Children’s acquisition of new/given markers in English, Hindi, Mandinka and Spanish: Exploring the effect of optionality during grammaticalization (original) (raw)
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We compared the production of discourse markers by 5-year-old children and adults across four languages: Hindi, English, Mandinka and Spanish. As predicted, Experiment 1a revealed that obligatory markers are acquired earlier, resulting in more adult-like referential expressions. Interestingly, Hindi appears to be undergoing a process of grammaticalization of their numeral ‘one’ into an indefinite article, which resulted in a protracted acquisition of the corresponding discourse function. Supporting this hypothesis, Experiment 1b revealed that older adults from a rural area failed to use the numeral to introduce new characters, whereas 10-year-old children’s production was comparable to that of younger adults in the city and higher than 5-year-olds’. Experiment 2 revealed that Mandinka speakers made full use of the markers available in their language when tested on a familiar story, without pictorial prompts. These findings highlight the importance of using culturally-appropriate tas...
Open Research Europe
Background: A question that lies at the very heart of language acquisition research is how children learn semi-regular systems with exceptions (e.g., the English plural rule that yields cats, dogs, etc, with exceptions feet and men). We investigated this question for Hindi ergative ne marking; another semi-regular but exception-filled system. Generally, in the past tense, the subject of two-participant transitive verbs (e.g., Ram broke the cup) is marked with ne, but there are exceptions. How, then, do children learn when ne marking is required, when it is optional, and when it is ungrammatical? Methods: We conducted two studies using (a) acceptability judgment and (b) elicited production methods with children (aged 4-5, 5-6 and 9-10 years) and adults. Results: All age groups showed effects of statistical preemption: the greater the frequency with which a particular verb appears with versus without ne marking on the subject – relative to other verbs – the greater the extent to which...
Splitting the notion of ‘agent’: case-marking in early child Hindi
A B S T R A C T Two construals of agency are evaluated as possible innate biases guiding case-marking in children. A BROAD construal treats agentive arguments of multi-participant and single-participant events as being similar. A NARROWER construal is restricted to agents of multi-participant events. In Hindi, ergative case-marking is associated with agentive participants of multi-participant, perfective actions. Children relying on a broad or narrow construal of agent are predicted to overextend ergative casemarking to agentive participants of transitive imperfective actions and/ or intransitive actions. Longitudinal data from three children acquiring Hindi (1 ; 7 to 3 ; 9) reveal no overextension errors, suggesting early sensitivity to distributional patterns in the input.
(2016) The acquisition of differential object marking in Hindi as a foreign language
This article explores a grammatical structure-differential object marking (DOM)-that is particularly difficult for L2 learners to acquire. DOM is a phenomenon in which some direct objects are morphologically marked and others are not. In Hindi, animate direct objects are always marked with the objective case marker ko, whereas specific direct objects are only optionally marked with ko. Inanimate and non-specific direct objects are never marked with ko and take the unmarked nominative form. DOM in Hindi has been found to pose a problem to heritage speakers of Hindi. The present study investigates whether similar difficulties exist for foreign language learners. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 31 foreign language learners of Hindi completing an oral production task. The results suggest that the learners do not have difficulties with the concept of DOM in itself – they know that not every direct object needs to be marked –, but rather with the variable conditions under which DOM occurs. The study defines five developmental profiles, which reflect a gradual accumulation of contexts appropriately marked with the objective case.
The acquisition of differential object marking in Hindi as a foreign language
Dutch journal of applied linguistics, 2016
In this paper, I show that a constraint-based approach to DOM, such as the OT system proposed by Aissen (2003), leads to the conclusion that the child will entertain a number of grammars different from the target grammar, before acquiring the final ranking of constraints, even under the learnability assumptions of the OT framework (such as those made by Tesar and Smolensky (1998, 2000). The data examined here, from Spanish-speaking children in the CHILDES database, clearly shows that children master Spanish DOM with a performance virtually errorless. This raises doubts regarding the capacity of the OT framework to explain a key aspect of human language, namely, the process of acquisition. 1. I would like to thank William Snyder and Diane Lillo-Martin for their many suggestions and constant support, which were crucial to the development of this paper. Many thanks also to Andrea Calabrese, Georg Kaiser and Manuel Leonetti for their advice. Thanks to two anonymous reviewers for their comments, which greatly improved this work. All remaining errors are mine.
(2015) The Acquisition of the Ergative Case in Hindi as a Foreign Language
Using the framework of Processability Theory (PT), this chapter examines the development of the Hindi case system in the interlanguage of Dutch-speaking foreign language learners. A number of studies have already adopted the PT framework to describe, predict and explain the development of case marking systems in different languages (e.g., German, Russian and Serbian). These studies demonstrated that PT was a suitable framework for predicting and explaining case development. Because German, Russian and Serbian are accusative languages, the question arises whether PT as a conceptual framework is also applicable to the foreign language acquisition of a language with ergative features such as Hindi. The present chapter therefore addresses case development in L2 Hindi, thereby testing the claim that PT possesses universal applicability. Spontaneous oral production data were collected from 11 foreign language learners of Hindi. In accordance with PT, the study results indicate that three stages of development occur; in particular, learners begin with no feature unification, transition through direct mapping, and eventually attain feature unification.