Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-gr6zb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-28T05:57:08.852Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The mosaic acquisition of grammatical relations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Matthew Rispoli
Matthew Rispoli*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
*
Juniper Gardens Language Project, Gateway Center, Tower 2, Suite 830, 4th and State, Kansas City, KS 66101, USA. E-mail: bureauca@ukanvax.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The view that grammatical relations have substantial essence, designated as ‘subject’ or ‘object’ has difficulty in accounting for the variety of naturally acquirable grammatical relations. The acquisition of grammatical relations is examined from a theoretical framework, ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR, in which grammatical relations are decomposed into two separate types of structure: logical (semantic) structure and information (pragmatic) structure. The acquisition of grammatical relations from four languages is compared: (1) the definite accusative suffix and pragmatically motivated word order of Turkish; (2) Kaluli verb agreement, case and focus marking postpositions, and pragmatically motivated word order; (3) Hungarian definite and indefinite verb conjunction; and (4) Italian participial agreement and anaphoric, accusative case pronouns. Two conditions on structures are found to cause difficulty: the neutralization of a semantic or pragmatic distinction by interfering structures (e.g. Kaluli and Italian), and global case marking which forces the child to discover relevant semantic characteristics of both the actor and the undergoer (e.g. Hungarian and Kaluli). Structures that encode semantic or pragmatic distinctions independently are more easily acquired (e.g. Turkish). Piecing together discrete structures in a mosaic fashion, the child can acquire the great variety of grammatical relations that exist in human languages.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , October 1991 , pp. 517 - 551
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The author thanks Patricia Clancy, Dan Slobin, Ceil Toupin, and Robert Van Valin for their helpful comments and criticisms. The author also thanks Betty Hart and the Juniper Gardens Language Project for help in preparing this paper.

References

REFERENCES

Antinucci, F. & Miller, R. (1976). How children talk about what happened. Journal of Child Language 3, 167–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bánhidi, Z., Jókay, Z. & Szabó, D. (1965). Learn Hungarian. Budapest: Tankonyvkiado.Google Scholar
Bates, E. & MacWhinney, B. (1987). Competition, variation, and language learning. In MacWhinney, B. (ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition. Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Bates, E. & MacWhinney, B. (1989). Functionalism and the competition model. In MacWhinney, B. & Bates, E. (eds), The crosslinguistic study of sentence processing. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Bowerman, M. (1985). What shapes children's grammars? In Slobin, D. (ed.), The cross-linguistic study of language acquisition. Vol. 2. Theoretical issues. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Centineo, G. (1986). A lexical theory of auxiliary selection in Italian. Davis Working Papers in Linguistics 1, 1–35.Google Scholar
Chafe, W. (1976). Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. In Li, C. (ed.), Subject and topic. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Dede, M. (1986). Definiteness and referentiality in Turkish verbal sentences. In Slobin, D. & Zimmer, K. (eds), Studies in Turkish linguistics. Philadelphia: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Demuth, K. (1989). Maturation and the acquisition of the Sesotho passive. Language 65, 56–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dixon, R. (1979). Ergativity. Language 55, 59–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowty, D. (1979). Word meaning and Montague grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, J. (1987). The discourse basis of ergativity. Language 63, 805–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durie, M. (1988). The so-called passive of Acehnese. Language 64, 104–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ekmekçi, F. (1986). The significance of word order in the acquisition of Turkish. In Slobin, D. & Zimmer, K. (eds), Studies in Turkish linguistics. Philadelphia: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. (1968). The case for case. In Bach, E. & Harms, R. (eds), Universals in linguistic theory. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. (1986). Pragmatically controlled zero anaphora. Berkeley Linguistics Society 12, 95–107.Google Scholar
Foley, W. & Van Valin, R. (1977). On the viability of the notion of ‘subject’ in universal grammar. Berkeley Linguistics Society 4, 293–320.Google Scholar
Foley, W. & Van Valin, R. (1984). Functional syntax and universal grammar. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Holisky, D. (1987). The case of the intransitive subject in Tsova-Tush (Batsbi). Lingua 71, 103–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keenan, E. (1976). Towards a universal definition of ‘subject’. In Li, C. (ed.), Subject and topic. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kuno, S. (1973). The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Kuroda, S. (1979). The ‘w’hole of the doughnut. Ghent: Story-Scientia.Google Scholar
Lambrecht, K. (1987). Sentence focus, information structure, and the thetic-categorical distinction. Berkeley Linguistics Society 13, 366–82.Google Scholar
Lys, F. & Mommer, K. (1986). The problem of aspectual verb classification: a two-level approach. Chicago Linguistic Society 22, 216–30.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (1974). How Hungarian children learn to speak. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (1976). Hungarian research on the acquisition of morphology and syntax. Journal of Child Language 3, 397–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maratsos, M. (1988). Crosslinguistic analysis, universals, and language acquisition. In Kessel, F. (ed.), The development of language and language researchers: essays in honor of Roger Brown. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Maratsos, M. (1989). Innateness and plasticity in language acquisition. In Rice, M. & Schiefelbusch, R. (eds), The teachability of language. Baltimore: Brookes.Google Scholar
Mayr, E. (1982). The growth of biological thought: diversity, evolution, and inheritance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Moravcsik, E. (1984). The place of direct objects among the noun phrase constituents of Hungarian. In Plank, F. (ed.), Objects: towards a theory of grammatical relations. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Perlmutter, D. & Postal, M. (1983). Some proposed laws of basic clause structure. In Perlmutter, D. & Postal, P. (eds), Studies in relational grammar. Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1984). Language learnability and language development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1987). The bootstrapping problem in language acquisition. In MacWhinney, B. (ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Pye, C. (1987). The ergative parameter. Paper presented to the workshop ‘Structure of the simple clause’. Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.Google Scholar
Rispoli, M. (1990). Lexical assignability and perspective switch: the acquisition of verb subcategorization for aspectual inflections. Journal of Child Language 17, 375–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schieffelin, B. (1981). A developmental study of pragmatic appropriateness of word order and case marking in Kaluli. In Deutsch, W. (ed.), The child's construction of language. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Schieffelin, B. (1985). The acquisition of Kaluli. In Slobin, D. (ed.), The Crosslinguistic study of language acquisition: the data. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Silverstein, M. (1976). Hierarchy of features and ergativity. In Dixon, R. (ed.), Grammatical categories in Australian languages. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. (1985). Why study acquisition crosslinguistically? In Slobin, D. (ed.), The Crosslinguistic study of language acquisition: the data. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. & Bever, T. (1982). Children use canonical sentence schémas: a Crosslinguistic study of word order and inflections. Cognition 12, 229–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, C. & Weist, R. (1987). On the temporal contour of child language: a reply to Rispoli & Bloom. Journal of Child Language 14, 387–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Underhill, R. (1986). Turkish. In Slobin, D. & Zimmer, K. (eds), Studies in Turkish linguistics. Philadelphia: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Van Valin, R. (1990). Semantic parameters of split intransitivity. Language 66, 221–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Valin, R. (in press) A synopsis of Role and Reference Grammar. In Van Valin, R. (ed.), Advances in role and reference grammar. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vendler, Z. (1967). Linguistics in philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Volterra, V. (1976). A few remarks on the use of the past participle in child language. In Lo Cascio, V. (ed.), Italian linguistics. Vol. 2: On clitic pronominalization. Lisse: Peter De Ridder Press.Google Scholar
Weist, R., Wysocka, H., Witkowska-Stadnik, K., Buczowska, E. & Konieczna, E. (1984). The defective tense hypothesis: on the emergence of tense and aspect in child Polish. Journal of Child Language 11, 347–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed