ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the hypothesis that the wanna-contraction, the phenomenon in which the sequence want to is realized as wanna, is the result of restructuring, the mechanism traditionally thought to underlie clitic climbing in Romance languages. The many previous analyses of the wanna-contraction are discussed and found to be lacking, either empirically or conceptually. Parallels between restructuring and the wanna-contraction are pointed out, and it is shown how an analysis based on restructuring yields a more satisfactory result. With regard to learnability, the wanna-contraction is a clear example of a “poverty of the stimulus” problem, but under the analysis proposed here, we have a simple and straightforward picture of how children come to exhibit the wanna-contraction and its various restrictions.
