Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXXIII

This paper presents initial results on the acquisition trajectory of the definite determiner əl- in Emirati Arabic. It is shown that Emirati children follow a maturational process sporadically producing target-like fully inflected DPs early on, but dropping determiners frequently in obligatory syntactic contexts, including prepositional phrases, after demonstratives, with generic nouns and certain proper names. In addition, children add determiners in contexts where they are illicit in the targe