This paper aims at building a bridge between theoretical linguistics, especially generative grammar, and applied linguistics, focusing on second language pedagogy as applied to the teaching of Italian and French to Portuguese- (and Spanish) speaking students. Our claim is that the generative theory's understanding of the unaccusativity phenomenon can shed light on some aspects of second language acquisition. As will be shown, this would allow students of Italian and French to internalize and comprehend the rules that govern selection of auxiliary verbs in active tenses, as well as of the distribution of partitive pronouns.
generative grammar; second language acquisition; unaccusativity; French and Italian
