ResumenCuando durante el proceso de adquisición los niños vascos comienzan a construir enunciados de dos o más palabras, atraviesan un período en el que no utilizan conocimientos gramaticales o sintácticos al construir sus producciones lingüísticas. Tras este período presintáctico en el que la producción lingüística es construida basándose en principios semántico-pragmáticos, los niños vascos, hacia la edad de 2;00, inician un desarrollo sintáctico gradual y de algún modo calificable como uniforme. El presente trabajo analiza la producción lingüística de tres niños vascos, dos bilingües vasco-castellanos y un monolingüe, que fueron videograbados quincenalmente desde 1;06 hasta 3;00 de edad, durando las sesiones unos 30 minutos. Dadas las características morfológicas del euskera, resulta relativamente sencillo identificar la utilización o no de las mismas por parte de los niños. Se observarán las unidades lingüísticas fundamentales: determinación y estructura del sintagma nominal, casos declinativos, morfología verbal, órdenes de las preguntas Qu, etc. También conviene señalar que el posterior desarrollo sintáctico que tienen lugar no surge de la utilización de los principios semántico-pragmáticos, sino que más bien es independiente de ellos.AbstractWhen Basque children begin to produce multiword utterances during their language acquisition process, they go through a first period characterized by a lack of grammatical or syntactic knowledge when constructing their language productions. After this presyntactic period, when language production is mainly based on semantic-pragmatic principles, Basque children show, towards the age of 2;00, a gradual syntactic development which could be considered as uniform. The present study analyses the language production of three Basque children, two of them Basque-Spanish bilinguals, and the third a Basque monolingual, videotaped fortnightly from the age of 1;06 until 3;00, in 30 minute sessions. Due to the pronounced nature of Basque morphology, it is not difficult to determine whether it is used or not by these children. We will take note of the most important morphological characteristics: determination and structure of noun phrases, case markings, verbal morphology, word order in Wh-questions, etc. We would also like to point out that the subsequent syntactic development does not emerge from semantic-pragmatic principles. On the contrary, it is quite independent.Extended SummaryIt can be affirmed that in the process of acquisition of Basque, children go through a pre-syntactic phase during which they do not use grammatical properties, nor do they base their language production on syntactic rules. The subsequent syntactic development begins towards the age of two and seems to develop gradually, according to basic sentence structure. it is the mental, neurological maturity, activating the biologically inherited principles of Universal Grammar, which makes possible the development of the grammar process, since grammar is independent of the semantic-pragmatic principles which children seem to be using during the previous pre-syntactic period.I have elaborated this working hypothesis on the basis of other studies and investigations analysing different L1 acquisition processes. I would like to point out the importance of studies carried out in this area by: Bickerton (1990), theorising on general acquisition processes; Radford (1989), who, analysing early English, observed the lack of INFL and COMP functional categories; Platzack (1990), who arrived at similar conclusions observing the process of acquisition of Swedish; Meisel (1992), who, investigating the acquisition of French and German by bilingual children, established an early stage of language lacking the above-mentioned functional categories, etc.In order to give support to our hypothesis I have observed the language production of three Basque children, two of them bilinguals and the third one monolingual. They have been video-taped fortnightly from the age of 1;06 to the age of 3;00, in 30 minute sessions.Basque is a morphologically clearly marked language as to case markings as well as verbal conjugation. This fact simplifies the identification of the use of differentiated morphological elements. I have analysed determiners and internal structure in the process of NP acquisition; case marking: so-called grammatical markings (with verbal agreement) as well as non-grammatical ones; the verbal aspect; triple verbal agreement (subject, direct object, and indirect object); verbal tense and mode; subordinating conjunctions (temporal and non-temporal); word order in WH-questions, and word order in the first declarative utterances.After describing these acquisition processes, i can state that there evidently exists an early, pre-syntactic stage, during which the children do not use case markings or syntactic structures. After this period, the three children analysed show a gradual syntactic development, which can somehow be qualified as uniform, towards the age of 2;00. The three children first start using the VP structure and NP determiners, difference case markings and auxiliary verbs. The use of the functional category INFL, which permits them to use subject agreement, comes later. Subsequently, the acquisition of the functional category COMP, permits them to use subordinating temporal conjunctions or the construction of WH-questions according to adult norms. i should like to point out that due to the complexity of INFL in Basque, it seems evident that the use of this category by the children during the language acquisition process will be gradual.As to the pre-syntactic period, during which not only lexical acquisition but also the acquisition of different lexical categories is evident, I can say that a great part of the construction of two-or-more word utterances follows semantic-pragmatical principles, which are quite normal in adult spoken Basque. Since these principles are used during the whole of the following syntactic development, always adjoining the theme to the left of the structure used at each moment, i.e., at the beginning of the utterance, it seems evident that the acquisition of syntax is independent of the semantic-pragmatic principles used.Palabras clave: Adquisición de lenguajecategorías funcionales (INFL, COMP)desarrollo sintáctico gradualeuskeraperíodo presintácticoprincipios semántico-pragmáticosKeywords: Language acquisitionfunctional categories (INFL, COMP)gradual syntactic developmentBasque languagepresyntactic periodsemantic-pragmatic principles