The Acquisition of ErgativityEdith L. Bavin, Sabine Stoll Ergativity is one of the main challenges both for linguistic and acquisition theories. This book is unique, taking a cross-linguistic approach to the acquisition of ergativity in a large variety of typologically distinct languages. The chapters cover languages from different families and from different geographic areas with different expressions of ergativity. Each chapter includes a description of ergativity in the language(s), the nature of the input, the social context of acquisition and developmental patterns. Comparisons of the acquisition process across closely related languages are made, change in progress of the ergative systems is discussed and, for one language, acquisition by bilingual and monolingual children is compared. The volume will be of particular interest to language acquisition researchers, linguists, psycholinguists and cognitive scientists. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 15 | |
Ergativity in child Basque | 35 |
The acquisition of ergativity in Inuktitut | 71 |
The acquisition of ergative case in Warlpiri | 107 |
The acquisition of ergative marking in Kaluli Ku Waru and Duna Trans New Guinea | 133 |
The acquisition of ergative case in Chintang | 183 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
A-role argument absolutive marking acquisition of ergative adult speech agent alignment animacy antipassive aspect aspectless Basque bilingual bivalent propositions caregivers chil child language children acquiring Chintang core arguments dative Duna ellipsis Enita erga ergative case-marking ergative forms ergative languages ergative marker ergative marking ergative morphology ergative subject ergative-absolutive ErgCM example extended ergative contexts extended ergative marking frequent grammar Hindi included input interactions intransitive Inuktitut Jesi K’iche Kaluli Kurmanji language acquisition Lawrence Erlbaum Associates lexical light verbs Linguistics Mayan languages morphemes nominal nominative-accusative O-role object obligatory contexts ofthe overt participants past tense patient patterns plural present tense sample Schieffelin 1985 semantic sentences sessions Slobin speakers split-ergative structure suffix syntactic Table Target Child third person subjects tion tive Total number transitive utterances transitive verbs Tzeltal Tzotzil verb tokens verbal agreement verbal inflection verbs in extended Warlpiri Waru word order Yucatec Yukatek