This thesis addresses children's comprehension of the get-passive, examining (i) how early getpassives are acquired in development, (ii) how children perform with get-passives relative to bepassives, and (iii) what structure children initially assume for the get-passive. These questions are addressed through two different experimental methodologies, a Picture-Selection Task and an Act-out Task, with children ages 3 to 6. Results from the Picture-Matching Task suggest 3-yearolds initially assume a control/causative analysis of the get-passive, enabling them to perform above chance with only those that have animate subjects. Around the age of 4, however, children understand all (actional) get-and be-passives. The Act-Out Task additionally confirms that those 4;06 and older interpret the by-phrase as containing the agent, like adults. These results suggest there is no "advantage" to the get-passive after the age of 4. Children, rather, acquire a raising analysis of actional passives around the same time, contra previous claims. 1.0 The Syntax of the Passive in Adult GrammarAlthough English has two types of passives (exemplified in 1-2), they differ in systematic ways; in this chapter I will review syntactic analyses of both types of passives. Be-PassiveChomsky's 1981 analysis derived the passive via NP-movement, where the object moves to the matrix subject position, whereas the subject is base-generated in the by-phrase (if there is one), or absent.(3) John was pushed (by Bill) John.Jaeggli (1986) argues that the external theta-role is absorbed by the passive morphology, and then transmitted to the argument in the by-phrase. Jaeggli also assumes that the external argument is implicit in the structure when there is no overt argument in a by-phrase (following Manzini 1983). In this case, the external theta-role is retained by the passive morphology.Baker, Johnson & Roberts (1989) propose that the by-phrase is always projected, if only implicitly. For instance, it is possible to use agent-oriented adverbials (see 4) with short passives (i.e. those without a by-phrase) and long passives, indicating that there is an understood agent.(4)The vase was broken on purpose.This assumption of an implicit by-phrase is not uncontroversial (see Bhatt & Pancheva 2006); however, as will be discussed in Section 3, there is support for this notion from child grammar (cf. Orfitelli 2012). I will be assuming that the by-phrase is implicit, and hence functions as an intervening argument that the object must move around in order to get to the subject position (cf.Collins 2005). I will return to this issue in Section 3.

Sluicing has traditionally been analyzed as an operation involving wh-movement and deletion (Merchant 2001). French is a language that has both fronted and wh-in situ strategies; on the surface, however, it seems that French sluices do not involve (overt) movement, in spite of this being an available option. For nearly all wh-words, the in situ and moved forms are the same; the exception is que/quoi ‘what’— que is found in fronted wh-questions alone, while quoi is found in situ. In sluicing, only quoi surfaces, suggesting that French may be a challenge for the movement-and-deletion approach (Dagnac 2019). By formalizing an analysis within a late insertion approach to the syntax-morphology interface, I argue that not only do sluices in French involve full structure, but that they involve movement as well. I assume that the wh-word is initially represented in the syntactic derivation as an abstract feature bundle. The morphological form is determined in the mapping of syntax to morphology by locality-dependent Vocabulary Insertion (VI) rules that are sensitive to C. These rules apply only after ellipsis occurs. Following Thoms (2010), I argue that C is targeted in sluicing, and as a result destroys the context that would trigger que. This analysis is able to capture sluicing in French, while explaining the behavior of quoi more generally.

Abstract. This research study examines children's comprehension of the get-passive, to determine (i) what age the get-passive is acquired, (ii) how children perform with 'get' relative to 'be', and (iii) what structure(s) children assign to the get-passive. We argue that the results of two experiments (with children around 3-4 years to 6 years) indicate that young children may initially assume a causative/control analysis of the get-passive, allowing them to comprehend those that have animate subjects alone. By around age 4, children comprehend both actional get-and be-passives, and interpret the by-phrase as containing the agent of the action.