This edited collection contains 13 selected papers presented at the Romance Turn IV conference, which was held at Universite Francois Rabelais, Tours, France, in 2010. The volume reflects the diversity of interests of the contributors, not only in the learning contexts investigated (first language acquisition, typical or impaired, and bilingualism), but also in the linguistic properties being explored, in both syntax and phonology, and the languages under examination (work not only on Romance languages such as French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish, but also comparative studies involving Basque, Modern Greek, and Cypriot Greek). Such a variety allows for multiple comparisons, which corresponds to the objective of the Romance Turn: providing an interactive platform for exchanges between researchers on the acquisition of Romance languages from a generative perspective. The volume is divided into two parts: the first part includes two papers presented as plenaries, one on L1 acquisition of morphophonology in European Portuguese (by M. Joao Freitas) and one on L1 acquisition of relative clauses in Italian (by Adriana Belletti), while the second part comprises 11 papers by Nikos Amvrazis, Isabel Garcia del Real and Maria Jose Ezeizabarrena, Giuliana Giusti, Kleanthes Grohmann, Elaine Grolla, Virginia Hill and Mihaela Pirvulescu, Tihana Kras, Juana Liceras, Anca Sevcenco and Larisa Avram, Katerina Palasis, and Francesca Volpato.
About the Author: Sandrine Ferre has been a Lecturer in Linguistics at Francois Rabelais University in Tours, France, since she completed her PhD in Phonology. She is also a member of the National Institute for Health and Medical Research Unit Brain and Imaging. Her research interest focuses on phonological acquisition in typical and atypical contexts. Philippe Prevost is a Professor of Linguistics at Francois Rabelais University in Tours, France, and a member of the INSERM Unit Brain and Imaging. His research interests include L2 acquisition and language impairment. He recently published a book on the acquisition of French in different contexts (The Acquisition of French: The Development of Inflectional Morphology and Syntax in L1 Acquisition, Bilingualism and L2 Acquisition, John Benjamins, 2009). Laurice Tuller is a Professor of Linguistics at Francois Rabelais University in Tours, France. Her current research focuses on comparison of the acquisition of the morphosyntax of French in different atypical contexts: autism, child L2, epilepsy, hearing loss, and SLI. Her recent publications have appeared in journals such as Applied Psycholinguistics and Lingua, as well as in collective volumes. Rasha Zebib is an Adjunct Research and Teaching Associate at Francois Rabelais University in Tours, France. She completed her thesis on the relation between working memory and reading in 2009. Her current research interests concern language acquisition in typically and atypically developing children as well as language acquisition in multilingual contexts.