Acquisition of wh-movement in German. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

Acquisition of wh-movement has been extensively examined in English, French, Chinese, and other languages (de Villers, Roeper, and Vainikka 1990, Guasti 2000, Hamann 2000, Lee 1992). However, there has been little acquisitional study of wh-movement in the German language. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the acquisition process of wh-movement in L1 German learners and provide a complete view of the acquisition process: acquisitional data coinciding with theoretical issues. -- This thesis examines three areas of wh-acquisition to give a more complete picture of wh-movement in L1 German learners. These areas of acquisition are: wh-words, short distance wh-movement (root questions, embedded clauses), and long distance wh-movement (this includes the language particular partial wh-movement). The CHILDES database is used to examine child data from the Nijmegen and Wagner corpora in search of these wh-phenomena.

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