The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition, Volume 3 0805801057, 9780805801057

Table of contents :
Contents
Format and Abbreviations for Glosses
Introduction • Dan I. Slobin
ERGATIVE LANGUAGES
1. An Overview of Ergative Phenomena and Their Implications for Language Acquisition • Robert D. Van Valin, Jr.
2. The Acquisition of Georgian • Natela lmedadze and Kevin Tuite
3. The Acquisition of West Greenlandic • Michael Fortescue and Use Lennert Olsen
4. The Acquisition of K’iche’ Maya • Clifton Pye
5. The Acquisition of Warlpiri • Edith L. Bavin
NON-ERGATIVE LANGUAGES
6. The Acquisition of Mandarin • Mary S. Erbaugh
7. The Acquisition of Scandinavian Languages • Kim Plunkett and Sven Stromqvist
8. The Acquisition of Sesotho • Katherine Demuth
Subject Index
Author Index

Citation preview

THE CROSSLINGUISTIC STUDY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Volume3

THE CROSSLINGUISTIC STUDY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Volume3 Edited by DAN ISAAC SLOBIN

University of California at Berkeley

I~ ~~o~;~~n~~;up LONDON AND NEW YORK

First Published 1992 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, NewYork, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business First issued in paperback 2016 Copyright© 1992 by Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data (Revised for vol. 3)

The Crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Includes bibliographies and indexes. Contents: v. I. The data-v. 2. Theoretical issues- v. 3. [without special title] I. Language acquisition. I. Slobin, Dan Isaac, 1939401' .93 85- 27411 Pll8.C69 1985 ISBN 978-1 -138-98900-9 (pbk) ISBN 978-0-8058-0105-7 (hbk) Publisher's Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.

Contents

Format and Abbreviations for Glosses

Introduction Dan I. Slobin

1

The Crosslinguistic Endeavor 1 Deja Vu and the Capacity for Surprise More of the Same 8 Something New 10 The Plan of the Book 11

8

ERGATIVE LANGUAGES 1. An Overview of Ergative Phenomena and Their Implications for Language Acquisition Robert D. Van Valin, Jr. Morphological Ergativity 19 Syntactic Ergativity 27 The Interaction of Case Markings and Grammatical Relations Implications 34

30

2. The Acquisition of Georgian Nate/a lmedadze and Kevin Tuite Introduction

15

39

39

The Georgian Language

39

Sources of Data on the Acquisition of Georgian Overall Course of Development

Analysis of Data from the Diary Studies Verb Morphology

58

Noun Declension

77

54

56

58

v

vi

CONTENTS

85

Syntax

Experimental Study of Some Aspects of the Acquisition of Georgian Case Marking

98

Comparison of Acquisition Data From Monolingual Children

101

with Data From a Bilingual Child

Conclusions

104

3. The Acquisition of West Greenlandic Michael Fortescue and Use Lennert Olsen

Introduction

111

111

Operating Principles and the Acquisition of West Greenlandic

Basic Structures and Processes in West Greenlandic The Acquisition of Morphology by Greenlandic Children Conclusion 214 The Nature of the Acquisition of Polysynthetic Morphology Linguistic Pacing of Cognitive Development

4. The Acquisition of K'iche' Maya Clifton Pye

221

222 223

Brief Sketch of K'iche' Grammar The Cultural Contact

The Data

237

244 244

Methodology

The Early Lexicon

245

The Acquisition of Inflectional Morphology Syntactic Acquisition

Conclusion

298

Introduction

309

309 309

The Language and Its Speakers Brief Grammatical Sketch of Warlpiri The Social Context Sources of Evidence

321 324

325

Overall Course of Development Error-Free Acquisition Errors

254

278

5. The Acquisition of Warlpiri Edith L. Bavin

The Data

214

216

216

Areas for Future Study

Introduction

113 115 136

353

348

325

310

CONTENTS

The Setting of Language Acquisition Cognitive Pacesetting 359 Linguistic Pacesetting 364 Individual Differences 365 Conclusion 366

vii

359

NON-ERGATIVE LANGUAGES

373

6. The Acquisition of Mandarin Mary S. Erbaugh

Introduction

373

Descriptive Sketch of Mandarin Sources of Evidence

373

392

Chinese Culture and Language Acquisition Overall Course of Development

The Data Errors

405 405

Word Classes

412 416

Word Order

Question Answering

41 9

Difficulties with Verb Segmentation Causatives and Enhanced Transitivity Temporality

420 420

423

Conditionals and Counterfactuals Topicalization

439

441

Problems with Sentence-Final Particles

Conclusion

395

402

441

442 457

7. The Acquisition of Scandinavian Languages Kim Plunkett and Sven Stromqvist

Introduction

457

Descriptive Sketch of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish Child Language Research in Scandinavia Sources of Evidence

472

Overall Course of Development

The Data

484

Feedback Items Negation

484

492

det Constructions

501

Relative Constructions

512

475

470

457

viii

CONTENTS The First Inflectional Morphemes

522 532 Conclusions and Suggestions for Further Research Universals and Mainland Scandinavian 541 Word Accents

539

Internal Differences in the Acquisition of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish

548

Suggestions for Further Research

549

8. The Acquisition of Sesotho Katherine Demuth Introduction

557

557

A Grammatical Sketch of Sesotho

558 The Data and Their Theoretical Import

585

The Database and Research Methodologies Used

Conclusions and Areas for Further Research The Nominal System 629 The Verbal and Grammatical System 630 The Phonological System 632

Subject Index Author Index

639 649

585 629

Format and Abbreviations for Glosses*

All foreign language examples are given in Italics. (Small caps are used for emphasis and other usual functions of Italics.) In running text, English glosses and grammatical codes are given in single quotes, and optional free translations follow in parentheses, indicated by an equal sign and single quotes. Grammatical codes are always given in capital letters (see list, below). For example: gel-me-di-n 'come-NEG-PAST-2SG' ( = 'you didn't come').

In interlinear format, translation equivalents appear below each foreign element, and the free translation is placed below in single quotes: gel -me -di -n come NEG PAST 2SG 'you didn't come'

Hyphens in a gloss always correspond to hyphens in the foreign example. If one foreign element corresponds to more than one English element and/or grammatical code, the collection of meaning equivalents is joined by colons; e.g. gel-medin 'come-NEG:PAST:2SG', or even gelmedin 'come:NEG:PAST:2SG'. If it is relevant to indicate the possibility of segmentation, plus signs can be used in place of colons. The preceding example consists of segmentable morphemes, and could also be glossed, for example, as gel-medin 'comeNEG+ PAST+2SG'. Use of colons is neutral in regard to the possibility of segmentation, and in most instances either colons or hyphens are used. (The degree of precision of segmentation and glossing of an example, of course, depends on the role it plays in the exposition.) *The abbreviations are adapted from a list used by Bernard Comrie (The languages of the Soviet Union. Cambridge University Press, 1981. p xv). The format is based on useful suggestions offered by Christian Lehmann in "Guidelines for interlinear morphemic translations: A proposal for a standardization" (lnstitut fiir Sprachwissenschaft, Universitlit Kiiln, Arbeitspapier Nr. 37, 1980). The system presented here is offered as a proposal for standardization in child language studies.

ix

X

FORMAT AND ABBREVIATIONS

If a grammatical code consists of two words or abbreviations they are joined by a period; e.g. DEF.ART means "definite article." Combining the principles for use of colons and periods, consider the gloss for the German definite article in its masculine singular accusative form: den 'DEF.ART:MASC:SG:ACC'.

LIST OF GRAMMATICAL CODES 1 First Person 2 Second Person 3 Third Person ABESS Abessive ('without X') ABL Ablative ('from X') ABS Absolutive ACC Accusative ACT Active ADESS Adessive ('toward X') ADJ Adjective, Adjectival ADMON Admonitive ADV Adverb(ial) AFFIRM Affirmative AGR Agreement AGENT Agent ALLAT Allative ('to(wards) X') AN Animate ANTI Antipassive AORIST Aorist APL Applicative ART Article ASP Aspect AUG Augmentative AUX Auxiliary BEN Benefactive CAUS Causative CL Clitic CLASS Classifier CMPLR Complementizer CNTR Contrastive COMIT Comitative ('(together) with X') COMM Common COMPAR Comparative COMPL Completive CONC Concessive COND Conditional CONJ Conjunction

CONN Connective CONSEC Consecutive CONT Continuous, Continuative CONTEMP Contemporative COP Copula OAT Dative DECL Declarative DEF Definite DEICT Deictic OEM Demonstrative DER Derived, Derivation DESIO Desiderative DIM Diminutive DIREC Directional DO Direct Object DU Dual DYN Dynamic (Nonstative) ELAT Elative ('out of X') EMPH Emphatic EQU Equative ERG Ergative ESS Essive ('as X') EVID Evidential EXCL Exclusive EXIS Existential EXP Experiential EXT Extension FACT Factive FEM Feminine FIN Finite FOC Focus FUT Future GEN Genitive HAB Habitual HON Honorific HUM Human ILL Illative ('into X')

FORMAT AND ABBREVIATIONS

IMP Imperative INAN Inanimate INCH Inchoative INCL Inclusive INCOMPL Incompletive INDEF Indefinite INDIC Indicative INESS Inessive ('in X') INF Infinitive INFER Inferential INSTR Instrumental INT Interrogative INTENT Intentive INTERJ Interjection INTRANS Intransitive 10 Indirect Object IPFV Imperfective IRR Irrealis ITER Iterative WC Locative MASC Masculine MKR Marker MOD Modal N Noun NEG Negative NEUT Neuter NEUTRAL Neutral NOM Nominative NOML Nominal NONPAST Non-past NONVIR Non-virile NUM Numeral, Numeric OBJ Object OBL Oblique OBLIG Obligatory OPT Optative PART Participle PARTIT Partitive PASS Passive PAST Past PAT Patient PERF Perfect PFV Perfective PL Plural POL Polite POSS Possessive

POST Postposition POT Potential PP Past Participle PRE Prefix PREP Preposition PRES Present PRESUM Presumptive PRET Preterite PRO Pronoun PROG Progressive PROL Prolative ('along X') PROWC Prolocative PTL Particle PURP Purposive PVB Preverb Q Question QUANT Quantifier QUOT Quotative RECENT Recent RECIP Reciprocal REFL Reflexive REL Relative REM Remote REPET Repetition REPORT Reportative RES Resultative SG Singular SIMUL Simultaneous STAT Stative SUBJ Subject SUBJV Subjunctive SUBL Sublative ('onto X') SUFF Suffix SUPER Superessive ('on X') SUPERL Superlative TAGQ Tag Question TEMP Temporal TNS Tense TOP Topic TRANS Transitive TRANSL Translative ('becoming X') V Verb VIR Virile VN Verbal noun VOC Vocative

xi

Introduction

Dan I. Slobin University of California at Berkeley

Contents The Crosslinguistic Endeavor 1 Deja Vu and the Capacity for Surprise More of the Same 8 Something New 10 The Plan of the Book 11

8

Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weij3 nichts von seiner eigenen. 1 -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

THE CROSSLINGUISTIC ENDEAVOR

In November 1980 the authors of the first two volumes of The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition met in a conference at Berkeley to discuss drafts of their chapters. At that time, English-language publications on child language were heavily anglocentric. The Journal of Child Language, founded in 1974, had devoted 80% of its data-oriented articles in the seventies to the acquisition of English. By contrast, in November 1990, only 57% of such articles dealt with English alone. Our crosslinguistic database has grown significantly in the last decade, and so it has seemed useful to prepare successor volumes to the first two, which appeared in 1985. In Volumes 1 and 2 we presented overviews of the acquisition of 15 languages; in Volumes 3 and 4 we add 13 more languages. Linguistic and psycholinguistic journals, monographs, doctoral dissertations, and international conferences devote increasing attention to the search for universals and particulars in a crosslinguistic framework. A review of the publication 1

'He who does not know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.'

2

Slobin

50 45

Percentage of Articles ' 3rd human > 3rd nonhuman animate > 3rd inanimate > others

8 See Silverstein (1976, 1981, 1987) for detailed discussion of this hierarchy and its cognitive implications.

24

Van Valin

Languages vary as to which of the speech act participants is highest ranking, and numerous distinctions may be made within each of these third person categories, e.g. between kinterms and nonkinterms among human nouns. Dyirbal exhibits a split case-marking system in which first and second person arguments are consistently case marked on an accusative pattern, while third person arguments are marked on an ergative pattern. Dyirbal has true pronouns only in the first and second person; noun markers, e.g. balan in balan qugumbil 'the woman', function pronominally in the third person and are case marked like nouns rather than pronouns. (11)

a. lJaqa 1sgNOM

bani-pu

come-TNS

'I [S] am coming' b. lJaqa 1sgNOM

1Jinuna

bura-n

2sgACC

see-TNS

'I [A] see you [0]' c. 1Jinda 2sgNOM

1Jayguna

bura-n

1sgACC

see-TNS

'You [A] see me [0]'

In the Mamu and Dyirbal dialects of the language, vaqa is first person singularS and A, while vayguna is first singular 0, yielding an accusative pattern. In the Giramay dialect, however, the forms for S, A, and 0 in the first person and second person singular are all distinct; the first person forms are vayba 'S', vaqa 'A', and vava '0'. Here, neither (first or second person) argument of a transitive verb receives the same case as that of the S. An interesting situation arises when the pronouns in (11) occur in a clause with NPs, as in (12). (12)

a. lJaqa 1sgNOM

bayi

yara-VJ

bura-n

NM:ABS

man-ABS

see-TNS

ba1Jgul

yara-lJgu

bura-n

NM:ERG

man-ERG

see-TNS

'I see the man' b. 1Jayguna 1sgACC

'The man sees me.'

In (11a), both arguments are in morphologically unmarked forms (nominative and absolutive), whereas in (b) both are in morphologically marked forms (accusative and ergative). This suggests that there is a general principle of interpretation at work which is keyed to the hierarchy in (10): It is more natural for an argument higher on the hierarchy to act on one lower on the hierarchy than vice versa. This explains why the two morphologically unmarked arguments in (12a) can only be interpreted with the first person argument as A and the third person

1.

Ergative Phenomena and Language Acquisition

25

one as 0. While this seems entirely reasonable when it comes to animates and inanimates, e.g. it is normal for a person to act on a sweet potato as in (9a) and highly abnormal for the reverse, it may be somewhat surprising to some that this same opposition is extended to the contrast between speech act participants and non-speech act participants, even when all are human. Yet this is a very pervasive pattern in the world's languages. The split-intransitive marking in TsovaTush, for example, is restricted to first and second person arguments only; there is straightforward ergative marking only for third person arguments. These split case-marking phenomena reinforce the point made in the introduction that the crucial question for understanding these case marking patterns is not "why are S and 0 or S and A grouped together?" but rather "what are the motivations for and the conditions under which A or 0 receive special marking?" The simplest statement of the relevant case-marking rules for the dialects of Dyirbal represented in (11) and (12) would be the one in (13). (13)

a. Assign 0 accusative case if it is first or second person. b. Assign A ergative case if it is third person.

No reference to S need be made, and indeed the only instance in which reference to S is necessary is in languages like the Giramay dialect of Dyirbal in which S receives a different case from either 0 or A. Note that these are local casemarking rules; they refer only to individual arguments, and the case marking of each is independent of the other, hence the pair of morphologically unmarked forms in (12a) and the pair of morphologically marked forms in (12b). Kaluli (Schieffelin, 1985) presents an extremely complex and interesting split case-marking system which introduces a new variable into the range of possible conditioning environments for splits: the information structure of the clause. This is also a conditioning factor in the split case system in Mparntwe Arrernte, an Australian language (Wilkins, 1989). 9 Kaluli is a strict verb-final language with two possible word orders, AOV and OAV. In terms of information structure, the immediately preverbal position is the focus position in the clause; that is, it is the position in which the new information being asserted or the answer to a question is found. The initial position is topical, i.e. presupposed; the topic element is often not expressed. This is summarized schematically in (14). (14)

Information structure of Kaluli clause:

NP Topic

NP Focus

v

Of the two orders, AOV is the default order and OAV a special, restricted form. This means that the default situation is for the A to be topic and 0 to be focus; 9 Mparntwe Arremte also exhibits NP case vs. verb agreement and inherent lexical content motivated splits. See Wilkins (1989) for detailed discussion.

26

Van Valin

this is in fact the default situation in most languages, including English. The examples in (9) are AOV, and it is only in this order with lexical NPs that the global case-marking system described there operates. Pronouns show no variation in form in AOV sentences; there is no case marking, and the verb agrees with the A. (15)

a. E 3sg

ne

sandab

1sg

hit:3:TNS

'He/she hits me' b. Ne 1sg

e

sond:Jl

3sg

hit: 1:TNS

'I hit him/her'

The situation is very different in OAV utterances. The A is focus, not topic, in them, and with lexical NPs, deictics and demonstratives ergative case marking is obligatory; there is a special set of focus pronouns for the A of transitive verbs as wel1. 1o This is a local marking system, because the A is assigned ergative case regardless of the properties of the 0. The conditioning factor for this casemarking pattern is whether the A is topic or focus, regardless of its place on the hierarchy in (10). (16)

a. Nodo-w:J one:side-ABS

niba

di:Jl

1sgCNTR

take:l:TNS

'I (not you) take one side' b. Nodo-w:J one:side-ABS

S-wc

diab

S[name]-ERG

take:3:TNS

'S takes one side'

Kaluli thus presents a remarkable array of splits: The one in (9) is a global system sensitive to the hierarchy in (10), the one in (15) and (16) is a local split sensitive to the pragmatic status of the argument, and throughout there is a consistent accusative pattern to verb agreement independent of the NP case-marking system, be it neutral or ergative. In this section, we have examined a variety of split ergative phenomena, each with a distinct conditioning factor. They are summarized in Table 1.2. These conditioning factors are by no means mutually exclusive; they may interact to produce particularly complex systems, as in Georgian and Kaluli. IOThere are a number of complexities here. First, there are five different focused pronoun forms, and they are subject to varying restrictions. For example, only one of the forms can be used with S arguments; all others are restricted to arguments of transitive verbs. Second, three of them can only occur in the past tense. Third, none of them can be used to express the experiencer of verbs of affect or internal state. See Schieffelin (1985) for detailed discussion.

1.

27

Ergative Phenomena and Language Acquisition

TABLE 1.2 Conditioning Factors of Split Ergative Phenomena Conditioning Factor

Main vs. Subordinate Clause Tense/ Aspect NP Case vs. Verb Agreement Inherent Lexical Content Pragmatic Function

Language(s)

Example(s)

Jacaltec Hindi, Georgian Enga, Kaluli, Georgian Warlpiri, Samoan, Mparntwe Arrernte Kaluli, Dyirbal, Mparntwe Arrernte Kaluli, Mparntwe Arrernte

(5)

(6). Table 1.1 Table 1.1, (8) (9), (11-12) (16)

2. Syntactic Ergativity

Syntactic ergativity means that in a particular syntactic construction the 0 argument of a transitive verb is treated the same way as the S of an intransitive verb. This is illustrated in the following examples from Dyirbal, in which an argument is omitted from the second conjoined clause under coreference with an argument in the first; the conjoined clause with the omitted argument is underlined in each sentence. (17)

a.

Balan

qugumbil-1&,

walma-}Ju

NM:ABS

woman-ABS

get:up-TNS

S omitted

!&, way}Jqi-}1

run:uphill-TNS

'The woman [S] got up and (she) [S] ran uphill' b.

Balan

qugumbil-1&,

walma-}JU

NM:ABS

woman-ABS

get:up-TNS

!&, baggul

NM:ERG

yara-vgu

bura-n

man-ERG

see-TNS

0 omitted

'The woman [S] got up and the man [A] saw (her) [0]' b'. *Balan NM:ABS

qugumbil-1&,

walma-}JU

woman-ABS

get:up-TNS

!&, bayi

NM:ABS

yara-1&

bura-n

man-ABS

see-TNS

*A omitted

'The woman [S] got up and (she) [A] saw the man [0]' c.

Balan

qugumbil-1&,

baggul

ya[a-vgu

bura-n

NM:ABS

woman-ABS

NM:ERG

man-ERG

see-TNS

!&, way}Jqi-}1

S omitted

go:uphill-TNS

'The man [A] saw the woman [0] and (she/*he) [S] ran uphill'

The patterns of omission and coreference in these examples exhibit a distinctly ergative pattern. With respect to omission, sentences (17a,c) show that the S can be elided in a coordinate construction, just as in its English counterparts, and (17b, b') shows that in a clause with a transitive verb it is the 0 and not the A that can be omitted, in striking contrast to their English counterparts, in which only the A can be elided, never the 0. The choice of the antecedent for the missing argument also follows an ergative pattern. In (17 a, b) the antecedent is an S, while (17c), in which only the woman can be interpreted as the participant running uphill, shows that only the 0 and not the A can be an antecedent in this construction. Thus with respect to which argument can be omitted and to which

28

Van Valin

argument can be the antecedent of the mtssmg argument in the subsequent clause, this construction treats S and 0 alike and excludes A from either being omitted or being an antecedent. This is an ergative syntactic pattern, and it differs sharply from the accusative syntactic pattern found in English, in which only S and A can be omitted or serve as antecedents in this construction. Hence (17a) works the same way in both languages, but ( 17b') and not ( 17b) is grammatical in English; in the English version of (17c) the A, not the 0, must be the antecedent, yielding the interpretation 'the man saw the woman and [he/*she] ran uphill'. Syntactic ergativity is much rarer than morphological ergativity, and it is always part of a split syntactic system. No language has consistently ergative syntax, although there are a few languages, e.g. Dyirbal, Sarna (Philippines; Walton, 1986), in which the syntax is predominantly ergative. 11 Of the languages discussed in this volume and Volume 1, only K'iche' appears to exhibit any syntactic ergativity. Ergative syntactic patterns are most commonly found in two syntactic domains: (a) deletion and coreference in certain types of complex constructions, as in (17), and (b) "extraction" constructions, e.g. relative clause formation, WH-question formation, and topicalization. Examples of the latter types of construction with transitive verbs from Jacaltec are given in (18) (Craig, 1977); there are no restrictions on intransitive verbs, and therefore no examples will be given. (18)

a. X-fJ-y-il TNS-3ABS-3ERG-see

naj

ix

he

she

'He saw her'

b. W-ohtaj

ix

lsgERG-know

CL

ix woman

[x-@-y-il

TNS-3ABS-3ERG-see

naj]RelCl

he

Relative clause formation

'I know the woman whom he saw' (*'I know the woman who saw him') c. Ha' CLEFT

ix

x-fJ-y-il

naj

she

TNS-3ABS-3ERG-see

he

Topicalization

'It is she whom he saw' (*'It is she who saw him') d. Mac who

x-@-y-il

naj

TNS-3ABS-3ERG-see

he

WH-question formation

'Whom did he see?' (*'Who saw him?') In ( 18a), a simple clause is presented, and in the other three sentences there is an NP followed by a clause which is missing an NP. Since there is no case marking on Jacaltec NPs, the single NP after the verb could in principle be interpreted as either A or 0, but in fact only one interpretation is possible in each case: The 11 See Van Valin (1981) for discussion of the range of variation in the syntactic organization of ergative languages. Dixon ( 1979) presents an excellent survey of both morphological and syntactic ergative phenomena.

1.

Ergative Phenomena and Language Acquisition

29

preclausal NP must be the 0 and the clause-internal (postverbal) NP must be the A, as the glosses indicate. Since the S argument of an intransitive verb can be relativized upon, topicalized, and questioned, there is an ergative pattern to these restrictions: The affected NP may be S or 0 but not A. This is analogous to the restrictions on the omission of arguments and interpretation of coreference in the Dyirbal sentences in (17). Only S or 0 may be omitted, and only S or 0 may be interpreted as the antecedent of the "gap" in the conjoined clause. Even though A arguments were excluded in the examples in ( 17) and ( 18), it is not the case that they are absolutely excluded from these constructions. In the accusative system in English, for example, it is possible for an 0 argument to be omitted in the second clause of a sentence like ( 17b) if the clause is passivized, as in (19). (19)

The woman [S] got up and fl [d-S] was seen by the man.

In a passive construction, the argument which would appear as the 0 in a transitive clause is realized as the derived S (henceforth, d-S) of a derived intransitive verb and thereby assumes the subject properties that an 0 lacks. Hence, a more accurate characterization of the accusative syntactic pattern of English is that S and A can function in grammatical constructions without modification, whereas the argument that would be the 0 can only function in them if it is realized as the d-S of a derived intransitive verb in a passive construction. This same situation obtains in syntactically ergative languages: there is a special construction, called an ANTIPASSIVE construction, which allows the argument that would be the A to appear as the d-S of a derived intransitive verb form and hence to function in the constructions exemplified in ( 17) and ( 18). The contrast between passive and antipassive is presented in (20). (20)

Active

x verb y X=

A, y = 0

Passive

y

=

d-S, x

=

Anti passive

Oblique

x = d-S, y = Oblique

These are general characterizations of these forms; individual languages vary in how they are manifested in them. 12 The Dyirbal antipassive is illustrated in (2la) and its application to (17b') in (21b). (21)

a. Bayi NM:ABS

yara-@ man-ABS

bagun NM-DAT

gugumbil-gu woman-DAT

bural-va-}1u see-ANTI-TNS

(Cf. (lb))

'The man [d-S] sees the woman [OBL]'

12 See Foley and Van Valin ( 1985) for a survey of passive and antipassive constructions in the world's languages.

30

Van Valin b. Balan

NM:ABS

gugumbil-0, woman-ABS

walma-jlu get:up-TNS

0,

bagul NM:DAT

yaca-gu man-DAT

bucal-va-Jlu see-ANTI-TNS

(Cf. (17b))

'The woman [S] got up and (she) [d-S] saw the man [OBL]'

Antipassive in Dyirbal is signaled by the -va(y) suffix on the verb; the d-S appears in the absolutive, and the argument corresponding to the 0 with a transitive verb appears in the dative case. The situation in Jacaltec is somewhat different. First, Jacaltec has THREE different antipassive constructions and FOUR distinct passive constructions (see Craig, 1977; Van Valin, 1981). Second, the anti passive relevant to the constructions in ( 18), called the focus antipassive in the Mayan literature, cannot be used in simple sentences like (l8a), but occurs only as part of the extraction constructions in (l8b-d). It is illustrated in (22). (22)

a. W-ohtaj lsgERG-know

naj CL

winaj man

[x-0-_-'i/-ni TNS-3ABS-_-see-ANTI

ix]Re/Cl she

Relative clause formation

'I know the man who saw her' (*'I know the man whom she saw') b. Ha' cleft

naj he

x-0-_-'i/-ni TNS-3ABS-_-see-ANTI

ix she

'It is he who saw her' (*'It is he whom she saw') c. Mac x-0-_-' il-ni ix who TNS-3ABS-_-see-ANTI she

Topicalization

WH-question formation

'Who saw her?' (*'Whom did she see?')

The suffix -ni indicates focus antipassive here, and the ergative cross-reference morpheme is omitted from the verb, but the marking of the 0 is unaffected; it does not become an oblique as in Dyirbal and most other languages. Here again, it is necessary to revise the characterization of an ergative syntactic pattern; it is more accurate to say that S and 0 can function in grammatical constructions without modification, whereas the argument that would be the A can only function in them if it is realized as the d-S of a derived intransitive verb in an antipassive construction. 13

3. The Interaction of Case Marking and Grammatical Relations An important consequence of split case marking is that case is not a reliable guide to grammatical relations. This is true with respect to morphologically ergative languages which have accusative syntax, e.g. Enga (Li & Lang, 1979) and Warlpiri (Bavin, this volume), but it is also true with respect to syntactically ergative languages with split case marking. Dyirbal has ergative case marking for 13 Even though the 0 does not become an oblique in the Jacaltec construction, antipassivized verbs take the intransitive rather than the transitive future tense suffix.

1.

Ergative Phenomena and Language Acquisition

31

NPs, as in (1), and accusative case marking for first and second person pronouns, as in ( 11 ). It was shown in (17) that there is an ergative syntactic pattern in certain constructions containing NPs; is the syntactic pattern in these constructions with pronouns ergative or accusative? The relevant examples are given in (23) (from Dixon, 1979) and (24). (23)

a. IJana; lp!NOM

banaga-)Ju

return-TNS

bura-n

2p!NOM

see-TNS

'We [S] returned and you [A] saw (us) [0]' (*'We returned and saw you') b. )Jura 2p!NOM

vanana;

bura-n

banaga-)Ju

I p!ACC

see-TNS

return-TNS

'You [A] saw us [0] and (we) [S] returned' (*'You saw us and returned')

c. vana; lp!NOM

banaga-)Ju

@;

return-TNS

bural-IJa-)Ju

)Jura-I)gu

see-ANTI-TNS

2pl-INST

'We [S] returned and (we) [d-S] saw you [OBL]'

d. IJana; lp!NOM

bural-va-)Ju

J1Ura-vgu

see-ANTI-TNS

2pl-INST

@;

banaga-)Ju

return-TNS

'We [d-S] saw you [OBL] and (we) [S] returned'

These sentences contain only first and second person (plural) pronouns, and the syntactic pattern of omission and coreference is exactly the same one found in (17): Sand 0 are treated alike, despite their different case marking, and Sand A are treated differently, despite their identical case marking. The missing argument in the second clause in (23a) must be the 0, not the A, and its antecedent is the S of the first clause. In (b), the antecedent of the missing S argument in the second clause must be the 0 of the first clause, not the A. In order to have the missing argument of the second clause of a sentence like (23a) be the omitted argument, it is necessary to antipassivize the clause, as in (c); the erstwhile A appears as a d-S and can be omitted. Similarly, in order to have the missing S argument of the second clause coreferential with the A argument in a sentence like (23b ), it is possible to antipassivize the first clause so that the "see-er" is the d-S and can serve as the antecedent of the missing S in the second clause. In these examples, we have the striking combination of accusative case marking with ergative syntax. Note that in the antipassivized clause in (23d) the form of the pronoun uana 'we' is the same as in the active clause in uana uinuna buran 'we [A] saw you [0]'; the only thing that has been changed is its syntactic function from A to d-S. The following examples contain pronouns and NPs. (24)

a. I)aqa; lsgNOM

bani-)JU

come-TNS

@;

bavgun

qugumbi-ru

bura-n

NM:ERG

woman-ERG

see-TNS

'I [S] came and the woman [A) saw (me) [0]' (*'I came and saw the woman')

32

Van Valin b. * vaga, lsgNOM

bani-pu come-TNS

balan NM:ABS

gugumbil-l:J woman-ABS

bura-n see-TNS

*'I [S] came and (I) [A] saw the woman [0]' C.

1)agai bani-]lU l:J, lsgNOM come-TNS

bagun NM:DAT

gugumbil-gu woman-DAT

'I [S] came and (I) [d-S] saw the woman [OBL]' d. vayguna, lsgACC

bavgun NM:ERG

gugumbi-[U woman-ERG

bura-n see-TNS

bural-va-pu see-ANTI-TNS

. l:J,

bani-pu come-TNS

'The woman [A] saw me [0] and (I) [S] came' (*'The woman saw me and came') e. vaga, 1sgNOM

balan NM:ABS

qugumbil-l:J woman-ABS

bura-n see-TNS

bani-pu come-TNS

*'I [A] saw the woman [0] and (I) [S] came' (OK: 'I saw the woman and (she) came') f. 1)aga,

lsgNOM

bagun gugumbil-gu NM:DAT woman-DAT

bu[a/-1]a-]1U @i see-ANTI-TNS

bani-pu come-TNS

'I [d-S] saw the woman [OBL] and (I) [S] came'

Here again, the ergative pattern obtains. In (24a), the S in the first clause is the antecedent for the gap in the second clause, which is the 0 argument. In the ungrammatical (b) example, the gap in the second clause is the A argument, which is not permitted; S-A coreference is precluded here, even though the arguments have exactly the same form when overt. In order to express this intended meaning, it is necessary to antipassivize the second clause, so that the A argument of (b) is realized as a d-S, as in (c). In (d), the 0 of the first clause is the antecedent for the S gap in the second clause. Example (e) is a particularly graphic illustration of the fact that the crucial factor in these patterns is not the form of the argument but its syntactic function: r;aqa 'I' is the A argument in the first clause and is the form that the overt subject of an intransitive verb like bani'come' would have, and yet it cannot be interpreted as the antecedent of the S gap in the second clause. In order for this to be possible, the first clause can be antipassivized, changing the function (but not the form) of r;aqa from A to d-S _14 The result of this is given in (f). Thus in this construction, the pattern of omission and coreference is consistently ergative, regardless of the case marking of the arguments in it, and overall it is clear that there is no direct correlation between case marking and grammatical relations in these languages. It was mentioned in section 1 that most languages exhibiting ergative syntax There is an alternative possibility; instead of antipassivization of the first clause, the suffix

14

-aura can be added to the verb in the second clause to indicate that the antecedent of the gap is the A rather than the 0 in the first clause, yielding yac!,a, balan qugumbil-0 bura-n fJ, bani-yura 'I saw the

woman and came'.

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Ergative Phenomena and Language Acquisition

33

TABLE 1.3 Syntactic Patterns in Seven Major Constructions in Jacaltec Pattern

Construction 1. 'Subject' [S, A)-triggered equi-NPdeletion 2. 'Object' [0)-triggered equi-NPdeletion 3. Promotion ('subject' copying with verbs like begin) 4. Relativization (cf. 18b, 22a) 5. WH-question formation (cf. 18d, 22c) 6. Clefting (cf. 18d, 22b) 7. Cross-clause coreference (preferred)

[S) only [S, d-S (passive)) only Dialect 1: [S) only Dialect 2: [S, d-S (both)) only [S, 0, d-S (antipassive)) [S, 0, d-S (antipassive)) [S, A d-S (passive)]

in some constructions also have constructions which do not have ergative syntax; that is, they are split syntactically. An extreme example of this can be seen in Jacaltec; the syntactic patterns in seven major constructions are summarized in Table 1.3, from Van Valin (1981). In these seven constructions, FIVE distinct syntactic patterns are found, including both the traditional accusative pattern in 7 and ergative pattern in 4-6. Unlike Dyirbal and English, there is no single consistent notion of "syntactic subject" which is applicable to all of these constructions, and therefore it is not the case that in every language there is a single consistent set of syntactic relations operative in the grammar. 15 It should be noted, further, that the variation in the syntactic patterns in Table 1.3 does not correlate with the casemarking split in the language; the accusative (7) and ergative (4-6) patterns are both found in tensed clauses which have an ergative cross-reference pattern, whereas the other patterns (1-3) occur in tenseless subordinate clauses which have an accusative cross-reference pattern. The independence of case marking from grammatical relations in some of the languages discussed is summarized in Table 1.4. Thus, ergative languages present grammatical systems which exhibit substantial complexities, both morphological and syntactic, not attested in familiar accusative languages; they are not simply "mirror images" of them.

151! should be noted that even if two languages have a consistent set of grammatical relations following the same pattern, it does not follow that the grammatical relations are the same. Subject in English involves treating S, A, and d-S alike, whereas in, e.g., Yatee Zapotec (Oto-Manguean; Mexico), another accusative language, subject includes only S and A, there being nod-S grammatical function in the system. Thus, even among languages within the same pattern type (e.g., accusative), there may still be substantial differences in the nature of the grammatical relations in each language. See Van Valin (1981, 1990b) for further discussion.

34

Van Valin TABLE 1.4 Case Marking and Syntactic Patterns in Sample Languages

Language Dyirbal: 1st & 2nd person 3rd person Warlpiri: NP case Cross-reference Jacaltec: Tensed clauses Tenseless clauses

Coding Pattern Accusative Ergative Ergative Accusative Ergative Accusative

Syntactic Pattern Ergative Ergative Accusative Accusative Ergative, Accusative Neither

4. Implications The most significant implication of languages exhibiting ergative patterns in their morphology or syntax is not the obvious fact that the patterns are different from those found in more familiar languages; it is, rather, the COMPLEXITY of the SPLIT case-marking and syntactic systems found in almost all of these languages. Languages like English and German are extremely consistent in the accusative patterning of their morphology and syntax, whereas only a tiny minority of ergative languages are so consistent. The case-marking splits summarized in Table 1.2 show that case-marking systems cannot be explicated solely in terms of either semantic notions like agent and patient or syntactic relations like subject and direct object, and moreover that the conditioning factors may interact to produce very complex systems, like those in Kaluli and Georgian. The task facing the child learning these languages crucially involves the discovery of the factors conditioning the splits, which would appear to be a formidable task; yet Imedadze and Tuite (this volume) and Schieffelin (1985) show that the primary factors-tense-aspect in Georgian and information structure in Kaluli-are quickly learned with few errors, a fact that must be explained by acquisition theories. Yet the main theories that have informed acquisition researchGovernment Binding and Lexical-Functional Grammar-do not include theories of case marking and agreement in which tense-aspect, inherent lexical content, or information structure play a significant role. One of the primary purposes of this chapter has been to show, as stated in Section 1, that the relevant question with respect to the contrast between ergative and accusative case-marking patterns is not "what motivates the association of S with A or with 0?" but rather "what motivates the assignment of a positive indicator of grammatical function to A or 0?" This shift in perspective has an important consequence for the acquisition of case. If the issue is the association of the S with one of the transitive arguments, then it would be reasonable to expect that children would overgeneralize the marking of the transitive arguments to semantically similar intransitive arguments. This has usually been formulated in terms of the possibility of children overextending ergative case

1.

Ergative Phenomena and Language Acquisition

35

marking to agentlike intransitive subjects. Interestingly, the corresponding overgeneralization has not been hypothesized for the acquisition of accusative languages; that is, it has not been suggested that children learning German or Russian should be expected to overextend the accusative case to the subject of intransitive verbs like die or break, even though this would be exactly analogous to the hypothesized ergative overextension. If, however, the crucial issue is the conditions governing the assignment of a particular marker to one of the transitive arguments and not the association of S with one of them, as proposed here, then there is no reason to expect these overextensions in either type of language. The case rules for Dyirbal sketched in (13), for example, make no reference to S at all and therefore provide no basis for any kind of overgeneralization. Hence, this view predicts that such overgeneralizations should not be a significant feature of the acquisition of these types of case system, and the studies of the relevant languages bear this out, for such overextensions are extremely rare in the studies of the acquisition of ergative languages and are virutally nonexistent in the studies of the acquisition of accusative languages. Thus, the lack of overextensions in both types of system supports the formulation of the central issue with respect to case marking patterns proposed in the introduction. While children are able to learn ergative languages just like any other, these grammatical systems pose interesting problems for acquisition theories. The two primary types of formal acquisition theory are parameter setting (e.g., Roeper & Williams, 1987) and semantic bootstrapping (e.g., Pinker, 1984, 1987, 1989). Given the morphosyntactic diversity of ergative languages, it is highly unlikely that there could be a simple "ergative parameter" governing these languages. This would be plausible only if they were "mirror images" of accusative languages. But this is not the case, for in every language with ergative syntax there is at least one construction which works on an accusative basis (see Dixon, 1979), whereas in most accusative languages there are no ergative syntactic constructions. The same is true with respect to morphology: Accusative languages are generally consistently accusative, whereas almost all ergative languages exhibit at least one of the splits listed in Table 1.2. None of these considerations preclude the possibility that ergative systems can be explicated in terms of parameters, but they do raise the following fundamental problem. Parameter-setting theories presume the Government-Binding model of syntax, and one of the fundamental tenets of this theory is the denial of the validity of the notion of "grammatical construction" (see Chomsky, 1988). That is, there are no construction-specific rules, and what have traditionally been considered to be grammatical constructions are epiphenomena resulting from the interaction of general syntactic rules (e.g., Move a) and principles (e.g., Case theory). However, the split syntactic systems found in ergative languages reveal that ergativity is restricted to particular syntactic constructions in most languages. Whereas there are some consistencies across languages (e.g., relativization is very commonly subject to ergative restrictions), there is considerable variation across

36

Van Valin

languages. Moreover, as Jacaltec shows (see Table 1.3), there can be remarkable diversity among constructions within a single language. The GB approach is clearly designed for languages in which there is a single, consistent system of grammatical relations, as in English, and accordingly the acquisition theory based on it is also best suited for such languages. Semantic bootstrapping models likewise presume a single, consistent system of grammatical relations in a language; children are assumed to break into the system by means of semantics, e.g. the association of agent with subject. Pinker's (1987,1989) discussion of ergative languages seems to presuppose crucially the mirror image view of syntactically ergative languages: Children learn to associate patient rather than agent with a subject notion that applies consistently throughout the grammar. This approach, too, runs afoul of the split nature of ergative systems. There is no single, general system of grammatical relations for the child to bootstrap into; rather, the child must learn restrictions on individual constructions. Some work accusatively, some work ergatively, and some work on a different basis (see Table 1.3). Minimally, bootstrapping must be relativized to individual constructions or sets of constructions, and this reduces the power of the mechanism. Although this approach does not run into the problem raised by the denial of the validity of the notion of grammatical construction as in the parameters conception, its reliance on a particular view of grammatical relations is problematic.I6 Because a child can learn any human language, it is vital that acquisition theories take as wide a range of grammatical systems as possible into account; otherwise, they assume an inaccurate conception of the task facing the child learning language. Ergative languages, be they morphologically ergative or syntactically ergative or both, provide phenomena which should be of equal concern to acquisition theorists as those of more familiar languages.

REFERENCES Aronson, H. (1982). Georgian: A reading grammar. Columbus, OH: Slavica. Bhat, D. H. S. (1988). Grammatical relations in Indian languages. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages. Chomsky, N. (1988). Some notes on economy of derivation. Unpublished ms., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Craig, C. (1977). The structure of Jacaltec. Austin: University of Texas Press. Dixon, R. M. W. (1972). The Dyirbal language of North Queensland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dixon, R. M. W. (1979). Ergativity. Language, 55, 59-138. Foley, W. A., & Van Valin, R. D., Jr. (1985). Information packaging in the clause. InT. Shopen

16For a very different approach to the acquisition of grammatical relations which avoids these difficulties, see Rispoli (1991).

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37

(Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description (Vol. I, pp. 282-364). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harris, A. (1981 ). Georgian syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holisky, D. A. (1987). The case of the intransitive subject in Tsova-Tush (Batsbi). Lingua, 71, 103132. Larsen, T. (1988). Manifestations of ergativity in Quiche grammar. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. Li, C., & Lang, R. (1979). Enga and other Papuan languages: The syntactic irrelevance of morphological ergativity. In F. Plank (Ed.), Ergativity (pp. 307-324). London: Academic. Merlan, F. (1985). Split-intransitivity: Functional oppositions in intransitive inflection. In J. Nichols & A. Woodbury (Eds.), Grammar inside and outside the clause (pp. 324-362). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pinker, S. (1984). Language learnability and language development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pinker, S. (1987). The bootstrapping problem in language acquisition. In B. MacWhinney (Ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition (pp. 399-441). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pinker, S. (1989). Learnability and cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Rispoli, M. (1991). The mosaic acquisition of grammatical relations. Journal of Child Language, 18, 517-551. Roeper, T., & Williams, E. (Eds.). (1987). Parameter setting. Dordrecht: Reidel. Schieffelin, B. (1985). The acquisition of Kaluli. In D. I. Slobin (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition (Vol. 1, pp. 525-593). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Silverstein, M. (1976). Hierarchy of features and ergativity. In R. M. W. Dixon (Ed.), Grammatical categories in Australian languages (pp. 112-171 ). Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Silverstein, M. (1981). Case marking and the nature of language. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 1, 227-246. Silverstein, M. (1987). Cognitive implications of a referential hierarchy. In M. Hickmann (Ed.), Social and functional approaches to language and thought (pp. 125-164). Orlando, FL: Academic. Van Valin, R. D., Jr. (1981). Grammatical relations in ergative languages. Studies in Language, 5, 361-394. Van Valin, R. D., Jr. (1990a). Semantic parameters of split intransitivity. Language, 66, 221-260. Van Valin, R. D., Jr. (1990b). Semantic roles and grammatical relations. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 29, 156-163. Walton, C. (1986). Sarna verbal semantics: Classification, derivation and inflection. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines. Wilkins, D. (1989). Mparntwe Arrernte (Aranda): Studies in the structure and semantics of grammar. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Australian National University. Woodbury, A. (1975). Ergativity of grammatical processes. Unpublished Master's Essay, University of Chicago.

The Acquisition of Georgian

Natela lmedadze Tbilisi Pedagogical Institute, Republic of Georgia

Kevin Tuite University of Montreal

Contents Introduction 39 The Georgian language 39 Sources of data on the acquisition of Georgian 54 Overall Course of Development 56 Analysis of Data from the Diary Studies 58 Verb Morphology 58 Noun Declension 77 Syntax 85 Experimental Study of Some Aspects of the Acquisition of Georgian Case Marking 98 Comparison of Acquisition Data from Monolingual Children with Data from a Bilingual 101 Child Conclusions I 04

INTRODUCTION 1. The Georgian Language Georgian belongs to the Kartvelian or South Caucasian language family. It is probably the case that this family is not genetically related to any other, though some scholars hypothesize a common ancestry with the autochthonous languages of the North Caucasus and even with Basque. The Kartvelian languages (Georgian, Zan, and Svan) are spoken today in essentially the same territory where they have been in use since the dawn of history: the Republic of Georgia and the northeast comer of Turkey. Unlike the other Caucasian languages, Georgian has long been a medium for written communication. The earliest attested Georgian inscriptions date from the

39

40

lmedadze and Tuite

fifth century, and a sizeable body of religious and secular literature was composed during the medieval period. Throughout their recorded history, Georgians, like other indigenous peoples of the Caucasus, have placed a high premium on verbal skills: improvization and recitation of poetry, storytelling, giving toasts. Although the modem mass media have reached all but the most inaccessible mountain villages, young Georgians still prefer to spend their evenings in the company of others, engaging in informal conversation or attending dinner banquets where the traditional opportunities to display one's oratorical skills as a toastmaster and poetry reciter are still retained (Holisky, 1989). The literary language is based primarily on the Georgian dialects spoken in the vicinity of Tbilisi, the principal city of Georgia since the fifth century, and currently the capital of the Republic of Georgia. The norms for the contemporary standard language were established in the late 19th century and to a slight extent revised by a commission of the Linguistics Institute of the Georgian Academy of Sciences, which makes recommendations concerning acceptable usage. The spoken language of educated Tbilisi residents varies to a degree from the standard. Some semantically unmotivated morphological differences have undergone leveling, a considerable number of Russian loan words are used, and the syntax of linked-clause constructions is somewhat different. The 15 or so dialects spoken elsewhere in Georgia diverge in various directions from this standard, and some of them are difficult for Tbilisi speakers to understand. In addition, some Georgians speak Kartvelian languages that are not mutually intelligible with Georgian. The Mingrelian and Laz dialects of the Zan language are spoken along the southeastern coast of the Black Sea (most Laz speakers are now on the Turkish side of the border), and the small community of Svan speakers inhabits the remote valleys of the southwestern Caucasus. All Mingrelians and Svans acquire Georgian as a second language. All together, about three and a half million people speak Georgian. The grammatical structure of the Kartvelian languages differs significantly from those of the familiar Indo-European, Semitic, and Asian languages. Because of the complexity of Georgian morphology and syntax, and the likelihood that the reader is encountering the Georgian language for the first time, we will go into some detail on the structure of the grammar at the outset. The descriptive method used here is largely based on Shanidze's monumental reference grammar (Shanidze, 1953); we have also made use of Tschenkeli (1958), Aronson (1982a), Harris (1985), and Tuite (1988b). 1.1. The Georgian Verb

The Kartvelian verb is basically agglutinative in structure, with certain significant exceptions. The ordering of the constituent morphemes is given in Table 2.1, adapted from Deeters (1930, p. 7) and Aronson (1982a, pp. 462-469). A variety of semantic categories are marked in the Georgian verb: three distinct

2.

The Acquisition of Georgian

41

TABLE 2.1 The Composition of the Georgian Verb Slot Slot Slot Slot Slot Slot Slot Slot Slot

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Preverb (one or more) Person agreement prefix (one, occasionally two) Preradical or "version" vowel Verb root Passive/inchoative suffix Series marker; causative suffix Imperfect stem suffix Tense/mood vowel Person/number agreement suffix (one or two)

aspectual oppositions, along with tense, mood, valence, person, and number. The major grammatical categories coded in the verb are discussed in this section. 1.1.1. Verb Morphology 1: Conjugation Classes. Georgian verbs can be divided into two major classes, and each of these into two subclasses, termed CONJUGATIONS (Aronson, 1982a) (see Table 2.2). The two major formal criteria correlated with class and conjugation membership are (a) case-assignment pattern (to be discussed below) and (b) formation of the future-tense form. Most 1st conjugation verbs are transitive. Almost all of the verbs in the other three conjugations are intransitive, but they differ in terms of their lexical aspect. 3rd conjugation verbs denote ACTIVITIES (in the sense defined by Vendler and Dowty), that is, events viewed as extending over a period of time without a significant change of state (e.g., 'dance', 'sing', 'whistle', 'act like a fool'). Verbs of the 4th conjugation class are almost all STATIVE. The verbs composing the 2nd conjugation divide into three subgroups, based on how their stems are formed: 1.

PREFIXAL, marked by the preradical vowels -i- and -e- [slot 3]. Many of these verbs correspond to English passives and are paired with transitive 1st conjugation verbs.

TABLE 2.2 Georgian Verb Classes

Future = (preverb +) present Future and present have different stems

Class A Verb (can assign ERG)

Class P Verb (cannot assign ERG)

1st conjugation

2nd conjugation

3rd conjugation

4th conjugation

TABLE 2.3 Georgian Verb Types Class A Verbs

Class P Verbs 2ND CONJUGATION

1sT CoNJUGATION

gamoacxobs 'sb will bake sthg'a gas/is 'sb will spread out sthg' da¥1is 'sb will tire sb out' gamoxarsavs 'sb will cook sthg'

daaqerinebs 'sb will make sb write' aacaxcaxebs 'sthg makes sb tremble' gaa*oxtavebs 'sthg (clothing) looks good on sb' miscems 'sb will give sthg to sb' mii¥ebs 'sb will receive sthg/sb' ganicdis 'sb will undergo sthg' 3RD CONJUGATION

m¥eris 'sb sings' (iris 'sb cries' tamasobs 'sb plays' maimunobs 'sb monkeys around' ¥imis 'sb smiles at sb' saubrobs 'sb converses' du¥s 'sthg boils' brqqinvalebs 'sthg glistens' ¥Uis 'sthg [fire] glows red'

asb

=

somebody; sthg

=

Prefixal gamoicxoba 'sthg will be baked' gaisleba 'sthg will be spread out' dai¥1eba 'sb will tire out' gamoixarseba 'sthg will cook' gamoexarseba 'sthg will be cooked for sb' etamaseba 'sb plays with sb' esaubreba 'sb converses with sb' Suffixal ga*etdeba 'sthg will be made' gaqitldeba 'sthg/sb will turn red' seuqwardeba 'sb will fall in love with sb' a(ir deba 'sb begins to cry' am¥erdeba 'sb begins to sing' Root gatbeba 'sthg/sb will warm up' cavardeba 'sthg/sb will fall' mova 'sb/sthg will come' qava 'sb/sthg will leave' 4TH CoNJUGATION

uqwars 'sb loves sb/sthg' axsovs 'sb remembers sthg/sb' akws 'sb has sthg' unda 'sb wants sthg' zis 'sb is sitting' qria 'things [plural] lie scattered' acwia 'sb wears sthg [clothes]'

something.

TABLE 2.4 Georgian Person/Number Agreement Affixes Set 0 ("object")

SetS ("subject") Slot 2

1sg 1pl 2sg 2pl

3 3pl

42

vv@@-

Slot9 -@!var -tlvar-t -fJ!xar -tlxar-t -slalo -anlenleslnen

Slot 2

1sg 1pl 2sg 2pl 3 3pl

mgwgg@, h, s-1@@, h. s-1@-

Slot 9

-t

-t

2.

2.

The Acquisition of Georgian

43

marked by the suffix -d- in slot 5. The verbs of this subgroup describe changes of state. Many are semantically INCHOATIVE, denoting the beginning of an event. 3. ROOT second conjugation verbs, which lack a specific stem formant. Many of these verbs denote ACHIEVEMENTS in Vendler's sense. The verbs of directed motion ('come', 'leave', 'arrive'), which are semantically agentive, also belong to this group. SUFFIXAL,

As a general rule, verbs that meet the criteria for Vendler and Dowty's ACCOMand ACTIVITY classes have Class A (1st and 3rd conjugation) stems in Georgian, and verbs belonging to the STATIVE and ACHIEVEMENT semantic groups are Class P (2nd and 4th conjugation) (Holisky, 1979, 1981) (see Table 2.3). These aspectual differences were in all probability the original basis for the Class AlP distinction and the split-intransitive case assignment pattern of the Kartvelian languages. The correlation between aspect and verb class membership is not exact, however; for example, a small set of activity verbs are formally 2nd conjugation (Class P), and a handful of stative verbs belong to Class A. For some examples of these exceptions, see Harris ( 1981, pp. 268-27 4 ). PLISHMENT

1.1.2. Verb Morphology II: Agreement. The morphemes occurring in slots 2 and 9 of the Georgian verb-and, to a degree, slot 8-cross-reference person and number features of nominal arguments. The two sets of person/number agreement markers which we will refer to 'SetS' and 'Set 0' affixes are shown in Table 2.4. One or two NPs per clause can control agreement in the Georgian verb. The NPs controlling agreement usually correspond to the subject and direct or indirect object of an English translation equivalent. The correlation between the grammatical role (subject or object) and the type of agreement marker used is not a straightforward one, however. For most transitive verbs, and many intransitives, the subject NP 1 controls SetS agreement, and the (direct or indirect) object2 is cross-referenced by a Set 0 marker. We term these DIRECT CONSTRUCTIONS. Some examples are given as follows: DIRECT CONSTRUCTION (Set S markers = subject; Set 0 markers

= Object)

1In this chapter, we use the term SUBJECT to refer to the controlling argument of the verb (usually the agent, experiencer, or theme). Attributes of subject include: (a) it is the NP denoting the addressee of an imperative; (b) its reference cannot be obligatorily determined by another NP within the clause (the "nominative-island constraint" of Chomsky, 1986, p. 186; cf. Keenan, 1976, p. 313); (c) it is the controller in certain linked-clause constructions (e.g., with verbs meaning 'wants', 'is able to', etc.). For a further discussion of grammatical relations in Georgian, see Harris (1981) and Tuite (1988b ). 2 0nly one object NP per clause can control agreement. Indirect objects take preference over direct, and 1st/2nd person over 3rd. For more on this, see Tuite (l988a).

44

lmedadze and Tuite (1)

pa{man-IIJ P-NOM

xa~apur-s

me me

cheese.bread-DAT

gal=m2=i3=*et4=eb6=s9 make[1]:3S:1sgO:FUT

'Patman will make cheese-bread for me'. (2)

tkwen youPL

cwen us

gw2=nax4=es=t9 see[ 1] :2p!S: 1p!O:AOR

'You-all saw us'. (3)

goca-IIJ G.-NOM

tavis self's

mama-s father-DAT

@2 =e3 =xmar4 =eb6=od7=a 9 help[2]:3S:30:IMPF

'Gocha was helping his father'. (4)

me I

paa{a-s P.-DAT

(real) object. In a direct construction, therefore, the Set S ("subject") marker is glossed first, while in the case of an indirect construction, the Set 0 ("object") marker is indicated first. Where it is considered relevant, the conjugation class of the verb (see Table 2.3) is indicated by a number in square brackets. For example, the gloss da=gv=a=vic;q=eb=in=a 'forget:CAUS:[1]:3S:1pl0:AOR' contains the information that the verb stem belongs to the 1st conjugation, contains a causative morpheme, is in the aorist screeve (tense/aspect/mood form), has a 3rd person subject marker (-a) and 1st person plural object (-gv-) marker, and means (roughly) '(he/she/it) caused (us) to forget'. The gloss da= gv=a=vic;q= d=eb=a 'forget[2]: 1pl0:3S:FUT' indicates a 2nd conjugation verb stem, future screeve, with a 1st plural Set 0 marker (-gv-) cross-referencing the real subject and a Set S 3rd person marker (-a) for the real object, and the meaning ' (we) will forget (him/her/it/them).' The abbreviations used in the glosses are those given in the list in the front matter of this volume, with the addition of SUBJ. V "subjective version" and OBJ. V "objective version."

SYSTEM OF PHONOLOGICAL TRANSCRIPTION

The transcripts of child language used in this study were written in the Georgian script. The transliteration of Georgian characters used here is essentially the same as that used in Aronson's (1982a) Georgian textbook: Vowels: a, e, i, o, u Voiced obstruents: b, d, g, 3 [dz], J [English j] Voiceless aspirated obstruents: p, t, k, c [ ts], c [English ch]

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*·

Voiceless glottalized obstruents: p, (, c;, ~. q [postvelar affricate/q'x/] Fricatives: s, z, s [English sh], i ['measure'], ¥[like Parisian r IRI], x [like German 'Bach']. Both ¥and x are postvelar. Sonants: m, n, l, r, v, w

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance rendered by B. Ptadze of the Department of Psychology, Tbilisi Pedagogical Institute, who conducted the experiments reported in Section 7. We also would like to thank Professor Slob in for the translation of Section 2.1, which N. Imedadze had written in Russian, and for his comments on the text. In addition, K. Tuite expresses his thanks to the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX), with whose support he conducted research on the Georgian language in Tbilisi, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, which enabled him to continue work on this topic at the University of Tokyo during the years 1989-1990.

REFERENCES Akhutina, T. V., Velichkovskij, B. M., & Kempe, V. (In press). Semanticeskij sintaksis v ponimanii predlozenij russkimi i nemeckimi det'mi. Aksu-Ko chi(k) > k'u(t) > ne(') > Prolocative > Directionals

The children seem to have recognized this order from the beginning of their multiparticle productions. A Carlos's most spectacular production was the fourparticle combination ta chine q' e. His full utterance was ma kok ta chine q' e: NEG enter NEG again perhaps X or 'Perhaps it did not enter again' (C16-32). I do not know the function of the last particle q' e:, but it showed up occasionally in the speech of all three children. The K'iche' children's use of verb particles constitutes still another domain in which they apparently have a more sophisticated use of language than their American peers. The appearance of particles expressing negation, doubt, emphasis, and so on, in K'iche' children's speech suggests that such concepts are not inherently beyond the grasp of young children. The K'iche' children's use of the directional particles is most similar to American children's use of phrasal verbs such as turn on, use up, and take out. It just happens that the verb particle system is much richer in K'iche' than it is in English, providing K'iche' children with an easier means of acquiring sentence modality.

CONCLUSION

Summarizing the data that I have reported in this chapter and elsewhere is almost as daunting a task as collecting and reporting it in the first place. Rather than reciting all of the K'iche' findings, I point out a few observations that I feel have special theoretical significance. The first of these must be the children's early use of the prolocative adverb wi(h). This is the last morpheme that I expected the children to use when I originally decided to study the acquisition of K'iche'. By itself, this finding might not appear very significant, but I feel that the reasons behind the children's use of the prolocative account for many of the other K'iche' findings. Foremost among these seems to be the contribution of the language's metrical structure to the shape of the children's first utterance (see Gerken, 1990). Stress placement and syllable structure are significantly correlated with morpheme acquisition order in K'iche' and English. The K'iche' verb-termination data show that these factors underlie the children's sentence production, limiting the number and types of syllables they can produce, rather than the morphemes they perceive. Metrical structure is very much a formal characteristic of any language. The

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299

dominant role of metrical structure in setting the early bounds on children's productions indicates that children must deal with the structural characteristics of their parents' language from the beginning. They cannot postpone this effort while developing a language-neutral repertoire of basic cognitive notions. The children's early use of the prolocative is but one example of their ability to acquire the language-specific properties of K'iche'. The children's phonology, use of verb terminations, and awareness of verb transitivity give no indication that the children have shied away from any of the specific problems of learning K'iche'. Their accurate use of the ergative cross-reference markers provides an especially convincing argument that children will not be swayed by universal preconceptions about morpheme function. The children never systematically overgeneralized the ergative cross-reference markers to the subjects of intransitive verbs or restricted the use of the ergative markers to a semantically distinct class of verbs (see Pye, 1990). The K'iche' acquisition data lead me to consider the implications of lexical acquisition and use in languages with a rich morphological structure. Children will acquire a basic vocabulary from the everyday events and conversational routines that surround them. In languages with a rich morphology, and especially where the language's metrical structure highlights this morphology, children will find evidence for extracting affixes and particles from stems. At present, I believe we lack a clear understanding of the precise constraints on the morpheme extraction process. The K'iche' children's use of verb terminations suggests that children are capable of recognizing the function of semantically abstract affixes. This morphology will account for the language-particular look of children's early language and may guide its development at later stages. Children that understand the use of their language's case marking system, for example, will not have to rely on a rigid word order. I assume that the K'iche' children use the verb terminations as a guide to verb transitivity and as an entry point to the ergative cross-reference system. K'iche' children's surprising ability to come to grips with specific features of their parents' language is the main conclusion I draw from this study. That I am surprised by the dominance of the verb-initial word orders or the profound absence of subject NPs in the K'iche' children's utterances reveals as much about my ignorance of the acquisition process as anything else. However, I do not wish to leave the impression that K'iche' is a language that children can learn effortlessly. Tables 4.22 and 4.23, for example, show that the children frequently omitted the cross-reference markers on verbs. They used the completive and incompletive aspectual markers still less frequently on verbs, and like Bowerman's (1973) Finnish subjects, almost always omitted the yes-no question particle. Recent cross-sectional testing has shown that K'iche' children 12 years old are still refining their knowledge of the causative and focus antipassive constructions. Zunil is also one of the few K'iche' communities to preserve a whistled form of the language. This form is useful for communicating across ravines or

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attracting the attention of a young woman. Boys begin acquiring this form of K'iche' when they are 8 or 9 years old. A final conclusion I draw from this chapter is the enormity of the task of documenting the acquisition of a language. I am especially sensitive to the task of documenting children's knowledge of the constraints that apply to their language's rule system. This task is particularly interesting in the Mayan context, as each language, and even dialect, seems to have a different set of constraints. It will be some time yet before the entire process of acquiring K'iche' is put into words. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grants from the National Science Foundation (Grant No. BNS-8909846), the General Research Fund of the University of Kansas (Grant No. 3691-XX-0038), the Organization of American States, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research supported my field research in Guatemala and the conversion of the K'iche' transcripts to a computer format. It has only been possible for me to conduct this research with the support of the K'iche' community where I have worked and with the special assistance of Augustin Huix Huix and Pedro Quixtan Poz. Janet Klepper also provided timely assistance with my Guatemalan research since the beginning. I would like to thank Ann Peters for her comments on an earlier version of this chapter. I take responsibility for any errors or omissions in the final version of this chapter. REFERENCES Aksu-Ko kech kij

Adult Equivalent

English Translation

Tokens

OS

pokj tab'kah tin tink uhu ya ye yo'

Ia'

/at Note. Angle brackets around a word indicate that the form or interpretation is questionable. A hyphen preceding a word indicates that a prefix of some kind is obligatory.

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307

APPENDIX 8 AI Tiya:n's Semantic Relations in Her Second Language Sample Locatives! Notice! Demonstratives a le: ta:t-e, ta:t ali le' *at Se'p le' ak'-/e' aq le are le' le' ch'i:j le' ch'ij-i ri rile' ch'iw tat *ch-fJ-*al*i/-*a mpe le' joron-e' kej-e kik'-i' *Ia k'u-t-e' leak' le: are' le' chij le: ch'iw le~ di~ /e' le kej le le' le~ le~ tz'i' le, le, le, le' tat le: *r-acho:ch le: tew piq' dah pox le le le' rile~ /e' ri' ri' *r-aqan-e tat, chij-e' tz'i' le' *u-jolom-e' *u-xikin-e' *u-pa:m-i' jewa le'

'ah the papa-there, papa' 'girl there' 'FAM Se'p there' 'chicken there' 'pig there' 'he that there' 'sheep that' 'sheep-this here here that' 'chick papa' 'look EMPH there' 'water-there' 'horse-that' 'blood-here' 'Qy EMPH-T-there' 'the chicken' 'the he' 'there sheep' 'the chick' 'that, dear, that' 'the horse' 'the that' 'that, that, dog' 'that, that, that, that papa' 'the 3SG.ERG-home' 'the cold' 'ear of green corn dear' 'pox that that that' 'here that, that' 'here and here' '3SG.ERG-foot-there 'papa, sheep-there' 'dog that' '3SG.ERG-head-there' '3SG.ERG-ear-there' '3SG.ERG-stomach-here' 'here there'

Verb Subject *x-fJ!b'e-!ik joron le' •k-fJ!ti'-on-·ik-e' *k-fJ!wa le' *x-fJI b'e-ik-e'

'go water there' 'bite-that' 'eat that' 'go-that

Subject Verb at *x-*at!*ya'-*ow-*ik

'no you give'

no~

3 1 10 2 1 4 1 1 5 6

2 6 2 1

1 15

1

2 2 2 4 1

(continued)

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Pye

APPENDIX 8 (Continued) Verb Object *ch-fJ-*a/chap-a le: are' *k-fJ-*u/tij le: are'

'grab the s/he' 'eat the s/he'

Object Verb aw chi' y le: are' *k-*at/cha'

'aw say' 'and the s/he say'

Subject Object ak' ixim

'chicken corn'

Denial na' ch'ij no: pelona taro'y, ta-j

'no sheep' 'no dove' 'rooster, NEG-T'

Existence je I k'o: ta-j k'o-11-!ik *le: w-achoch le' *k'o: ta-j le: ri' *n k'o ta-j, mem

'yes exist NEG' 'exist the 1SG.ERG-home there' 'exist NEG-T that, here' 'NEG exist NEG-T, dummy'

Possession in in tz'i' le: a-ch'iw *in k'o: *w-ak' in k'o-!1-!ik *le: w-achoch le' *r-acho:ch chich

'me, me dog' 'the 2SG.ERG-chick' 'exist 1SG.ERG-chicken 1SG.ABS' 'exist the 1SG.ERG-home there '3SG.ERG-home car'

Attributive ay, ak' are' k'ax *le: chij k'ax k'ax *le: kik' pina le'

'ay, chicken he' 'hurts the sheep' 'hurts carry' 'hurts the blood' 'fine that'

3

Interrogatives jas *u-wa:ch jas u-wa:ch ch'i:j jawi le'

'what 3SG.ERG-face' 'what, sheep' 'where that'

2

Uninterpretable are: at ali: ak' le: inaj . ..

'he you' 'girl, chicken' 'the little .. .'

1 2

1

1

1

Note. * = those morphemes that AI Tiya: n did not produce; ! =those morphemes that she did produce but that are not required in the adult language.

The Acquisition of Warlpiri

Edith L. Savin La Trobe University

Contents Introduction 309 The Language and Its Speakers 309 Brief Grammatical Sketch of Warlpiri 310 The Social Context 321 Sources of Evidence 324 325 The Data Overall Course of Development 325 Error-Free Acquisition 348 Errors 353 The Setting of Language Acquisition 359 Cognitive Pacesetting 359 364 Linguistic Pacesetting Individual Differences 365 Conclusions 366

INTRODUCTION 1. The Language and Its Speakers Warlpiri is a language of central Australia, spoken by about 3,000 people. Traditionally hunters and gatherers over a large area of central Australia, the people now live in a number of Warlpiri settlements in the Northern Territory: Yuendumu, Lajamanu, and Willowra. In addition, there are significant numbers of Warlpiri speakers in other communities: Warrabri, Alice Springs, and Tennant Creek. Laughren (1987) mentions four or five main dialects, a reflection of the traditional distribution of the Warlpiri people. There are differences in the language varieties spoken in the different communities, the major ones seeming to be lexical. Contact with other languages has resulted in some of the differences. For example, there has been a great influence of English on Lajamanu Warlpiri,

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and many Lajamanu people use English rather than Warlpiri, or switch between the two. Yuendumu was established as a government ration station in 1946 and Lajamanu was established in the mid-1950s, when the government thought that Yuendumu was growing too large and some families were moved to Lajamanu, which is north of Yuendumu, a day's drive away. Both communities have approximately 800 inhabitants. Willowra is a small cattle station of about 200 people, situated northeast of Yuendumu on the Lander river. It is the most traditional of the communities, mainly because of its size. The communities are far apart, and it was not until the late 1970s and 1980s that people had access to vehicles and were able to travel to other communities (Laughren, 1987). However, travel is still limited. The Warlpiri data reported in this chapter are mainly from the Yuendumu area. Warlpiri belongs to the Southwest, or Nyungic, group of Pama-Nyungan languages. It is classified as a member of the Ngarga subgroup. Warlpiri is an agglutinating language. Like other Pama-Nyungan languages, it has case markings, a small set of verb stems, retroflex consonants, no phonemic distinction between voiced and voiceless stops, and few vowels. There is both a short and a long series for the three vowels i, u, and a. Early descriptions of the language are given in Reece (1970, 1975, 1979). A comprehensive dictionary is in preparation at the Institute for Aboriginal Development in Alice Springs. Preliminary parts are available as publications from the MIT Center for Cognitive Studies. Hale (1982) provides a comprehensive introduction to the syntax. Other aspects of the grammar are described in a number of articles and theses. Particularly valuable are Hale (1976, 1983, 1987), Laughren (1982a, 1982b, 1984a, 1984b, 1985, 1988), Nash (1982, 1986), and Simpson (1988, 1991). While most accounts focus on the Yuendumu variety of Warlpiri, Swartz (1982, 1988) discusses Lajamanu Warlpiri, concentrating in the later work on the pragmatic use of word order. Simpson (1985a, 1985b) has written a short grammar of Eastern Warlpiri and a vocabulary list (from Tennant Creek). There is an elaborate sign language traditionally used by widows under a speech ban. The language is still predominantly a means of communication among the women. Kendon (1989) has written a detailed description of the sign language. 2. Brief Grammatical Sketch of Warlpiri

2.1. Word Classes The two morphologically determined word classes, verbal and nominal, form the major part of the lexicon. In addition, there are a number of particles and clitics. The nominal class includes statives, which may be represented as verbs in other languages (e.g., pina 'knowing', ngampurrpa 'wanting'), and attributes, which may be classified as adjectives in other languages (e.g., wita 'small/the

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small one'). The nominals can be used predicatively. Hale (1983, p. 34) lists the range of semantic functions for nominals in Warlpiri, identifying a continuum ranging from those most likely to be used as argumental (e.g., pronouns, names) to those most likely to be used as predicates (e.g., mental and psychological statives, locatives, and directionals). Although there is a small number of verb stems, these can be extended through compounding and with the addition of preverbs, which add such information as manner, direction, quantity, and cause. There are no definite or indefinite articles, but there are demonstratives, which distinguish proximity (e.g., nyampu 'this/here', yalumpu 'that/there near', yali 'that/there removed').

2.2. Phonological Features The language utilizes five places of articulation (which are reduced to three in baby talk). Stress occurs on the first syllable of a word and on alternate syllables of a word but not on final syllables. Stress patterns are fairly complex given that a number of case forms and clitics may be attached to a word. They are useful for determining word boundaries (Nash, 1986). Intonation patterns identify phrases. When a noun and modifier appear together, they are usually included in the scope of one intonation contour. A topic that appears preclausally is usually separated from the clause with an intonation break. A regular rule of vowel harmony conditions the alternation between a high front and high back vowel in a case affix and other suffixes and clitics. Generally, back vowels in the stem condition the appearance of a high back vowel [u] in the affix, and the high front vowel [i] in the stem conditions the appearance of the high front vowel in the affix. Consider the following alternations in the allative case: watiya-kurra 'to the tree', pirli-kirra 'to the hill/rock'. This progressive vowel harmony does not apply for tense affixes. A high vowel in the tense affix determines the preceding vowel, so the direction of harmony for verbs is anticipatory.

2.3. Word Order Word order is pragmatically determined; there is no neutral order. Two words with the same referent, traditionally analyzed as a head and modifier, do not need to be contiguous in the clause. Laughren (1984a) notes that the modifier (semantically determined) most typically follows a head noun, and when the modifier is separated from its head and is in sentence-initial position, it generally provides contrastive information. New information comes first in sentences in most texts. This ordering is comparable to the organization of discourse in some North American Indian languages, as discussed by Mithun (1986). The noun phrase associated with a known referent, particularly if it is the thematic subject, is likely to be ellipsed. If overt, the noun phrase is most likely to appear late in the clause. In a detailed study on ellipsis and word order in Lajamanu Warlpiri,

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Swartz (1988) analyzes preverbal position as a focus position, and this is supported by the Yuendumu texts I have studied.

2.4. Case Frames The case of the subject and object arguments depends on the lexicosemantic properties of the verb (Laughren, 1988). Intransitive (one argument) verbs specify absolutive case for the subject. Transitive (two argument) verbs generally specify ergative subjects and absolutive objects. However, for some verbs, the objects, those representing goals, have dative case, and the subjects of these verbs are absolutive. As an example, luwarni 'shoot' is a highly transitive verb in that the subject is an agent and the object an affected argument (Hopper & Thompson, 1980). If overt in the clause, the subject for this verb carries an ergative case marker and the object appears unmarked (absolutive). Another transitive verb, rdipimi 'encounter', has an absolutive subject and a dative object. Only one verb stem has an ergative subject and a dative object, warrirni 'look for'. However, derived verbs can have an ergative subject and dative object. If a verb represents attempted action as opposed to successful, the object is marked dative. So luwarni with an ergative subject and absolutive object indicates that the patient is affected, but with an ergative subject and dative object, the action is only attempted. Ditransitive verbs specify an ergative subject and dative goal with absolutive used for the patient/theme. Additional dative arguments may be added to the basic case frame of a verb. Only one verb in Yuendumu Warlpiri has an alternative case frame depending on whether the agent or affected object is the subject. This is jankami 'cook, bum'. The subject of this verb can be the cause of the cooking (the fire, not the person doing the cooking), which will be ergative, with the object cooked (e.g., meat) absolutive. Alternatively, the object cooked can be the subject, in the absolutive case. Laughren (1987) reports an innovation in Lajamanu Warlpiri, with the verbs yukami 'enter' and manyu-karrimi 'fun-stand' ( = play) also being used with alternate case arrays: ergative-absolutive, or just absolutive.

2.5. The Clitic Cluster Core noun phrase arguments do not have to be overt in the clause. A system of cross-referencing clitics registers the person and number of the subject and object, although the 3rd person singular form for subject and object is null. The pronominal clitic forms are given in Table 5 .1. The forms for a reflexive object, controlled by the subject, are ju 'lSG .OBJ', ngku '2SG:OBJ', and nyanu elsewhere. That is, the 1st and 2nd person singular forms are identical to the object clitics, but the nyanu reflexive is used for all other persons. Hale (1983) discusses the relationship between the clitics and the overt noun phrases as one of 'construal'. Jellineck (1984) takes the position that the pro-

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TABLE 5.1 The Warlpiri Pronominal System Singular First Person Exclusive Pronoun Subject Object First Person Inclusive Pronoun Subject Object Second Person Pronoun Subject Object Third Person Subject Object

Dual

Plural

ngajarra rlijarra jarrangku

nganimpa rnalu nganpa

ngali(jarra) rli ngali(ngki)

ngalipa rlipa ngalpa

nyuntu n(pa) ngku

nyumpala n(pa)-pala ngkupala

nyurrula nkulu nyarra

fJ fJI ria

pala palangu

lu jan a

ngaju rna ju

Source: Hale, 1973.

nominal clitics occupy the argument positions in the syntactic projection, and overt noun phrases associated with these clitics are analyzed as adjuncts. Whereas verbs and their arguments and adjuncts may occur in any order, there is a syntactic slot into which pronominal clitics fit. The pronominal clitics form a cluster, which has no head. If the base of the cluster is two syllables long, and therefore can stand as a word (e.g., kapil kapu 'future'), the cluster may appear in initial position. However, if the base is only the syllable or null, the cluster appears following the first phonological phrase of the clause, whatever that may be. Thus, the clitic forms do not give the child a clue to the form class of the preceding word, as does a case marker for a nominal and a tense suffix for a verb. Within the Warlpiri clitic cluster there is an ordering principle as given in the following (Simpson & Withgott, 1986): propositional particle-sentential particle-aspect-subject-object/oblique

Note, however, that there is no requirement that a clitic cluster be phonologically realized. If there are no sentential or propositional particles, and if there is no aspect marker, and if the subject and object arguments are 3rd person singular, there will be no manifestation of the cluster. For example, consider the sentence in (1). It consists of a verb and no overt arguments. The verb is inflected for past, which is synonymous with perfect aspect. It does not require an aspect marker. There are no sentential or propositional particles. The non-overt arguments are

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interpreted as 3rd person singular because there are no overt pronominal clitics. Noun phrase (NP) arguments could be added to the sentence. (1)

Nyasee

ngu PAST

'He/she/it saw her/him/it'

In comparison, sentence (2) illustrates 1st person singular subject and 2nd person singular object with the past imperfective aspect marker lpa. Independent pronominal forms may be added, but they are not required. (2)

nyasee-

nguPAST-

lpaIPFV-

rnalSG.SUBJ-

ngku 2SG.OBJ

'I was looking at you'

Although the pronominal clitics are generally not segmentable into number and person morphemes, certain subject forms may be analyzed as having separate person and number forms because the person morpheme may precede the object clitic and the number morpheme may follow. This situation occurs with 1st or 2nd person singular object clitic. For example, rnalu '1PL.EXCL.SUBJ' appears as one unit before jana '3PL.OBJ' but is split into two units around ju '1SG .OBJ', giving rna-ju-lu, and around ngku '2SG. OBJ', giving rna-ngku-lu. Simpson and Withgott (1986, p. 165) describe the conditioning factor for this split as the number of syllables in the object clitic. 1st and 2nd person object clitics are the only monosyllabic clitics in the paradigm. The splitting of the morphemes around ju and ngku seems to represent a relic of an older system in which number markers had a special slot following the object clitic (Simpson & Withgott, 1986, p. 165). If a dative object is available in the clause, it takes precedence over an absolutive object argument in the clitic cluster. In the two examples in (3), a ditransitive verb appears with both an absolutive and dative object. The dative is cross-referenced in the clitic cluster, not the absolutive. In (3a), the dative pronominal clitic for 3rd person is ria, registering the recipient as object, and in (3b), the 1st person singular recipient is registered as object. (3)

a. karnta- ngku- ria yu- ngu wardapi- jarra purlka- ku woman- ERG- 3.DAT give- PAST goanna- DUAL old man- DAT 'The woman gave two goannas to the old man' b. Karnta- ngku- ju yu- ngu watiya- jarra ngaju- ku DAT woman- ERG- lSG.OBJ give- PAST stick- DUAL me'The woman gave two sticks to me'

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Dative adjuncts may also be cross-referenced in the clitic cluster. So two dative clitics may appear, although if the two arguments are 3rd person singular, the sequence rla-rla is not permissible; the second will always be in the form jinta. (The sequence rlajinta has a number of functions: the marking of two dative arguments, an allomorph for comitatative, and a complementizer, as discussed below.) The dative adjunts that may be cross-referenced include benefactives and adversatives (see Hale, 1982, for further discussion). Thus, the clitics registering subject and object identify the core arguments, since the nouns with which they are construed may not be overt in the clause. However, if two 3rd person arguments are involved, the referents must be inferred from context. Auxiliary bases are interconnected with the tense/aspect/mood system of Warlpiri. The bases include ka 'non-past imperfective', lpa 'past imperfective', and kapi/kapu 'future'. Other auxiliary bases include kajika 'potential/might', used with the nonpast verb form, and kalaka 'admonitive', used with the nonpast verb form. Kujaka with non-past constitutes a presentational construction. The form kala is used with the past verb form for past usitative (past habitual). Sentential particles that may be prefixed to these bases include kula 'negative' and kaji 'conditional'. The particles in Warlpiri are fairly numerous. They serve a sentential or propositional function, typically appearing in first or second position, although propositional particles may appear in any position in the clause depending on their scope. Propositional particles indicate the speaker's attitude or role (Laughren, 1982a, p. 132) and include particles such as nganta 'supposedly, reportedly' and the evidential kari, a particle that indicates direct evidence. Sentential particles, however, express temporal/modal information, or links between clauses, and include yungu 'causal' and kaji 'uninstantiated relative'.

2.6. Nominative-accusative Syntax There are no syntactic alternations in the language, such as passive, and there are no syntactic movement rules; grammatical relations are established by the lexical specification of the verb. As noted above, most transitive subjects are ergative, and most objects absolutive (the unmarked case). Thus, Warlpiri is morphologically ergative. However, it follows a nominative-accusative pattern syntactically. The subject of the sentence is cross-referenced with a subject clitic, regardless of its case. In addition, the subject controls the reflexive morpheme nyanu, regardless of case. A third property associated with subjects is that they control the "same subject" complementizer karra in subordinate nonfinite clauses. 2.7. Number

The language distinguishes four numbers: singular, dual, paucal, and plural. In the pronominal system, there are distinct forms for subject and nonsubject

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clitics for each person for singular, dual, and plural. (For 1st person, there is also an inclusive-exclusive distinction.) Dual subject and object clitics cannot cooccur in a clitic cluster. A neutralization takes place and the plural form takes the place of one or both. In addition, object number is not always cross-referenced. Note that object number is not always registered in the clitic cluster, and, if the object is focused by being fronted to preclause position, it is not registered at all. Suffixes are added to the singular forms of nouns to mark dual and paucal number: jarra 'dual' and patu 'severallpaucal'. For some human words a reduplicated form may be used for plural (e.g., kurdu 'child', kurdu-kurdu 'children', karnta 'woman', karnta-karnta 'women'). For demonstratives, the suffix -rra is used to mark plural (e.g., nyampu 'this', nyampu-rra 'these'). An innovation is the use of wati as a plural suffix for nouns; this is used regularly by the children.

2.8. Case Forms and Case Agreement In addition to the case forms for core arguments, the semantic cases in the language include locative, allative, elative, perlative, admonitive, proprietive, and possessive. Benefactive is the same as dative. There are distinct forms for pronominal and noun possessors and special forms for kin relations. There may be more than one case form attached to a nominal. The locative case marker indicates a general location. However, there is the option of indicating specific locations with locative nominals; these may have directional suffixes added. For example, the location indicated in watiya-rla 'at the tree' can be made more specific: watiya-rla kankarlu 'above/on the tree', watiya-rla kankarla-rni 'above/on the tree hither'. The directional affix rni can be interpreted as if the object on the tree is close or facing this way. The locative word does not have to be next to the reference object. The case markers may have two or four allomorphs. The ergative case has four, two of which are conditioned by vowel harmony rules from the other two. The forms ngkulngki are used on two-syllable words (with a few exceptions), and rlu/rli on longer words. The exceptions, two-syllable words that take the rlu!rli forms, include nyampu 'this/this one', yali 'that/that one', kuja 'thus', and two question words: nyarrpa 'how' and nyiya 'what'. The locative form ngka is used on two-syllable words (with the same exceptions as for the ergative case), and rla on longer words. The comitative also has two allomorphs: ngkajinta for two-syllable words and rlajinta on longer words. Other cases have two forms conditioned by vowel harmony, for example, ku!ki 'dative', kurra!kirra 'allative', and ngurlu!ngirli 'elative'. However, not all case forms have variants (e.g., jangka 'from'). Any words with the same referent in a clause will carry the same case marking. If the two words are contiguous, only the last need carry the case marker, but

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if separated, both will. Consider the following, in which wita 'small' agrees with maliki 'dog' in case (absolutive) in (4a) but with kurdu 'child' in (4b): (4)

a. Maliki dog

nyasee-

ngu PAST

kurduchild-

ngku ERG

wita small

'The child saw the little dog/ The child saw the dog and it was small' b. Nyasee-

ngu PAST

kurduchild-

ngku ERG

maliki dog

witasmall-

ngku ERG

'The small child saw the dog/ The child saw the dog and she (the child) was small'

A wide range of relations are linked through case marking: head-attribute, as illustrated in (4a); head-demonstrative; generic-specific; part-whole; and nominal-predication, as illustrated in the second interpretations of both examples in (4). Synonyms may be used within a clause, and these will carry the same case marking to indicate same function. Case agreement is important for matching items in a clause; but case agreement also applies across clause boundaries. If the subject of a non-finite verb is the same as that of the matrix clause, the non-finite verb will carry the appropriate case agreement. Thus, if a main clause has an ergative subject and the subordinate clause has the same subject, the non-finite verb will carry an ergative case marker following the complementizer. As discussed above, there are allomorphs for the cases. There are also homophones for many of the case markers. The ergative ngku is the same as the 2nd person singular object clitic, the ergative rli is the same as the 1st person dual inclusive subject clitic, the noun possessive case kurlangu is the same as the sequence ku 'dative' + rlangu 'some, for example', the locative ria is the same form as the dative clitic as well as the sequential complementizer, and the allative kurra is a complementizer. The homophonous forms can lead to ambiguities as illustrated in the following: (5)

malikidog-

OR

dog-l.DU .INCL:SUBJ

rli ERG

nyasee-

ngu PAST

see-PAST

'The dog saw him/her/it' OR

'We (2) saw the dog'

2.9. Verb Morphology There are few verb stems in the language (estimates range from 150-200). On the basis of the suffixes used with the verb stems, five morphological verb classes are distinguished. A summary of the main verb inflections is given in

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Bavin TABLE 5.2 Verb Classes in Warlpiri

Class

1 2 3

4 5

Non-past

Past

Imperative

mi/0 rni nyi rni ni

ja rnu ngu rnu nu

ya ka ngka nja nta

lrrealis yar!a karla ngkarla njarla nyarla

Infinitive nja rninja nja rninja ninja

Table 5. 2. In addition to the listed affixes, a set of future markers is used in some dialects of Warlpiri. The verbs in class 1 may appear without the nonpast suffix; otherwise, verbs are always inflected. As noted above, vowel harmony for verbs is anticipatory: Verb stems in classes 2, 4, and 5 alternate according to the vowel in the tense affix. Most of the verbs in class 1 (Nash, 1986, lists 53 stems) require only one core argument, the subject. Most of the verbs in class 2 (Nash lists 61 stems) require two core arguments, a subject and object, but there are exceptions. For example, verb class 1 includes purami 'follow', a two-argument verb. Class 2 verbs include the highly transitive verbs such as luwarni 'shoot' and pakarni 'hit', and these take an absolutive object, but pardarni 'wait for' takes a dative object. Classes 3, 4, and 5 are small. In Aboriginal languages there are generally two main verb groups with a few verbs designated to a few other groups (Dixon, 1980). In Warlpiri, verb class 3 has eight stems, verb class 4 has only one stem ngarni 'injest', verb class 5 has three plus the inceptive suffix njini. Although these verb classes are small, the verbs they contain include the highly frequent verbs ngarni 'injest' and from class 5, yani 'go, come' and mani 'get, take'. Mani is also used as a transitive suffix. Verbs of stance (ngunami 'lie', karrimi 'stand', and nyinami 'sit') in class 1 may take ka as the imperative suffix rather than the expected ya. There is a certain amount of variation in the pronunciation of retroflex consonants. For the suffixes for verb classes 2 and 4, some speakers use the nonretroflex form nu. Directional affixes may be added to the tensed verb forms, as in ya-ni-rni 'comenonpast-hither'. As discussed above, the verb forms are used in combination with different auxiliary bases to give aspectual distinctions.

2.1 0. Derivations The addition of the verb jarrimi changes the status of a nominal to an intransitive verb, and the addition of mani gives a transitive verb. So, from pina 'knowing' can be derived pina jarrimi 'to become knowledgeable, to learn' and pina

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mani 'to cause to be knowledgeable, to teach'. Similar derivations are available for the other stative nominals in the language. Another derivation process is the compounding of a preverb with a tensed verb stem. Preverbs add information such as manner, path, direction, result, and quantity. Preverbs do not have to be contiguous to the verb stem; some are more separable than others (Nash, 1982). Some preverbs are limited to use with one or two stems; others are more productive. The addition of a preverb may affect the argument structure of the verb. For example, the addition of the preverb jurnta 'away' adds a source argument to the case frame of the verb to which it is an addition. It can be added to a stem such as paarrpardimi 'fly' (itself a compound of paarr 'into flight' and pardimi 'emerge, arise') to give 'fly away from'. Then an argument, carrying dative case and representing the source, is added to the argument structure. This is clear because the source needs to be cross-referenced in the auxiliary cluster with a dative clitic, even if the source argument is not overt in the clause. In addition to case suffixes, other affixes may be added to nominals; these include an intensifier and diminutive. In addition, there are a number of enclitics that may be attached to either nominals or verbs. These include wiyi 'first, before', lku 'as of now, then', juku 'still', and mipa 'only'. There are ordering principles for affixes. A case marker is added to the end of a word, so that number will be marked before case, but enclitics may follow a case marker. Verbalizing suffixes may be added to derived nominals; an example taken from Simpson and Withgott (1986, p. 153) is walya-kurra-mani 'land on the ground'; this consists of an allative case marker added to walya 'ground' to form the compound 'to the ground'; the verbalizer mani is then added to give the derived verb. 2.11. Negatives

The general negative form is lawa 'no'. The negative particle kula is used to negate past, non-past, and irrealis verb forms and appears in first or second position of the clause. Wangu 'without' is suffixed to the infinitive verb to form a negative imperative, as well as to nominals. Note that nuu or nati have been borrowed from English no and not, but they are now well established in the language and can replace any of the three negative forms. An alternative negative imperative, which is being used by young adults as well as children, is formed with the imperative verb form, which is negated with lawa, nuu, or nati. 2.12. Questions

Yes-no questions are marked with rising intonation or with the addition of a question word mayi. Mayi is often used as a tag in final position. Information

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questions are formed with a question word, usually in initial position. These words function alone as nominals or as determiners accompanying nouns. They include ngana 'who' (nyana in Eastern Warlpiri), nyiya 'what' (nyayi in Eastern Warlpiri), nyarrpara 'which, where', nyajangu 'what ones, how many', and nyangurlarnu 'what, who, which'. Nyangurla 'when' and nyarrpa 'how' are two other question words.

2.13. Clause Combining Subordinate clauses may be non-finite or finite. Non-finite clauses do not include pronominal clitic clusters. Purposive and jussive clauses are marked with ku on the subordinate infinite verb form. The subject of the non-finite verb has the same referent as the subject of the matrix verb in jussive clauses and usually also in purposive clauses, although here it may share identity with the matrix object (Hale, 1982, p. 282). When rla is suffixed to a non-finite verb, the relation between the matrix and subordinate clause is one of succession, the rla indicating 'having done'. Another suffix used on non-finite verbs is kujaku 'admonitive', the interpretation being that the main clause action be done so that the subordinate action does not occur. Simultaneous action between two clauses may be marked by using one of four complementizers suffixed to the non-finite verbs. If the subject of the subordinate clause is the same as the matrix subject, karra is used; karra indicates that the subordinate subject is the same as the matrix object, rlajintalngkajinta indicates a reflexive, and rlarnilngkarni shows that the subordinate subject is not coreferent with any of the matrix clause arguments. These four complementizers conflate temporal information and information about the subordinate subject. Hale (1982) and Simpson and Bresnan (1983) discuss the complementizers in detail. Infinitive verbs are analyzed as nominals by Simpson (1988). There is good evidence for this: the verbs are not tensed, and they may carry case suffixes following the complementizer (which themselves are often homophonous with case forms in the language). Thus, non-finite, subordinate clauses are nominalizations. Tensed subordinate verbs are used if the clause are combined with manu 'and/or' or kala 'but'. In addition, the instantiated complementizer kuja or ngula 'relative' and the uninstantiated complementizer kaji 'if' may be used to join clauses. These are prefixed to the auxiliary cluster, as is yungu 'causal'. There is no relative clause as such. Hale (1976) refers to a subordinate clause with kuja or ngula as an "adjoined relative clause." Such clauses either give temporal information, translated as a while-clause in English, or they supply additional information about an argument in the main clause. Hale (1982, 1987) discusses the finite-clause complementizers in detail.

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3. The Social Context

3.1. Social Organization In studying the acquisition of any language, it is important to consider the social context. One of the greatest differences between Western beliefs and Australian Aboriginal beliefs relates to land. People are associated to specific areas of land through the kin system; they cannot own land. They are associated with and are responsible for land areas through both patrilineal and matrilineal relations. This kinship system is a complex hierarchically organized structure which encompasses a conventionalized set of relations based on the maternal and paternal relations (Laughren, 1982b, p. 72). The system covers both genealogical relations and relations based on membership in sets, usually referred to as subsections. Social and political organization are based on the kinship system. The total number of lexical items relating to the kinship system is very large. Continuity between the mythical time and the present is evident in many domains, including paintings and ritual. The belief is held that in the past mythical beings roamed the land. They left behind the social order and "law"; the land is covered with the "tracks" of these beings. The beings remain as features of the land, such as in the form of rocks, hills, and trees. As pointed out by Hale ( 1987), there are a number of ways in which the language of the Warlpiri also reflects that the past and the present do not contrast; rather, they complement each other. Hale refers to this as the logic of eternity. A notion of cyclicity is reflected in kinship terms: a boy has the same subsection ("skin") name as his patrilineal grandfather, and there are distinct terms for same versus ascending generation. In addition, the name for an object is the same as the material from which it is taken or formed. For example, kuyu is 'meat' or 'animal', warlu is 'firewood' or 'fire', and ngalkirdi is 'witchity grub' or the tree from which it is taken. An object such as a spear does not come into being because it already exists in the form of the material from which it is shaped.

3.2. Socialization of the Child How the child is perceived in a culture will determine, to some extent, how the adults and siblings interact with the child. In Western Samoan society, for example, the focus of learning is on the child (Ochs, 1988). In Kaluli society, adults model appropriate forms for the child (Schieffelin, 1986). These reflect different socialization processes. In Warlpiri society, the view is held that knowledge is gained through experience and earned through maturity. There are many levels of knowledge. Some knowledge will be withheld until the individual is perceived to be mature enough to be given it. The Warlpiri child learns through experience and observation, rather than through verbal teaching. As with other Aboriginal groups (Harris, 1984), the child learns through real life experiences,

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not through play situations, and through group cooperation, rather than individual competitive behavior. The Warlpiri child is not assumed to be talking until words are intelligible. The question-answer routine familiar in Western societies is not found in Warlpiri society. The adult has knowledge, not the child, and questioning is not used as a teaching device. There is some modification in the direct input to a young child in certain contexts, and this will be discussed in detail below. However, the child mainly hears unmodified speech. People live together in extended families, and a camp might be quite large and noisy. Children are not put to bed at a particular time; they live and sleep with family members and sleep when tired. Many activities might last throughout the night and children will be part of these activities. Ceremonies generally take place at night, and children are present. A card game, involving many participants, players, and observers, may last throughout the day and night. The life-style is public, with people usually spending most of their time outside even if they have buildings to shelter in. People generally prefer to sleep outside, and they sleep in close proximity around the camp fire.

3.3. Input Adults speak quickly, with a great deal of repetition and loss of unstressed syllables. Much reduction is noted in fast speech, and it is quite usual for a syllable to be lost if it is contiguous to a syllable of similar sound as in puluku-ku 'cow-DAT'. This is also grammaticized; the first pa of npapala 2nd person dual subject is lost unless the form is split around another clitic. In addition, final vowels are often voiceless, and the consonant before may be unreleased. So watingki 'man-ERG' will be [watiiJ]. Thus, case forms may not be easily detectable in the input data. Core nominal arguments may be ellipsed, although the nouns may be included and they may be repeated within one utterance. There may be synonyms used even within one clause. Voice modulations are associated with different styles. In storytelling, women often adopt a high pitch voice and chanting style. If people are talking about a particular dreaming story or pointing out significant places in their land, they might start singing a relevant song, and this singing is characterized also by its rhythmic patterns and modulation contours. Laughren (1984b) describes the stylized speech style that adults and older siblings use when directly addressing a child up to about the age of 5. The style (BT) is not used in all contexts, however. Laughren describes this baby talk as an adult construct that imitates features of child language (p. 73). The style involves a number of phonological substitutions, which have the effect of reducing the consonant inventory. The adult system distinguishes five places of articulation, and BT three. Bilabial and velar stops are retained, but the apico-alveolar, apicodomal, and !amino-palatal are all produced as !amino-palatal. There are few exceptions; for example, pardu 'diminutive' is produced as pawu. In addition,

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consonant clusters may be reduced, so that a nasal is assimilated to the place of articulation of a following stop. Another feature is the dropping of initial consonants. Generally, the sounds ny, ng, y, and w are affected. Thus, nyampu 'this/here' is produced as ampu, and ngaju 'lime' is aju. Laughren (1984b, p. 77) reports l becomes w in two words: lawa 'no' __,. wawa and warlu 'fire'__,. wawu. A lateral is often elided before a stop consonant, as in purlka 'old man' __,. puka. There is also rhotic elision so that the alveolar trill rr is not articulated in ngurrju 'good', which is produced as nguju. The absence of rhotics leads to kayi for kari 'other' andjayi for jarri(mi) 'inchoative'. Reece (1971) reports that adults first use uninflected verb stems when talking to children. In the input data I have collected, adults occasionally produced an imperative verb without the suffix, but more frequently they produce inflected forms. Both forms may appear in one utterance, as with wangka wangkaya 'talk!' Some semantic oppositions are reduced in BT and the generic terms rather than specific are used, so that watiya is used for 'tree' rather than the species name. Nyanya is used for all food instead of the three terms that are used to divide up the domain of food: kuyu 'meat, animal', miyi 'vegetable food', and pama 'nectar'. This word is specific to BT. Animal names are often borrowed from English, with forms such as kangku or kangkuru for marlu 'kangaroo' and jiji for nantuwu 'horse'. There is modification in the terms used for kin. For example, mamiyi is used for 'mother, mother's sister', and papa for 'father'. The term tartarta 'mother's father' is specific to BT. The adult form is jamirdi. Other BT forms for kin are modified forms of the actual adult forms, either in form or range of reference. Thus, wayingiyi is used for 'father's father, father's father's brother, and father's father's sister', or any person in father's father's subsection. Terms for same generation are reduced to a two-way contrast based on sex. Thus, kakiyi is used for brothers, although the adult system distinguishes older brother papirdi and younger brother kukurnu, and yayiyi is used for sisters in place of kapirdi 'elder sister' and ngawurru 'younger sister'. What is interesting about the substitution patterns is that they indicate the adult's attitude that the child does not have the knowledge to use the appropriate words, and thus the modifications are an attempt to simplify the system until the time that the child has, through experience, sufficient knowledge to use the appropriate adult forms. The style of baby talk is used by adults and siblings when playing with a baby. It serves also as a form of teasing. When a child of 2 and 3 speaks, there is a great deal of phonetic variation. I have observed others being highly amused by the child's talk as they mimic the child's pronunciation. Thus, as Laughren (1984b) points out, the baby talk is an adult construct which imitates features of child language. The effect of this teasing is often to delay attempts on the part of the young child to articulate. The child presumably feels kurnta 'shame'. Perhaps

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the best interpretation for kurnta is 'embarrassment'. When people are asked a question, they may not reply or they answer in a whisper. Others will explain the behavior as one of kurnta. People prefer to offer knowledge if they have it and are willing to convey it. This aspect of the culture is crucial for understanding the acquisition of Warlpiri and the socialization of the child. However, although the teasing may affect young children, as they get older they tease back. They also repeat utterances used by the adults or siblings. Even though this repetition is not used as a teaching routine, it does reflect that the child has already become attuned to features of the adult discourse, in which there is a great deal of repetition both within and across utterances.

4. Sources of Evidence The only reported research on children's Warlpiri other than that by Bavin and by Bavin and Shopen (discussed in detail below) is by Reece (1971), which is written up in a two-page article, and some research on features of children's speech at Lajamanu by Leeding and Laughren (1979). The Leeding-Laughren report describes features of the children's speech based on three and one-half hours of recording, mainly from school-age children. They note that children used Warlpiri and Gurindji words in free variation in the sentences, as well as Warlpiri and English-derived loan words. While the adults were not found to use English-derived words generally, there were certain contexts where this was the norm (e.g., the church). As mentioned in the introduction, the Lajamanu community was set up away from traditional Warlpiri land, and the people who were moved there had contact with other Aboriginal groups, including Gurindji, and Aboriginal people who had learned English while working on cattle stations in the North. All other material is data collected by Bavin and Shopen in field trips to Yuendumu from August 1982 to August 1986, and by Bavin since then although some material collected in Willowra and Lajamanu in 1982 and in Lajamanu in 1987 is noted in the chapter. The production data are both naturalistic and elicited, and the comprehension data are based on experimental work. The naturalistic data are cross-sectional, collected sporadically from children aged from 2 to 5 years. The children were taped talking to another child or other children in play situations. Sometimes adults participated. However, the young children talked more freely without adults present. Taping was done outside, generally in camp settings, and thus the children could be observed and notes taken. All tapes were transcribed with the help of native speakers, usually people who had observed the sessions. The transcriptions were then checked by other adults. Spontaneous data reported are primarily from the following sources: recordings of two 2 year olds, two 2;8 year olds, a child of 2;11, a child of 3;0, two 3;3 year olds, two 3;5 year olds, two 3;8 year olds, two 3;10 year olds, a child of 4;0, two 4;3 year olds, two 4;8 year olds, a child of 4;9, and a child of 4;11. Several of the children were recorded at different ages.

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Narratives were collected using picture-book prompts, books with no text. These were collected from children aged from 3;5 to 13 years. Altogether, four picture books were used over the period of data collection, two with 6 pictures, one with 12 pictures, and one with 10. Each book had clear episodic structure, the first two being based on story lines of the books used in Karmiloff-Smith's studies (1981, 1985). The first book showed a man with a gun, a kangaroo by some rocks, the man and kangaroo looking at each other, the man shooting, the kangaroo wounded, and the kangaroo on the ground. The second showed a boy, the boy approaching a man holding a bird, an exchange of the bird, the boy walking along with the bird, the bird flying away, the boy walking alone. The third picture series was selected from part of a published story, The Giant Dingo by Dick Roughsey. The series of pictures depicted a lengthy chase of two men by the dingo and the eventual capturing of the dingo by the two being chased. The fourth book showed a family going hunting in a truck, resting in the shade of a tree, hunting for kangaroo, returning to camp with a shot animal, and cooking at the camp. The narratives were collected to provide developmental data on clauselinking morphology, ellipsis of core arguments, word order, and other aspects of discourse organization. Children were either asked to say what was happening (stories 1-3) or to tell a story (story 4). Following the fourth book, some of the children were asked to tell their own stories. Other narratives have been elicited. Personal narratives were collected from children aged from 10 to 13 years. The children were asked to tell about times they were frightened or what they did over the weekend. They were telling the stories to another child of a similar age. Experimental work designed in consultation with Warlpiri adults covers tests on the comprehension of case marking and word order, as well as the comprehension and production of locative forms. Children from the age of 3;0 participated in this experimental work. Data on pronominal forms and kin terms were elicited. A few adults were tested for each set of experimental work and for the elicitation sessions so that some comparison could be made with the children's responses. Information on adult input is gained from direct observation, from sessions in which adults have tried to prompt children to talk, and from Laughren's (1984b) discussion of baby talk.

THE DATA

5. Overall Course of Development

5.1. Introduction An overview of the general course of acquisition of Warlpiri is presented in the following sections. Developments are discussed for each of the age groups 2;0, 2;8, 2;11-3;0, 3;3-3;5, 3;8-3;10, 4;0-4;11. These age groups have been determined rather arbitrarily, but there are developments to report for each group.

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In particular, I note the ages at which form-function mappings appear in the corpus of naturalistic data. Results of experimental work are reported separately in the later sections, as are the results of a survey on the use of pronominal forms, and developments noted in the production data after the age of 5. In section 5.4, I place particular emphasis on the emergence of the auxiliary base ka and the pronominal clitics. In addition, developments in the use of ergative case are discussed. Although clear developmental patterns show up, there are problems with drawing generalizations about the course of acquisition on naturalistic data. One of these is that accidental gaps in the data are bound to occur. If a form does not appear in the corpus, this does not mean that the child has not yet mastered a concept or the form for expressing the concept. For example, I note that only at the age of 3;5 is there data showing a child talking about events in the past. This does not imply that the child has not developed time concepts before that age. I also note that the first example of both an overt subject and object clitic together in the auxiliary cluster is from a child aged 3;0. This is with a 1st person singular subject and 2nd person singular object. This illustrates that utterances from the younger children often referred to a third person and not that the child is not able to mark subjects and objects together. A second problem relates to using cross-sectional data, from which one is tempted to generalize similar age-based developmental patterns for all children acquiring the language. There are enough indications in the Warlpiri data to indicate some children are more linguistically mature than others of a similar age. The overall course of development is as follows: there is no pattern of telegraphic speech; grammatical morphemes are identifiable from the data from 2 year olds. These include the dative case, and tense suffixes, which are first used to mark aspect. By 2;8, the auxiliary cluster is emerging, and this includes the imperfective base ka as well as pronominal clitics. Dative cross-referencing appears early, and as preverbs enter the data, they are appropriately referenced, indicating an awareness of the case frames of the individual verbs. The future morpheme appears at 3;0. By 3;5, the child is proficient in the sentence-level use of tense and aspect morphology and talks spontaneously about events in the past. Ergative case forms are not frequent in the data because agent nouns tend to be ellipsed. However, ergative case forms are used at 3;0, and case-agreement patterns indicate an early knowledge of case arrays. A number of overgeneralizations are noted in case forms for ergative and locative. Negative and question words cause no problems; their use involves no syntactic alternations. Particles used in the 2-4-year-old corpus are nganta 'it seems', yini 'anyway', junga 'true', waja 'certainly', and ngayi 'just'. Morphologically linked clauses appear at 4;8. Although some embedding morphology appears at 2;11, it takes many years for the children to use the range of complementizers available, and few embedded clauses appear in the corpus before the age 7.

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5.2. First Words The first utterances that are interpretable as words occur at around the age of 2. Before that, "talk" by the child is not interpreted as language, and there are no expansions and recasts of the child's early words. The child's first words show a great deal of phonetic variation. Much of this mirrors the patterns noted for the baby talk style of speech. Initial consonants are dropped and consonant clusters reduced, and there is substitution of consonants by other consonants. For example, the laminal stop j is generally produced as a laminal alveolar (t) and the flap rd is produced as w. Note the form apuju for nyampuju 'this/here'; the initial ny is missing as well as p from the cluster mp. The form parnkata is heard for panka-ja 'run-past', pawu for pardu, and tali for yali 'that/there'. In spite of these and other variations, words are identifiable. The forms refer most frequently to the existence of an entity, or the location of an entity, or volition. Utterances encoding agents are not found. The deictic expression nyampu 'this, here' is common. Only about 20% of the utterances are verbal. The dative case ku is identifiable and is used to express volition, as in ngaju-ku 'I-DAT', which the child uses with the sense of 'I want it' or 'it's mine'. The pronunciation is generally aju-ku. Many of the comments made by the young child are to direct the attention of another to what is going on, as with the imperative nyangka 'look'. Of the verb forms used, imperatives are the most frequent at this age. For example, in one 30-minute tape, a 2-year-old child used 10 verbs of which 50% were imperatives. Other verb forms show that the child first uses the past tense morphology to mark the end point of an action, and the non-past form to show ongoing activity in the immediate context. The forms show that the child uses tense forms aspectually, marking viewpoint aspect, and this pattern continues throughout the third year. Some attributives are noted in the speech of the 2 year olds. An example is warna wiri-jarlu 'snake big-INT' 'a really big snake', which the child produces as warna wijawu. There is an example of a number nominal panu 'some', and number is marked in the expression kangku wita-pawu-patu 'kangaroo smallDIM-paucal' 'some little kangaroos' and also in watijinta 'man-one'. However, with these examples it is not possible to say if the forms are productive. One instance of a locative nominal appears: kangkarlayi ( = kangkarla-rni) 'uphither'. There is repetition in the early utterances, a reflection of the input data, and baby talk lexical items are produced. English animal terms are used side-byside with Warlpiri traditional words. For example, the forms kangku and marlu 'kangaroo' are both used. There is no indication of an event being grammaticized at this stage. The utterances are influenced by pragmatic factors. Although there are a few instances of a morpheme that could be an ergative case form, there are other possible interpretations for these forms. Note the formpapa-rlu marlu, which an

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adult interpreted later as papa-kuriangu mariu 'papa-POSS-kangaroo' 'papa's kangaroo'. However, the child uttered no other instances of noun possessors. The riu was not interpreted as ergative. In that there is variation between the retroflex and non-retroflex laterals, it is also possible that the child intended the plural cross-reference iu. Neither an ergative nor plural would be acceptable in the utterance, and the adult imposed the most acceptable interpretation in the adult system. When the same child produced yani yi pawu-li, the helper interpreted the yi as yali and li as the directional rni and gave the meaning as 'it's going along there'. However, ii could also be indicative of a plural subject, but there is an error in its position. If the child is adding a morpheme in an attempt to imitate the ergative case forms, rii, the morpheme is used in error. The child could be adding a form because it is in the input data, but its function is not understood yet. This is similar to examples reported by Clancy (1985). Young Japanese children associated the subject markers (galwa) with particular verbs and added them to inappropriate nouns, indicating that the function of the forms had not been mastered. What is most revealing from these data and the attempts to interpret them by the adults is that with the reduced forms and the phonological variation there are a number of interpretations that could be made from one utterance. Adults prefer not to attempt to interpret utterances that are not clear from the context. They argue that the child is not talking yet. If an interpretation is made, one adult may give one interpretation, whereas another gives an alternative.

5.3. Early Developments: 2;8 5.3.1. Semantic Cases. At 2;8, there is still a great deal of phonetic variation. For example, [kuta] = kuja 'thus', and [ajukulaj] = ngajucku nguia-ju 'meDAT that-lSG .OBJ' 'That one is for me/mine'. In the corpus, there is also a lot of repetition of the words within an utterance, as well as repetitions of utterances. However, a notable development is in the use of semantic cases other than the dative. These include the perlative wana, as in nyampu-wana 'here-along' 'along here'; the admonitive kujaku, as in ngaju-kujaku 'me-look out for' 'watch out'; the benefactive ku, as in ngaju-ku payinti-manu 'me-BEN found' 'she found it for me'; the proprietive kuriu, as in waji-kuriu '?horse-having' 'with a horse'; and the locative forms ngka and ria, as in karnta-ngka 'woman-LOC' 'on the and nyampu-rla 'here-LOC'. Nyampu 'this/here' is one of the two-syllable exceptions for ergative and locative case forms, and it is produced by children of 2;8 with the adult locative form ria, indicating rote learning rather than rule application. One child used yali-ngka, another of the two-syllable exception words for locative case, but here the child was regularizing with ngka. Nyampu is more frequent in the input data as well as in the children's production than yaii. One child used the noun possessive form kuriangu on the question word nyiya 'what' but also over-

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generalized its use to the pronouns nyuntu 'you (SG)' and ngaju 'I'. However, the other child of 2;8 used the dative for possession. 5.3.2. Negatives and Questions. Negatives and questions do not cause problems for the children. From the time the forms appear, they are used in an appropriate position. No modification is needed in the syntax, such as subjectauxiliary inversion. The first negatives appear at 2;8 with naa 'denial' in sentence-initial position. There are no examples of the negative lawa in the corpus until 2;11 and none of kula until 3;8, at which time it is used to negate a nominal rather than a verb: nyampu kula 'this not' 'not this one'. The question word mayi is used in sentence-final position. This often functions as a tag, seeking confirmation. However, the following is an example of mayi used in a yes-no question: (6)

=

nyuntukal mayi nyuntuku you (SG)- DAT

yali that

mayi

Q

'Is that yours?' (Adult meaning

=

'Is that one for you?')

Other question words are used at 2;8. These, as in the adult language, appear in initial position. The forms used by the 2;8 year olds are for 'what' and 'where', as in the following. The form ngana 'who' appears a little later. (7)

a. nyiya what

nyamputhis-

ju [nyiampu] FOC

'What's this?' b. ngapa, water,

nyiyawhat-

ku DAT

'Water, what for?'

c. nyiyawhat-

kurlangu POSS

'What does it belong to?' (Note: kurlangu here could also be ku-rlangu 'DAT-also') d. nyiya

what

wiyi first

'What first?' e. apara where

ku ( = nyarrpara nyuntu-ku) DAT

nyuntuyou-

'Where's yours?'

f. apara where

nuulu from

'From where?'

( = nyarrpara-ngurlu)

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5.3.3. Pronominal Clitics and the Auxiliary. Systemic cross-referencing of core arguments is noted at 2;8. The 1st person pronominal object clitic is in the corpus, frequently with yun-gka 'give-IMP', as in yungka-ju 'give-1SG.OBJ' 'give it to me'. Another example contains a subject clitic: ngaju-rna 'I-1SG.SUBJ'; however, the utterance contains no verb. Another example is kama nga-rni 'IPFV-1SG.SUBJ eat-NONPAST' 'I am eating'. The 1st person plural inclusive subject clitic -rlipa is used several times by one child but only in imitation, after it was used by an older child. There are few examples of dative cross-referencing for benefactive arguments. After her sister said wawirri-lpa luwa-rnu 'kangaroo-IPFV shoot-PAST' 'He was shooting it', one girl produced wawirri-rla luwarnu 'He was shooting it for someone/he was shooting at it'. However, the rla 'dative cross reference' could have been an error in imitation. Dative cross-referencing does appear in aju-ku-rla ampuju = ngaju-ku-rla ampuju 'I-DAT-3:DAT this-FOC' 'This is for me'. There is an overgeneralization in this form in that the dative object form for 1st person singular is ju not ria. The presence of ku on ngaju indicates that 'I' was the intended referent. Ria could indicate a second dative argument, but no verb is overt, and so it is not evident if the child intended some other message. (The ju on ampu is a focus marker.) There are a few examples of the aspect marker ka in the data from one child of 2;8. Because of the initial position of ka in the example given above (ka-rna ngarni), an adult interpreted it as kapu-rna ngarni 'I will eat'. Recall that the future kapu may appear in initial position, whereas ka may not. It is interesting that the adult used the position as an indicator of the child's intention. It was not clear from the context what was intended by the child. There are no examples of kapu 'FUT' in the corpus from the 2;8 year olds. The same child produced nyampu-rla nguna jinta 'here-LOC lie one' with no ka. In the adult grammar, this would be the immediate future 'One is about to lie here'. The utterance was interpreted as 'One is lying here', that is as an "error," a sentence with a missing ka. However, the child also produced yali ka karri-mi kuja 'there IPFV standNONPAST thus) 'It is standing there like this'. This sentence follows the adultlike pattern with ka in second position. 5.3.4. Core Arguments. Core arguments appear in the clause only sporadically at 2;8. If one unmarked nominal appears with a transitive verb, adults tend to interpret it as absolutive, that is, the patient/theme argument. For example, jinta-kayi payinti-ma-nu '1-other find-TR-PAST' was interpreted as 'She found another one', not as 'Another one found her/him/it'. There are no examples that could be unambiguously interpreted as an agent with a missing ergative case marker. Any errors in leaving off an ergative case marker are not detectable at this age, because an agent may be inanimate or animate. The data show that the child does not rely on a particular word order to signal the function of core arguments. When they are overt in the clause, absolutive subjects appear either before or after verbs. However, note that only about 25% of the utterances have

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331

verbs. Other utterances identify the existence or location of an object in the immediate context, or a comment on what is happening, as illustrated in the following examples. I have given the child's production first, followed by the interpretation given by an adult Warlpiri, and the adult form (AF) is given in parentheses if the child has not used the standard adult form. (8)

a. nyampuiuk nyampuiuk

nyampu this

puiuku cow

nyampu this

puiuku cow

'This is a cow; this is a cow'

b. nyampu-

ria LOC

here~

nyampuhere-

ria LOC

'It's here; it's here' c. kuja 'thus' d. nyuntuyou (SG)-

ku DAT

yangka that

'That's yours' (AF = nyuntu-nyangu yangka)

e. aju-ku jimajayi ngaju1-

ku jirramaDAT two-

jarra DUAL

'My two' (AF = ngaju-nyangu jirrama-jarra)

A few instances of an ergative-like morpheme appear, as with the data from the 2 year olds. The utterance panika-lu panu-ju was interpreted as 'Veronica's are many, Veronica has a lot' (Veronica-DAT many-FOC). That is, the lu was interpreted as ku not rlu. There is no verb, and thus no need for an ergativemarked nominal. However, lu may be there for some other purpose. Remember, lu is added as a phonological extension to the 1st and 2nd person singular pronouns before the ergative case marker is added, so the child may be confused about the function of lu and rlu in the input data, using lu here as an extension of Veronica. The same child used puluku-lu in answer to a question; it was appropriate to give an agent in response, so lu could be ergative here. The child also produced wiri-jarlu-ngkuk, interpreted as wiri-jarlu nyangka 'big one-very look' 'look at the big one', but the form ngkuk could be ngku 'ERG' followed by ka. The utterance is not complete, however, because a transitive verb would be needed to give a sentence. Verbs may be gapped in Warlpiri if already clear from the linguistic context, as in lists (Laughren, personal communication), but the example cited is not an example of adult-like gapping. 5.3.5. Verbs. There is an increase in the number of verbs used by the children of 2;8 in comparison with the 2 year olds, but the proportion of utter-

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ances with verbs is about the same, with only about 20-25% of the utterances containing verbs. It is notable that the past/non-past distinction still represents viewpoint aspect; the child comments on immediately completed events with past tense forms and ongoing activities with nonpast forms. There is some interaction with verb semantics (situational aspect) in that the verbs for 'died', 'found', 'dropped', 'broke', and 'shot' were used in their past form (palija, payinti-manu, kijurnu, rdilyki-pungu, luwarnu), and these verbs do imply some end point. The verbs for 'stand', 'kiss', and 'run' were used in the nonpast form (karrimi, nyunjirni, parnkami), and these verbs do not have an inherent endpoint. The verb luwarni 'shoot/strike' is used as an achievement verb in Warlpiri, not an activity. Evidence for this comes from the focus on contact between the missile and the object. The verb may be modified so that 'shoot to the death' and 'shoot completely' are quite usual expressions. In addition, if the shooting is not successful, a change in argument structure is required, the object being dative. The verb semantics do not determine the form used. For example, one child used both past and nonpast forms on the activity verb kanyi 'transport/carry'. In using ka-nyi 'carry-NONPAST', she was describing an act of carrying, and when the event was completed, she commented on the completion with ka-ngu 'carry-PAST'. The verbs used by the children are from all five conjugation classes. Errors are not apparent in the suffixes used for the verb classes, and this is discussed in section 6. Developments in verb morphology include the use of the inceptive compound 'go and X', directional affixes on the verb, and a few instances of lku 'now/then'. The use of lku represents a comment on what is happening rather than relating the event to some other time period. By using lku, the adult implies that the event was not happening before. The lku-marked event can be linked to some other event and thus contrasted with a reference time other than speech time. The temporal form wiyi 'first, before' is used in wiyi-rna wangkaja 'first-ISG.SUBJ speak-PAST' 'I spoke first'. In this context, wiyi does not relate two time periods. Thus, neither lku nor wiyi has the full range of functions. 5.3.6. Number. The plural clitic on imperatives is heard at 2;8. The plural is marked with lu, as in nyangka-lu 'look all of you'. In addition, the demonstrative plural number marking rra is used once in the corpus, on the word nyampu 'this', but from a child imitating her sister. Her sister utters the expression in (9a), and the girl of 2;8 attempts to imitate her twice, with (9b). (9)

a. ngaju1-

ku DAT

nyamputhis-

rraPL-

juku just

'Just these two are for me' b. aju1-

ku DAT

amputhis-

rraPL-

ju FOC

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333

Note in (8e), dual number marking appears on the nominaljirrama 'two'. It also appears on another nominal in the corpus. 5. 3. 7. Particles and Other Morphemes. The propositional particles in the corpus are nganta 'reportedly, it seems' and ngayi 'just'. The form kala 'but' is used in isolation as an interjection. The child's involvement in the activities is conveyed with the focus forms }ala and ju and in other expressions, including wiyarrpa 'oh dear' and urju ulaju = ngurrju ngula-ju 'good that-FOC' 'that one's good'. The exclamation yakayi is used, as in yakayi nyuntu 'hey you', and one of the children uses swear words while talking to her sister (e.g., }inti pukulyu 'vagina rotten').

5.4. Developments: 2; 11-3;0 5.4.1. General Developments. At 2;11 to 3;0, the percentage of verbs in relation to the number of utterances is about the same as with the younger children. An additional construction in the corpus from the 2;11 year old is the V + yani compound. The temporal word juku 'just' also appears. There is an example with lu: wita-patu-lu 'small ones'. Either the lu is added in error as a plural marker in addition to patu 'paucal' or the child intended to complete a verbal sentence, the lu being the 3rd plural subject clitic. The 2; 11 year old used the source case form jangka. On different occasions, he used the alternative locative forms ria and ngka on nyampu, indicating some awareness of two forms serving one function, but no rule for the application of one over the other. However, the 3 year old used only the ria form on nyampu. From the 3 year old, utterances are longer, and there is less phonological modification and variation. Notably more morphemes are put together, as in yunga-rni-lki 'give-hither-now'. The directional affixes rni 'hither' and rra 'thither' are used. The child also uses particles and linking forms, for example, kala 'but' in kala nyampu-ku 'but this-DAT' 'how about for this one', ngula 'that one'. The form yini, a recent innovation, is used a great deal, as in yini puluku kuja 'any cows thus' (= Are there any cows like this one?). Another noticeable development in the data from the 3 year old is the use of the pronoun possessive form ngaju-nyangu 'mine' in place of ngaju-ku used by the younger children. 5.4.2. The Auxiliary. Although one of the children used ka at 2;8, another did not. Once the children use the morpheme ka consistently, by the age of 2;11 in the corpus, there is evidence that the child is separating tense and aspect. The past and non-past verb forms place an event in reference to speech time. Sentences with the non-past verb form including ka can be contrasted with those without ka, so that present and immediate future are distinguished. Sentences from the 2;11 year old have ka in second position, as in parnkami ka 'it's

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running', yani ka 'it's going'. The child also uses ka in a nonverbal sentence, as if it is a copula. (10)

kuja jinta kayi ka ampu-rla * kuja

thus

jinta one

kari other

ka IPFV

nyampuhere-

rla LOC

'There's another one here'

From the 3 year old also, an overgeneralization in the use of ka is apparent in ka kurnta 'he is ashamed'; ka is not used with verbless utterances in the adult grammar. In addition, ka is in sentence-initial position. In other utterances from the same child, ka is in second position. As noted in the discussion of the data from the 2;8 year olds, ka in initial position may be a short form of the future, but here it clearly is not. The boy is commenting that his friend is shamed by being naked. In addition, the child uses the future form in kapu-rna 'FUT-lSG .SUBJ'. Thus, future is established at 3 years. In comparison, Berman's data (1985) show that Hebrew children have mastered the past, present, and future morphology by age 3. 5.4.3. Ergative Case Forms. From the 3 year old, there are examples of the ergative case form, but an error in usage. The ergative form rli is used with the vocative of an imperative verb form: panu yungka-ju mamiyi-rli 'some giveIMP-lSG.OBJ mummy-ERG' ('Give some to me, mummy'). In addition, there is an example of the ergative used correctly, but this is an imitation of an adult's utterance. (11)

nyasee-

nyi NONPAST

ka IPFV

PukaPuka-

ngku ERG

lingka snake

'Puka is looking at a snake'

There are examples in the corpus from the 3 year old of a nominal used in topic position (preclausal), as in jarntu, ngarni ka 'The dog, it's eating'. In this position, jarntu does not require ergative marking.

5.5. The Period 3;3-3;5 5.5.1. Ergative Case. Ergative case marking starts to appear more frequently in the data from children over 3, but there are still few overt agents in the utterances. There are no examples of an ergative case form missing from a subject of a transitive verb (with the exception of the 1st and 2nd person singular pronouns, which do not require it). From a child of 3;3, there is an example of lu (for rlu) as an ergative, as indicated in (12).

5.

( 12)

kuja atata-iu kuja thus

NatajaNatasha-

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335

miki-ma-nu mijimess-

riu ERG

maCAUS-

nu PAST

'Natasha messed it up like this'

An ergative is also used on a question word, the subject of a transitive verb. However, there is an overgeneralization in the use of an ergative marker on a noun with the same referent as the understood subject of an imperative verb. The "error" could represent a change in intention. However, like the example from the 3-year-old child, who used an ergative on a vocative, the child is overgeneralizing the pattern of case agreement in the language, the pattern in which nouns with same referent carry the same case. The overgeneralization is given in (13). Note the marking of both subject and object. (13)

Natata-iu, *NatajaNatasha-

nya-yi-npa-ju riu ERG

nyasee-

nyiNONPAST-

npa2SG.SUBJ-

ju 1SG.OBJ

'Natasha, you are looking at me'

From another child of 3;3, an ergative allomorph is used on nyampu, but it is the ngku form, not rlu. This is an example of a rule-based application, because two-syllable words generally take ngku. The example is given in (14). Note that dative cross-referencing is used for the verb warrirni 'look for', the only verb stem in Warlpiri that requires a dative object with an ergative subject. Also note the repetition, a feature of the child utterances and also of the adult speech. (14)

warrilook for-

rni, warri-rni karia warriNONPAST IPFV- 3.DAT look for-

warrilook for-

rni NONPAST

kaIPFV-

ria 3.DAT

nyamputhis one-

rni, NONPAST

ngku ERG

'This one is looking for it'

The following sentence is used by a child of 3;5. It includes an ergative noun. Whereas her adult sister used the word mamiyi-rli 'mummy-ERG' before this, the child used the ngki allomorph. (15)

puiap a lot

mamiyimummy-

ngki pakaERG hit-

rnu PAST

'Mummy hit a lot'

In another utterance discussing a hunting trip for wardapi 'goanna', she produced another word for 'mother', also with the ngki ergative allomorph. The sentence lacks a dative cross-reference for the benefactive object.

336 (16)

Bavin kapayiGabriel-

ki DAT

witasmall-

pawu DIM

pakahit-

rnu PAST

ngatimother-

ngki ERG

'Mummy hit/killed one for Gabriel'

In the following sentence, there is an instance of the ngku ergative allomorph on a three-syllable word. Note that this sentence lacks a source case marker on Nupil; yet the child knows the formjangka, which was used in another utterance (yali-jangka 'there-from'). (17)

Nupil puntaNevil take-

rnu PAST

kijipa-ngku, Christopher

pankajarun-PAST-

lku now

Christopher took it from Nevil; then it ran away.

There are three other examples of the ergative in the corpus from a 3;5 year old, all ngki!ngku. Two appear on three-syllable names. The child uses the short form of ngaju with the ergative ngku, not the long form ngajulu-rlu. In the adult data I have, the long form is most frequently used. The examples show that the ngkilngku allomorph has been generalized as the ergative form. The child's generalization about which allomorph to use for ergative might be generalized to the locative forms as well. Although there is only one example in the corpus, the child uses yali-ngka instead of yali-rla. 5.5.2. Other Overgeneralizations. Two overgeneralizations are noted in the corpus from one child of 3;3: the use of the pronoun possessive ending together with the dative, giving double marking, as in ngaju-ku-nyangu 'I-DAT-POSS'; and the use of patu as the plural suffix on nyampu (recall that demonstratives have the special plural ending rra). 5.5.3. Events and Discourse Skills. Data from one of the 3;5 year olds show communication about events in the past, rather than just comments about the immediate context. Sentence ( 17) represents an attempt to relate two events morphologically with lku, and there are no examples of such linking before this age. There seems to be a clear connection between the mastery of the tenseaspect morphology, the development of spontaneous talk about the past, and the onset of discourse structuring, that is, the use of morphology to link events. Note that in ( 17) the preferred adult form would be to add an anaphoric link ngula before the second verb. The child is referring to a camel here, but this is not established in the discourse. That the child is developing discourse-related skills can also be detected in the tum-taking that takes place, something not documented before this age. Note the following exchange in (18) between a child of 3;5 and a young adult (C = child; A= adult):

5. (18)

C:

yanki

na-ngu-rna

yankirri, emu

nyasee-

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yali-ju

nguPAST-

rna ISG.SUBJ

ju yalithere- FOC

'I saw an emu there'

A:

Nyarrpawhere-

rla? LOC

'Where?' C:

yalithere-

A:

wunturru far

ngkaLOC-

ji, FOC,

yalithere-

ngkaLOC-

ji FOC

'There' mayi?

Q

'Was it far?' C:

wuntuwu 'Far'

A pattern of tum-taking in conversation develops so that at 3;8 the children are interacting a great deal with companions; they use question-answer sequences and they tease and swear back at each other. 5.5.4. Clitics. The clitic cluster is firmly established, with ka generally in second position, except when a topic noun is used initially. The 3rd person plural object cross-reference form, jana, is used as well as the 3rd person plural subject form, lu. As illustrated in sentence (14), dative cross-referencing for the verb warrirni is used. 5.5.5. Other Forms Used. The kin terms yayiyi 'sister' and ngajuku purdangka 'my same generation kin' appear in the corpus. Kin terms become more frequent in the data from the children older than 3;5. Utterances with two question words appear regularly from 3;5, e.g., nyiya mayi 'What is it?' Although this construction does not seem to be typical of adult speech I have observed, adult helpers thought it was good. Mayi is being used as a general marker of question, whether a question word is contained or not.

5.6. Developments: 3;8-3; 10 5.6.1. Case. The first example of the kin possessive case form nyanu appears in the data. Thus, by 3; 10 the children distinguish the three functions of the three possessive case forms: nyangu for pronouns, kurlangu for nouns, and nyanu for kin. The only ergative-marked nominals from one 3;8 year old are with ngku on

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two-syllable words, so there is no evidence to determine what strategy is used for applying the case form. An example follows: (19)

yangka- ngku

rdilki-

pungu,

nyangka

that-

break-

hit-PAST

look

ERG

'That one broke it, look!'

Another example of the ergative case is ngku on ngaju 'I'. Recall in the adult system that ngaju is used with an extension lu before the rlu ergative form is added. So the child is using the short form, and this pattern is used by older children also. A child of 3; 10 uses ngaju-rlu 'I-ERG', that is, the short form of the pronoun but with the rlu ergative allomorph, although it may also represent the long form of the pronoun without the ergative. In the adult system, it is acceptable to leave off ergative case marking on 1st and 2nd person singular; however, the long form of the pronoun would not be used without a case marker. The use of a double marking (lu + rlu) in addition to the optionality of the ergative adds some confusion to the task of working out which form to use. The same child uses ngku as ergative on nyampu and marlu, suggesting a rule is established. Another 3; 10 year old uses rlu on a three-syllable subject of the verb payirni 'ask'. 5.6.2. Case Agreement. A child of 3;8 uses case agreement, as shown in (20); the admonitive is used on three words in sequence. (The initial consonant of nyampu is in parentheses because it was not articulated.) (20)

yali-

kijaku

kurdu-

kujaku

(ny)ampu-

ju-

kujaku

that-

ADMON

child-

ADMON

here-

FOC-

ADMON

'Watch out for that child here'

In another example of case agreement, the ergative appears on the manner word kuja 'thus', indicating that the (unspecified) agent took something in a particular way. (21)

kuja-

rlu

rna-

nu-

rnu

thus-

ERG

take-

PAST-

DIR

'She took it like this'

A child of 3;10 also uses case agreement on adjacent words: ngurra-kurra nyannyan-kurra (= ngurra-kurra ngaju-nyangu-kurra) 'camp-ALL my-POSSALL' 'to my camp'. Another 3; 10 year old uses case agreement in yunga-ju kiljingki 'give-IMP-lSG.OBJ quick-ERG' 'give it to me quickly'. The agreement is with the nonovert agent subject. This type of case agreement indicates that the child has knowledge of the case array for the particular verb.

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The Acquisition of Warlpiri

339

5.6.3. Locative Case. Another child of 3;8 uses the locative ria on threesyllable words as well as nyampu and another two-syllable word, but also ngka on nyampu as well as other two-syllable words. Thus, the child seems to be unsure about the conditioning factor for the forms but is aware of both. There are not enough data to determine if the child is following some principle other than word length for generalizing which form to use. A 3;10 year old alternates between ngka and ria on nyampu and uses ria on another two-syllable word. This confusion about the appropriate form to use continues for several years, as discussed in section 7. 5.6.4. Ciitics and Pronominal Forms. The pronominal forms used by the 3;8 year olds include the 1st person plural inclusive pronoun ngalipa, the 1st person plural inclusive subject clitic rlipa, and the 1st person dual object clitic ngali. The form rlipa was used by a girl of 4; 11 attached to ka in sentence-initial position. The 3;8-year-old, her sister, imitated her in putting ka-riipa in sentenceinitial position; however, there is evidence of productivity in that a later utterance by her had ka-riipa in second position. Note the utterance from the child of 4; 11, and the sentence that followed it, from the child of 3;8. (22)

4;11:

kaIPFV-

3;8:

kaIPFV-

rlipa 1PL.INC.SUBJ

yarrkujuWillowra-

kurra ALL

jalangu . yanow go-

ni NONPAST

'We're going to Willowra today' rlipa 1PL.INC.SUBJ

jalangu now

yago-

ni jalangu NONPAST now

'We're going now, today'

Other forms include cross-referencing for preverbs. The preverb jurnta 'away from' is used frequently, and although it is used without cross-referencing there is an example in which the child corrects herself to put in the dative clitic rla. At other times, she uses the clitic appropriately. The preverb generally appears before the main verb, but in some instances it follows, indicating she is aware of the separability of preverbs. One "error" is in using jurnta 'away' in a verbless sentence, a nonstandard pattern. Another possible "error" relating to the clitics used by a 3;10 year old is the use of yu-ngka-rna 'give-IMP-1SG.SUBJ', which the adult transcriber assumed was used instead of yun-gka-ju 'give-1SG.OBJ' 'give it to me'. However, the same child did use yungka-ju in several instances later, and thus the rna may be viewed as a phonological variant of rni 'hither', and her intended message was 'give it here'. She also used the object clitic ju on the imperative manta 'take' with the interpretation 'take mine/take it from me'. This use of an object clitic for registering source is acceptable to the adults. One of the 3;10 year olds used ka in a nominal sentence expressing location.

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Whether this represents an overgeneralization or a gapped sentence cannot be resolved. Verbs of stance (nyinami 'sit, ngunami 'lie, and karrimi 'stand') are regularly used to show the location of an object. For example, wati ka nyinami ngurra-ngka 'man IPFV sit-NONPAST camp-LOC' (= 'the man is sitting in the camp') does not necessarily have its literal interpretation of the man is sitting at the camp; it is also 'the man is at the camp'. Given this semantic bleaching for stance verbs, it is plausible to hypothesize that the children drop them in location sentences but retain the ka. The position of the clitic cluster is variable for one of the 3;10 year olds. In these instances with ka-rna 'IPFV-lSG.SUBJ', the cluster always appears in sentence-initial position (four times), although with other clitics-for example, the dual subject clitic pala-the cluster appears in second position. This does suggest that the child treats the cluster as a phonological word that can be put into focus position, that is, sentence initially. The 3;10 year old uses the dual object clitic palangu. 5.6.5. Number and Other Morphemes. Both the forms nyampu-rra and ngula-rra are used for plural demonstratives. For nominal dual, jarra is used. However, children of 3;8 and older also mark plural on nouns. To do this, they use the form wati. This is an innovation from traditional Warlpiri. I hypothesize it is a translation of pala, which is used in Warlpiri as a suffix on numerals of 4 and over, words borrowed from English. It is also a feature of the creole language spoken to the north of Warlpiri and is not related to the Warlpiri dual subject pronominal clitic pala. It appears to be borrowed from the English word fellow, and wati 'man' may be the closest translation into Warlpiri. Thus the children have generalized that non-singular nominals be marked for number. A 3;8 year old uses wati and the form appears in the corpus from older children as well as in nantuwu-wati 'horse-PL' 'horses' and ngurrju-wati 'good-PL' 'the good ones'. 5.6.6. Synonyms in One Clause. One of the notable features in the speech of one of the 3;8 year o1ds and one of the 3; 10 year olds is the use of synonyms. One child utters maju pungu 'bad bad' in anger at her sister. The use of the two words is clearly for emphasis. Another child uses kangkaru marlu, two words for kangaroo, and also luwajirri wardapi, two words for 'goanna' (a type of lizard). The presence of synonyms in the language can often be traced to the kumanjayi system of replacing a word if it sounded like the name of a person who had died. Both the person's name and similar words become taboo for a period of time. A replacement is made, often by borrowing a word from a neighboring language. When maliki 'dog' became kumanjayi, jarntu took its place. However, both words are currently used. If the two words are distinguished in meaning, as is predicted by Clark's principle of contrast (Clark, 1987), it is not evident how they are distinguished.

5.

The Acquisition of Warlpiri

341

One item could be viewed as generic and the other specific, but this analysis does not account for all the data. In the adult language, it is quite usual to have two nouns with the same referent in a clause, and the children use the same pattern. The use of synonyms is part of style in speaking the language, as is repetition of information, and the two are probably related. An example of repetitive style from a child of 3;8 is given in (23). (23)

kuja thus

mahold-

marlu, kangaroo kapu FUT luwashootkapu FUT

nta IMP

marlu, kangaroo

witasmall-

marlu, kangaroo

nyayirni INTEN

rni, NONPAST luwashoot-

marlukangaroo-

luwashoot-

kapu FUT

wati PL

nyampuhere-

marlu, kangaroo rni NONPAST

witasmall-

nyayirni INTEN

ria LOC

amputhis-

marlu, kangaroo

ku DAT

marlu, kangaroo

witasmall-

nyayirni INTEN

luwashoot-

rni, NONPAST

rni NONPAST

'Hold the kangaroos like this, here, kangaroo (X4), this kangaroo; he will shoot the really little one, shoot the really little one; he will shoot the really little one; he will shoot it.'

5.7. Developments: 4;0-5;0 5.7.1. General Features. General features in the development during the 5th year are increased use of preverbs, use of conjoined sentences, and use of pronominal forms. The past imperfect form lpa is used more frequently, an indicator that the child is able to take an internal perspective on an event with a reference time other than speech time. There is use of discontinuous word order. Although there are many examples of adult-like forms for ergative and locative case forms, some overgeneralizations occur. It seems that after first acquiring the exceptional rla form for nyampu, the children go through a period of uncertainty as to which form to use once the ngka form is assigned the same function as rla. This uncertainty lasts for several years. 5. 7. 2. The Auxiliary Cluster.

As did a child of 3; 10, the 4 year old used ka-

ma in sentence-initial position several times, and the context distinguished a

future time reference for this. However, the child also used kapu-npa 'FUT-2SG.SUBJ' in initial position; thus it seems that rna conditions the loss of the syllable pu (kapu-rna _..,. ka-rna). Both children of 4;3 used the clitic cluster systematically in second position with the base ka, and they used kapu-rna in initial position, as in the adult language. However, a child of 4;8 used ka-rna in

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Savin

initial position, with a future interpretation. It contrasted with ka-rna in second position with a present imperfective interpretation, as in the following: (24)

ngaju I rna-

take-

ka-rna IPFV

luwashoot-

rni DIR

rniNONPAST-

kalabut-

rna ISG.SUBJ

ni pina NONPAST back

'I'm shooting it but I'll take it back'

In addition, the 4; 11 year old also used ka in initial position with clitics attached, but not always. Thus, she used ka-riipa 'IMPFV-1PL.INCL.SUBJ' three times in initial position, but also following the independent pronoun form ngaiipa on four occasions. These do not have future time reference. She also used ka-rna-ngku 'IMPFV-1SG.SUBJ.2SG.OBJ' in initial position. Some children seem to view ka + clitics as a word that can stand in initial position for focus, but for others initial position is associated with future, and ka or kapu are used in this position for future time reference. The use of ju '1st person singular reflexive' appears, as does dative crossreferencing for the causative preverb mariaja 'because of'. The 1st person dual inclusive subject clitic rii is used frequently by a 4;3 year old, and the 1st person plural exclusive subject clitic rnaiu by a 4;8 year old. Another pronoun appears in the corpus from the children of 4;8-4;9: nyumpaia, the 2nd person dual. In an elicited text, the child also used the ordering required for clitics when a 1st or 2nd person singular object is used in combination with a non-singular object. In such a case, the subject clitic follows the object. The child produced the following: (25)

kuyu meat

kapiFUT-

jiISG.OBJ-

li 3PL.SUBJ

yigive-

nyi NONPAST

'They are going to give me some meat'

An interesting example from a child of 4;9 illustrates that the dative crossreference form ria is distinguished from the locative ria. The form nyampu-riaria 'here-LOC-3DAT' was produced. There are no examples of the form ngka being used instead of ria for dative cross-referencing, indicating that the children do distinguish the two functions, locative and dative. 5. 7. 3. Word Order. From the 4 year old there is the first clear instance of discontinuous word order, as given in (26), with the possessive element m preclitic position and the possessed noun appearing later in the clause. (26)

ngaju1nyunpacry-

nyangu POSS

ka IPFV

nyampuhere-

rni NONPAST

'My little child is crying here'

rla LOC

kurduchild-

pardu DIM

5.

The Acquisition of Warlpiri

343

5.7.4. Case. The 4 year old used ergative ngku on both a two- and threesyllable word, both names, but no ergative on ngaju as transitive subject, which is appropriate. In addition, ngku with an instrumental function is used on a twosyllable word. A 4;3 year old used both ngku and rlu appropriately, with ngajunkal from ngaju-ngku-kala 'me-ERG-but' ('how about me') and also panu-ngku 'many-ERG' and kamurlu-rlu 'camel-ERG'. The 4;8 year old, however, showed confusion with ngku used for ergative case agreement (or instrumental function) on watiya 'stick' a three-syllable word, as well as on kuja 'thus'. The 4;11 year old only used ngku ergative, on ngaju 'I', and for agreement on kuja-jarra-ngku 'thus-DU-ERG'. The adult form is kuja-jarra-rlu. With the 4 year old, the locative rla is used on three-syllable words as well as on nyampu. However, ngka is also used on nyampu, indicating confusion over which form to use; this applies to both ergative and locative case forms. Length of word does not seem a reliable cue for the child in working out the distribution of the allomorphs, and this is confounded by the exceptions. However, one 4;3 year old used both ngka and rla appropriately, as he did for the ergative case forms, and the other child of 4;3 only used rla on nyampu. There are, then, individual differences in how soon the children work out the forms to use. The 4;8 year olds used nyampurla and rla on three-syllable words, and one child also used ngka on a two-syllable word. Although the 4;11 year old used rla for nyampu, she used the short word form ngku on another exception, yali. A semantic extension of the case form wana 'along' to include a comitative function is noted in the speech of the young people, and the first example appears in the data from the 4 year old. It also appears in the data from a 4;8 year old. Ipani-wana is used by the 4 year old child for 'with Yvonne'. Note that in Djirbal, a non-Pama-Nyungan language, the instrumental and comitative functions have collapsed, with the comitative form retained for both functions (Schmidt, 1985). Another case overgeneralization in the Warlpiri data is an isolated example from a 4;8 year old of the instrumental ngku used instead of kurlu 'having'. 5. 7. 5. Verbs. An isolated "error" in the verb morphology from a child of 4;3 is in the form kari-nja-kurra 'stand-INF-COMP', which would be use by the adult only as an embedded clause to a matrix verb. The kurra marks that the unspecified subject of 'stand' is the same as the object of the matrix verb. An adult interpreted the utterance as the child intended 'I'm putting the animals to stand'. However, the matrix verb is missing. This is the only example in the corpus from the young children of a complementizer used on an infinitive verb. Generally, the complementizer is not used until the children are much older (around 10 or 11). So, the kurra is not used as a linking device. Rather, the child is marking a purpose on the infinitive verb. An alternative is that kurra is, in fact, ku 'dative' followed by the directional rra 'thither'. The dative on an infinitive is used for purpose clauses in Warlpiri. However, it was still considered an error to have the infinitive purposive verb without a matrix verb.

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The children of 4;8 do use two-clause sentences. An example is given in (24). Another example in the data is with the linking yungu 'because'. 5.7.6. Negative. The 4 year old used the innovated form for the negative imperative. In the traditional system, the infinitive verb is used with wangu 'without', as in wangkantja-wangu 'don't talk'. The form that is used frequently by children is the imperative verb form with a negative element, as in nati wangkaya. The young adults view this form as acceptable Warlpiri and use it themselves. For the 4 year old, the negative forms seem to be interchangeable; both nu-rna 'not me' and kula-rna 'not me' are used.

5. 7. 7. Derivations. A few interesting derivational overgeneralizations appear in the corpus from the 4;9 year old as well as from the older children. In adult Warlpiri, the suffix wani, from English one, is added to attribute words borrowed from English. This nominalization marks assimilation into the Warlpiri system because all attributes are nominals. However, which words require wani must be learned by rote, because it is not likely that the children will be aware of the history of borrowings. The overgeneralizations noted are in the method of marking the word as a nominal. Thus, 'fat' will be produced as patu-wani. However, the 4;9 year old produced punku-wanu-jarra 'bad-one-DU' 'two bad ones'. Yet punku is not a borrowed word. This is an example of leveling in the system. 5. 7. 8. Style. Children from an early age use voice modulations to show a change in attitude or for role playing. They use a high pitch in imitation of BT, and they use a deep pitch to imitate adults, as, for example, with ya-nta kiyini nyuntu 'go-IMP, again you'. In one instance, a 3;8 year old announced Walypali 'white man' and then adopted a gruff voice imitative of a white male. On occasions, she stressed every syllable carefully, as in nyin-a-ya. This deliberate pronunciation of every syllable is noted from a number of the children in their fourth year. Another feature is the use of nonsense words with a lot of s sounds, an imitation of English. Warlpiri has no fricatives and thesis a marked feature of English, which the children hear from the non-Aboriginal employees in the community. One of the features of role playing noted by Andersen (1986) was voice modulation. Ochs (1986) also notes that phonological and prosodic features are used to express attitudes. Teasing is frequent in the corpus. The 4;11 year old (S) teases her sister of 2;8 by imitating her. The little girl uses the utterance in (27) and her sister imitates her with a high pitch in (28) and then changes her pitch for (29). (27)

ngula

nganayi-jayi

ngula

nganayi-

jarrimi

that one what's it- INTR 'That one is going to do it'

5.

(28)

(29)

wula

anayi-ayi

ampu

ngula that one

nganayi- jarrimi what's it INTR

nyampu this/here

maparnirub-

rnaNONPAST-

The Acquisition of Warlpiri

yaruju ngku 1SG.SUBJ-2SG.OBJ quick

345

maparni rub-NONPAST

'I' 11 rub it on for you'

5.8. Later Developments 5. 8 .1. Overall Developments. In addition to a general increase in vocabulary, one of the major developments in the data after age 5 is the increased use of preverbs and other complex morphology. In particular, strings of morphemes are longer. Complex sentences are used, and there is a development in discourseorganizing skills. Anaphoric links, such as ngula 'that' (or 'then') are used, as well as temporal links which relate one event to another, such as lku 'now, then', and ngula jangka 'that from' ( = after that). Two clauses with finite verbs are first linked with manu 'and'. Some children continue to use this form as a marker that events are related, whereas others use ngula as a marker of sequencing. The Warlpiri children seem to acquire some discourse-organizing skills in stages similar to children from other language backgrounds, and yet some aspects are delayed, as with the use of complex sentences. Slobin and Bocaz (1988, p. 8) report that English and Spanish children start using aspect for foregrounding and backgrounding at the age of 5, and for Warlpiri children, it is at about age 6 that past imperfect clauses with lpa are used for backgrounding. The past imperfective form lpa is used to establish background information, once clauses are sequenced. There are individual differences, however. Regular use of the instantiated complementizer kuja (or ngula) and the instantiated kaji 'if' occur late in the data. Another late development is the use of the complementizers that conflate information about time and reference of the embedded subject. There are a few isolated examples of kurra from 6-7 year olds, but only on the verb karrinja 'stand-INF'. A few other examples appear on other verbs in the data from the children over 10 years on other verbs. An example from a child of 11 ;2 is given in (30). (30)

pulka old man

nyasee-

ngu PAST

jurlpubird-

kurlu with

mardahold-

rninjaINF-

kurra OBJ.CMPLR

'He saw an old man holding a bird'

Although kurra, which marks the embedded subject as same as the matrix object appears in the data, the other three complementizers are not found in the corpus at all. Frequency of the forms in the adult system needs further research to explain this. However, Laughren (personal communication) notes that young adults, under 30, use kurra now for both kurra and karra functions. In the children's data collected, kurra always appears with the traditional function.

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Bavin

5.8.2. Complex Sentences. Purposive clauses are used frequently by children over 6; these have ku added to the nonfinite verb, as illustrated in (31) from a child of 6;10. Sequential clauses with rla on the nonfinite verb are in the corpus at that age, as in (32), and the causal yungu is used also, as illustrated in (33). All examples are from the same child, from elicited narratives. (31) ngula- ju ANFOC parnka-

wati-

man-

mi

jarra-

DU-

ju

ka-

FOC

IPFV- 3DU.SUBJ

marlu-

ku

pala luwarni-

nja-

(32) wati- jarra- ju FOC man- DUmata- jarri-

ka-

pala

ku

INF- PURP

runNONPAST kangaroo- DAT shoot'The two men are running to shoot kangaroo'

wapanjani-

IPFV- 3DU.SUBJ walk along (compound)-

ju-

lku

parnka-

pala

nja-

lki

now

rla

PVINTRANS- PAST -now 3DU.SUBJ runINF- SEQ 'The two men are walking along now having become tired from running' (33) wati- jarra- juyungu- pala pala ya- nu man- DUFOC- 3DU .SUBJ go- PAST cause- 3DU.SUBJ marlu-

kangaroo-

wati-

wangu-

without-

jarra-

lku-

pala

pina

ya-

nu-

rnu

now- 3DU.SUBJ back go- PAST- hither

ju

man- DUFOC 'The two men came because they had no kangaroo; they came back the two men'

5.8.3. Discourse Organization: Anaphora. As reported by KarmiloffSmith (1981, 1985), children first use anaphoric forms deictically. At a later stage, they introduce the referents and reserve anaphora for the thematic subject, and finally the children are able to be more flexible as they acquire the means available in the language for switching reference and focusing. Analysis of narratives from children of different age groups shows similar developments in Warlpiri (Bavin, 1987). At first, children do not specify agents. These and other participants must be inferred from context. Thus, zero anaphora is used deictically from about the ages of 5 to 6. At a later stage, the children tend to name all the participants and give repetitive structures with overt nouns. At a third stage, once a participant has been introduced, the child will rely on the pronominal clitics for anaphora, with zero anaphora for 3rd person singular. Participants will be named for emphasis or if there is a switch in topic. However, there is a great deal of individual difference. Some children are better story tellers than others. The personal narratives from the 9 to 13 year olds usually started with the pronoun for 1st person plural exclusive 'we', since the content was about going

5.

347

The Acquisition of Warlpiri

hunting and coming back home with incidents on the way. The pronoun was generally not used again, except for emphasis. The clitic identified 1st person as subject or object. However, the nature of the text is important. Elicited narratives from picture sequences revealed that when two 3rd person participants are involved, there is more likelihood that the nouns will be overt to identify the 3rd person characters, even from the 10 to 13 year olds. This applied particularly if there was switching from one character to another, as in books 1 and 2. However, if there are characters as a group, they can be referred to with the dual or plural number marker in the auxiliary cluster, and thus can be distinguished from a 3rd person singular character. This was noted with story 3 as well as 4. The storyteller and listener can rely on the dual or plural clitic to disambiguate who is doing what to whom. It is not only with pronoun subjects, however, that ellipsis occurs; nouns are also ellipsed. A short extract from a text that starts with an overt pronoun and then relies on the clitic to maintain reference is given in (34). It is taken from a personal narrative of a boy of 11 ;9. (34) nganimpa-

riu- rnaiu nya- ngu warna wiri kuiurra lPL.EXCL.PRO- ERG- lPL.EXCL.SUBJ see- PAST snake big south

nguia- rnaiu, nguia- rnaiu yanu ngapa- kurra then- lPL.EXCL.SUBJ then-1 lPL.EXCL.SUBJ go-PAST water- ALL juyuiy- wanti- nja- ku PVfallINF- PURP 'We saw a big snake south; then we, then we went to the water to swim'

The following, the beginning of a text from a child of 5;3, shows a deictic use of zero anaphora; the major participants are never identified in the text. Note the cross-referencing of a human goal which is treated as a dative not an allative argument. (35)

parnkarunyago-

mi ka, NONPAST IPFV

nu-rnuPAST-

ria. juripu 3.DAT bird

yago-

nuPAST-

kaIPFV-

rnuhither-

ria 3.DAT

ria jinta 3.DAT one

yigive-

kari other

nyi NONPAST

'He is running. He came to him, another one. He came to him. He gave him a bird'

5.8.4. Preverbs. A number of preverbs are used in the narratives to extend the verb meanings. These add different types of semantic information and include jurnta 'away from', yarda 'more, again', muku 'all, completely', jangkardu 'in opposition to', piki 'in jeopardy of', wajili 'running', warru 'around', marlaja 'cause', milki 'demonstrate', puta 'try', wily 'emerge', and ngilgi

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'point', as well as juyuly used in combination with wantimi 'fall' for 'swim'. Dative cross-referencing is used where required by the grammar. 5.8.5. Kin Terms. The complexity of the kin system is evident in the time it takes the children to master the forms and their application. This is discussed further in section 8. 3. 6. Error-free Acquisition

6.1. Verb Morphology One of the clear examples of error-free acquisition is in the domain of verb morphology. As illustrated in Table 5.2, the Warlpiri verb stems are suffixed with morphemes for tense and mood. From the age of 2 years, the children's verb inflections are clear in the corpus, although there is some phonetic variation such as [parnkata] for parnka-ja 'run-PAST', with a !aminal alveolar stop replacing the palatal stop. One of the principles that may assist the child in the acquisition of the verb classes is the phonological connections between the past and nonpast. For class 1, there is a detectable change of consonant and vowel. For classes 2, 3, and 4, the semantic difference between the past and non-past forms is carried by the final vowel. In other aspects of the grammar, the difference between i and u does not carry a meaning difference; rather, the vowels alternate on the basis of the vowel harmony rules outlined above. Recall, the verb suffixes condition regressive harmony, while in other areas of the grammar vowel harmony is progressive. The marked direction of vowel harmony is a strong cue to the difference between verb and nominal morphology. In the acquisition of the past forms in English, the child hears uninflected verb stems from non-past, with the exception of 3rd singular, and so the addition of an inflection for past marks the past. In Warlpiri, suffixes are present for both past and non-past, so we cannot talk about a morphologically marked form in terms of adding to a stem for one tense but not the other. On hearing the alternation between the non-past and past suffixes for a verb stem, the child will build up correlations. Although the verbs in classes 2, 3, and 4 are few, they are frequent, and so the frequency of these must assist the child in building up the necessary correlations. Not all verbs need to be heard in all their inflected forms. Once the child starts to recognize patterns, new instances will fit into the sets on the basis of predictability. Bybee and Slobin (1982) argue that patterns in the irregular English verbs could be accounted for by schemas built on the shape of the verb stem; these schemas account for past forms. In Warlpiri, the shape of the stem does not help the child determine the past form, but the shape of the non-past is predictable from the past and the shape of the past is predictable from the nonpast, once a correlation is made on the basis of a few examples.

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Clancy (1985) reports that Japanese children do not overgeneralize in verb morphology. Japanese also does not have uninflected verbs, and thus the child is forced to be attuned to the inflections. Berman (1985) reports that Hebrewspeaking children acquire the verb inflections easily, and Hebrew verbs, like Warlpiri and Japanese, are always inflected. In applying the appropriate verb endings, the Warlpiri child must recognize that one function is marked by several forms. If the morphological verb classes coincided with the number of arguments required by the particular verbs, the child's task of working out the verb classes might be facilitated. However, because nouns are not necessarily in the input data for each verb, and as children under 3;5 produce few utterances with both NP core arguments, it is likely that the verb morphology is acquired independently. Although there is a correlation between verb case frames and morphological class membership, this is not totally reliable. Most of the verbs in class 1 are intransitive and so only require a subject, which takes absolutive case. Most of the verbs in class 2 are transitive, requiring both a subject and object. However, a few verbs in class 1 have two core arguments, one requiring an ergative case and the other absolutive. One verb class 1 stem, rdipimi 'encounter', requires an absolutive subject and dative object. A few verbs in class 2 require an absolutive subject and a dative object. Thus the child must acquire the morphological verb classes independent of argument structure. An apparent overgeneralization error appears in data from one child of 3;3 who used rna several times on an uninflected verb from class 2. Recall that only class 1 allows the nonpast inflection to be dropped. Thus instead of the form mardarni-rna 'hold-NONPAST-1SG.SUBJ', she produced marda-rna. This "errors" may result from an overgeneralization; however, the form may be explained by the tendency in the language to reduce syllables, particularly when two contiguous syllables are similar. Alternatively, the child intended mardarni and used the wrong vowel. There are other examples of variations in the pronunciation of a vowel.

6.2. Ordering Although there ate a few examples of ka in sentence-initial position, and some examples of it in nominal sentences, the acquisition of the auxiliary cluster is comparatively error-free. The subject and object clitics appear in that order. An example was cited of a child correctly using the exceptional order for object before subject clitic with a 1st person singular object. Another example in the data from a 3;8 year old is problematic. The child used the form yu-nga-rna-li 'give-IMP-1SG.SUBJ.3PL.SUBJ'. This combination does not make sense. One adult interpreted the form as an error in which the subject form rna was used in place of the objectju. Such a combination would be 'give it (you PL) to me'. The ordering requirement is correct, however, for this interpretation. Alternatively,

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rna is used instead of the directional rni. The utterance would then be 'give it here (you PL)'. This makes sense given that the particular child did produce some vowel variants in other contexts. The lack of examples in the data may obscure potential overgeneralizations in the ordering of the clitics for the exception situations, that is, when a 1st or 2nd person singular appears as an object with a non-singular 3rd person subject. The children follow the ordering requirements for other morphemes also. For example, case forms follow derivational affixes, pronominal clitics follow casemarked nouns if they appear in initial position and there is no auxiliary base, directional morphemes follow tense affixes, and focus markers follow case forms. Preverbs tend to be in front of the verb, but there are instances with preverbs separated, as in the adult grammar. Verb compounds also follow the adult ordering.

6.3. Pronominal Clitics 6.3.1. Variation. Children do not always register an object in the clitic cluster, but that is allowed in the adult system, and thus is not an error. One context in which adults say clitics may be gapped is in a clause that has the same participants as the preceding clause when the two are semantically linked (Swartz, 1978, also reports this property.) Just a few examples of the pattern appear in the corpus, but the non-appearance of the clitics cannot be considered an error. A few other apparent errors reflect a change in intention, as with some of the apparent case omissions. These must then be viewed as processing errors rather than acquisition errors. The elicited narratives show a few instances of variation of pronominal forms used, in comparison with the forms cited in Table 5 .1. For example, the 1st person inclusive subject pronoun nganimpa was used by a 12 year old in an elicited personal narrative in conjunction with the form rnalu but also in conjunction with ngalpa, the exclusive object clitic, for the same referent. Laughren (1977) discusses rnalu as an innovation for the inclusive subject clitic. The form rnapala was used in the narratives for exclusive dual subject clitic, and this form also was noted as a variant by Laughren (1977). There is synchronic variation in the system. As can be seen from the forms listed in Table 5.1, the pronominal clitics are not easy to segment into number and person. Some of the variations in the system used in the community show a move toward greater semantic transparency, a move toward one form-one meaning. In that many of the possible pronominal forms were not produced in the data collected from the children, a study was undertaken to elicit the forms. A total of 166 Warlpiri speakers were interviewed (Bavin & Shopen, 1987). Children under 9 years found the task too difficult, however, given the problems with the deixis of 1st and 2nd person. A series of pictures was used, and one character was

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introduced as the Warlpiri speaker and another as the interviewer so that the inclusive-exclusive distinction could be illustrated. By arranging the pictures it was possible to depict singular, dual, and plural combinations for both subject and object. The subjects were asked what was happening. The results indicate that the system is in fluctuation; a number of innovations are being introduced, and a number of semantic distinctions are being neutralized, as discussed in the following section. 6.3.2. The Innovations. Some changes in the pronominal system show innovation and others show mergers. Whereas all the speakers over age 33 used the distinct forms listed in Table 5.1, the speakers under 17 (44 subjects) showed some mergers, particularly for the 1st person forms. The forms that seem to be somewhat problematic for the speakers under 17 (as indicated in Table 5.3) include the subject and object clitics for dual inclusive, the object clitic for plural inclusive, the subject and object clitics, and the pronoun for both dual and plural inclusive. For the 2nd person, the dual forms of Table 5.1 are not well known; nor are the subject clitic and independent pronoun. A 2nd person dual pronoun that is used is nyuntu-jarra, as well as the form listed in Table 5.1, nyumpala. This form was noted as a variant by Laughren (1977), but it appears to be spreading. Over 90% of the subjects aged 9 to 16 years used it, whereas 30% of the subjects over 33 used it as well. The form is based on the singular form for 2nd person (nyuntu) with the addition of the dual nominal marker jarra. Another 2nd person innovation is nyuntu-rra for nyurrula, the plural pronoun. This also is based on the singular form, with the demonstrative plural suffix rra. The form npa-lu was used for ngku-lu, the 2nd person plural subject clitic. This is based on the singular form of the 2nd person, with the plural 3rd person affix lu. Thus, there is a tendency to use forms with separate morphemes for person and number instead it the traditional forms which show fusion. This indicates a preference for a one form-one function mapping. Another indication of this preference is the use of npa-pala for 2nd person dual subject in contexts where npala would be used by the older speakers. That is, the full singular form npa is used together with the number marker pala. In the 1st person category, innovations in both forms and mergers seem to be taking place. In particular, the inclusive-exclusive distinction seems to be unstable. The exclusive form was given most frequently for both functions of the object clitic, but the inclusive was given for the subject clitic and pronoun. An innovation for the 1st person dual subject is rna-pala, reported by Laughren (1977) as an innovation for the exclusive function. It is now being used by some speakers for both exclusive and inclusive functions. The form uses the singular form for 1st person, rna, and the dual 3rd person form pala. Subject and object clitics in the 1st person showed no mergers. The results in the survey may be an artifact of the interview; it was assumed that the speaker intended inclusive or exclusive with certain picture arrays.

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Savin TABLE 5.3 Percentage of Table 5.1 Pronominal Forms Used by Warlpiri Speakers in Survey Age Group (Years)

Form

1st person Singular Pronoun Subject Object Dual Exclusive Pronoun Subject Object Plural Exclusive Pronoun Subject Object Dual Inclusive Pronoun Subject Object Plural Inclusive Pronoun Subject Object Second Person Singular Pronoun Subject Object Dual Pronoun Subject Object Plural Pronoun Subject Object

9-16

17-24

100 100 97.6

100 100 100

25-33

33+

100 100 100

100 100 100

77.3 18.2

93.3 53.3 35.5

100 87.5 85.5

100 100 100

79.5 100 29.5

93.3 95.6 60.0

100 100 92.5

100 100 100

43.2 45.5 43.2

53.3 53.3 48.9

72.5 82.5 75

97.3 100 100

40.9 50 68.2

62.2 64.4 46.7

75 82.5 70

94.6 100 100

"

100 100 100

100 100 100

9.1 27.3 54.9

13.0 73.9 87

18.2

82.6 17.4 100

"

68.2

100 100 100

100 100 100

36.8 78.9 100

70 100 10

100 68.4 100

100 95 100

However, many of the forms that appear to be changing, according to the survey, were not observed in the naturalistic data from the younger children. This indicates that the forms most frequently used are the first acquired and these are more resistant to change. However, the interaction of linguistic complexity and cognitive complexity needs further research. Some of the children under 5 years did use traditional inclusive forms, notably rli and rlipa. Another explanation for the

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survey results is that the move toward segmentation of number and person is a late development. Just as children acquiring other languages apply a rule after producing idiosyncratic forms producing overgeneralizations, so the innovations in the Warlpiri system may be an indication of a leveling that is applied once the notion of a paradigm becomes part of the grammar.

6.4. Case 6.4.1. Case Forms. The naturalistic data reveal that many of the semantic cases are used appropriately by 2;8. Those that have two allomorphs based on vowel harmony alternations do not cause confusion. As with the other cases, vowel harmony alternations for ergative/instrumental and locative create no problems. Thus the phonetic variants are not treated as separate forms with separate functions. However, when there are distinct allomorphs, as with the ergative/instrumental and the locative cases, there is confusion, as discussed later. 6.4.2. Case Frames. The case frames for the Warlpiri verbs are not problematic for the children. One piece of evidence that the verbs are assigned to a case array at an early age comes from the fact that dative objects are crossreferenced in the auxiliary cluster. The verb warrirni does not appear without cross-referencing, and dative arguments of other verbs are cross-referenced. Other support is that there are no examples of the ergative being used on subjects of intransitive verbs or transitive verbs that require absolutive subjects. In contrast, Schieffelin ( 1985) reports that Kaluli children sometimes leave off ergative case from agents. Ergative-marked nouns in Kaluli appear first with highly transitive verbs. In addition, there is a connection between tense and the use of ergative forms: Agents tend to be marked more with past tense verbs. It also appears from the Warlpiri data that more ergative case forms are used on past tense verb forms. This is of linguistic interest in that some languages only mark ergativity in the past (e.g., Hindi). 7. Errors

7 .1. Case Forms 7 .1.1. The Problem. The early errors that do occur in applying the ergative case, as illustrated in section 4, show that the children are overgeneralizing the agreement function. However, the fact that so few ergative nouns show up in the corpus means that systematic errors are difficult to detect. Examples of selfrepair such as the following from a girl of 5 ;2 illustrate awareness of the need for the case forms. In the correction, the modifiers are left out, and this indicates some processing difficulty for the child in using the case forms and modifiers

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together. Note that there is no cross-referencing for the dual object, which would have followed the focus marker ju. (36)

manu jarntu dog and jarntudog-

ngkuERG-

wiribigju FOC

jarlu INTEN wajilirun-

wajilirun-

puattack-

pungu attack-PAST

ngu PAST

watiman-

ja, (error identified)

jarra two

'And the very big dog chased, the dog chased the two men'

The most frequent errors noted are in the forms used. The choice of one allomorph over another when the forms are quite distinct is problematic. The problem rests in having several forms for one function as well as several functions for one form. The child has to work out that the allomorphs have the same functions; for example, ergative marks the subject of a transitive verb with an ergative-absolutive or ergative-dative case frame, as well as marking agreement with the argument, whether overt or not. Thus the distribution is complex. In embedded clauses, the case forms used for agreement will appear on a non-finite verb. The child must also work out the functions for the homophones; for example, ria is a dative cross-reference marker as well as a locative case allomorph. Although the locative case form appears on nouns, the clitic can appear on any element. In addition, ria is a sequential complementizer when it appears on non-finite verbs, as well as part of the complementizer rlajinta. Another difficulty rests in having exceptions to the rule that two-syllable words take one form and longer words another. In addition, the 1st and 2nd person singular pronouns are not obliged to carry the ergative case marker; if they do have it, an extra syllable is added to the citation form before the ergative is added, so that they behave as three-syllable words. Given this linguistic complexity, it is not possible to conclude that the major problem in acquiring the forms is the word-length conditioning factor. However, given the amount of syllable reduction in fast speech, word length is probably not a strong cue for working out the system. 7 .1.2. The Errors. The errors made by the children in applying the ergative case forms are not based on the complexity of the concept "ergative," because similar errors are noted with the locative allomorphs. One of the usual errors, in terms of the traditional system, is the use of ngaju 'I' in its short form. This indicates that the children fail to find a function for the lu extension, so ignore it. The children at first seem to learn the exception words by rote, so that nyampu appears with ria, as in the adult system. Some of the children seem to have some knowledge of a rule, as indicated by a 4;8 year old who produced wati-ngki 'man-ERG' and wati-jarra-rlu 'man-DU-ERG'. Another child of 6;4 produced kaa-rla and corrected it immediately to kaa-ngka 'car-WC'. He could, however,

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have been just showing awareness of both forms, just as he might use synonyms in the one clause. This applies to other examples, such as that from a child of 6;9 who said jinta-kari-rli nya-ngu marlu 'one-other-ERG see-PAST kangaroo' but then immediately saidjinta-kari-ngki nya-ngu marlu, changing rli to ngki. These examples, then, may indicate that the forms are in free variation for some of the children. There seem to be periods of reanalysis. Once the child is aware of the similar function of ngka and ria, there are several paths taken. This is the area in which individual differences are most noticed. The child may use one of the forms or alternate between them. However, nyampu-rla seems to be the form used by most children even after they have adopted ngka as a locative marker, which they apply to other exception words. As pointed out by de Villiers and de Villiers (1985, p. 74) in their discussion of the acquisition of English, frequency of usage in the input is an important determinant for forms that must be rote learned. It is certainly the case that nyampu is used frequently in the input to the Warlpiri children as well as by the children themselves. 7.1.3. Individual Differences. Some children show no errors in the use of the case forms in the elicited narratives. There are individual developmental patterns, however, and different strategies are used for applying the allomorphs. An analysis of the narrative data shows the following individual patterns for using the ergative and locative allomorphs: 1. Only one form is used. For example, a child of 5;3 used ngurra-ngka 'camp-LOC' and mingkirri-ngka 'ant hill-LOC' and janyjajanyja-ngka 'bushLOC'. 2. One form is used on most words, but a noun will condition the other allomorph if it is similar in shape (e.g., rlu is the form used if the noun ends with rlu). For example, a boy of 11 ;2 used the ergative allomorph rli on warlkamani 'old lady' and rlu on mangulpa 'spear', kularda 'spear', paniya 'eyes', and wangala 'crow', with ngku on yapa 'person'. All of these are standard uses. However, on warlu 'fire' he used rlu. 3. The form used for agreement is the same as the form used on an accompanying word. For example, a child of 5;7 used pirli-ngka 'hill, rock-LOC' four times in a text and then changed the form to pirli-rla just before the modifier nyampu-rla 'here-LOC'. Another child of 6;6 used wati-ngki jirrama-ngku 'manERG two-ERG'. That is, after a pause the child added the ngku form to jirrama; this agrees with the form on the head noun wati. 4. One form is used on single-morpheme words and the other on words with more than one morpheme. For example, a boy of 12;3 used rlu on yapa-patu 'person-some', but ngku on all other nouns, namely yapa 'person', kurdu 'child', mardukuja 'old woman', and kanyarla 'spear'.

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Some of these patterns may be accidental rather than actual strategies used. There are not enough examples to generalize whether the forms are treated as variants by some speakers, or if they are distinguished on the basis of their distribution. It is possible that the use of the generalized ngku form in Lajamanu Warlpiri, at least with some speakers, adds to the confusion. As an example that the children did not all make errors, one boy of 12;4 produced 12 examples of an ergative in one text, and these all followed the standard pattern, with seven examples of rlu and one of rli on three-syllable words, and four examples of ngku and one of ngki on two-syllable words. The speaker is mature in terms of the complex structures used in the text, and the use of the standard forms for ergative and locative can be correlated to a level of linguistic maturity. It is useful to mention Slobin's (1985b, p. 1222) Operating Principle Extension here. The principle states that if the linguistic means to mark a notion has been discovered, "try to mark the Notion in relation to a word class or every instance of the configuration,, and try to use the linguistic means to mark the Notion." It seems that some Warlpiri children do this in that they mark the 1st person with ergative even though it is optional in the adult system. In addition, it is usual to find both words in a phrase marked, if the two words are contiguous, although there is the option of marking only the last item in the adult system. Another Operating Principle, Morphological Paradigms, indicates that if the choice of a functor cannot be determined by phonological conditioning, then semantic grounds may be tried or the phonological shape of the citation form or co-occurring elements (Slobin, 1985b, pp. 1214-1219). The Warlpiri children go through a number of options before they are able to work out that word length is the conditioning factor for the choice of the case form.

7.2. Case Frames and Word Order: Experimental Work

7.2.1. Introduction. Given that the core arguments were inftequent inverbal sentences in the data, the children's comprehension of case forms was tested in order to determine at what age the children understood a sentence with a verb and two arguments overt. Experimental work was conducted with transitive verbs. The first set of experiments examined the three case arrays (ergativeabsolutive, absolutive dative, and ergative dative) to determine (1) if the child relied on a word order to interpret the sentence, (2) if the child comprehended one array at an earlier age than the others, and (3) if there were any overgeneralizations from one verb array to another. The second set of experiments examined the comprehension of sentences with modifier and head word and with discontinuous word order. The primary purpose was to determine if discontinuous word order added to the complexity in interpreting the sentence. The third set of

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experiments was designed to investigate whether the child relied on animacy and/or probability in determining which argument was the agent, before the case forms had been mastered. Acting-out tasks were used. 7 .2.2. Transitivity and Case Frames. The first test used non-past verbs with imperfective aspect and 3rd person singular animal participants (Bavin & Shopen, 1985). All sentences were reversible, so that either noun could be the subject. Eighty-nine children of ages 3 to 11 years were tested. Overall results of the first tests indicate that the Warlpiri child of 3 years (mean age 3;2) chose one of the two animals as agent randomly; the mean number of errors was 8.5 of an 18-item test. However, examination of the particular responses reveals that the children were more likely to be accurate in picking out the agent for an ergative-dative verb than for the other two arrays. At 4 years (mean age 4;4), however, the children were more likely to pick out the agent with an ergative-absolutive verb. At 5 (mean age 5;5) with a year of schooling, the pattern switches again and the ergative-absolutive pattern results in more errors; 3.4 was the mean number of correct responses compared to 3.8 for absolutive-dative and 4.1 for ergativedative. However, at 6 (mean age 6;2) there is a leveling in the response pattern. Some fluctuations occur, but for the 8 and 11 year olds, the ergative-absolutive responses are higher than for the other case arrays (mean correct responses = 4. 7 and 5. 7, respectively). By age 6, the children seem to have acquired an understanding of the different case arrays with about 70% correct, but there may be other factors that influence their performance. The youngest children (3 years) clearly responded better to sentences with the object before the subject (the orders were OSV, OVS, and VOS). For the ergative-absolutive verbs, there was a slightly higher correct response rate if the agent appeared before the object for the children of the age 5 or 6 to 11, although for the other two case arrays this pattern was only noted for the 5 to 8 year olds. The apparent preference for ergative noun before nonergative noun appears to reflect facts about the discourse organization in the language. In sentences connected into a discourse, it would be unusual to mention the agent in each sentence. The agent would be mentioned if there were a switch in sentence topic or for emphasis, in which case the agent would probably be near the end of the clause. However, in the test situation the sentences were isolated, and so each sentence had a new topic (a different animal). Thus it would be more appropriate given the pragmatic use of word order in Warlpiri to have an agent before another noun in the sentence. Another factor could have influenced the results, one that was not controlled for. This is the form of the ergative case marker. Some of the agents required the ngkulngki form and others required the rlu!rli. The assumption was that the children would recognize both forms as having the same function (ergative case) because at that stage the naturalistic data had not been analyzed. Given the

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variation that exists in the use of the ergative case forms in the naturalistic data collected, the use of the different ergative allomorphs may have led to some of the fluctuations across the age groups. A similar pilot test was conducted at Lajamanu and at Willowra, although with few children in each age group. The results indicate that the Willowra children had fewer errors than the Yuendumu children, whereas the Lajamanu children had far more. Observations of the children's production in Lajamanu, and analysis of some elicited narratives, confirmed that many case markers were left off in obligatory contexts. 7.2.3. Case Agreement and Discontinuous Word Order. A second series of test sentences included attributes as well as words that functioned as the core arguments. Thus, nantuwu-rlu 'horse-ERG' might be modified with wiri-ngki 'big-ERG'. In some sentences, all core arguments had modifiers and in others only one modifier was used. In some sentences, the modifiers and heads were discontinuous and in others continuous. Both transitive and ditransitive verbs were used. Thus, there was the possibility of having up to three core arguments and three modifying words. The words that belonged together semantically could be matched through the case markers, ergative, dative, and absolutive (0). These type of sentences are not heard in the input, and although the children produced sentences with discontinuous word order, they did not produce sentences with three core arguments and three modifiers. Thus the test material was very unnatural. However, it was hypothesized that if the children understood the principles of case agreement, they would be able to interpret the sentences. Only two adults were able to interpret the most complex test items, that is, sentences with ditransitive verbs and modifiers for all arguments. The children were able to interpret discontinuous word orders. In fact, the number of correct responses was high for some sentences with the two nominals separated. However, if the child had to select two animals from four, as in 'The big kangaroo is hitting the little dog', when two dogs and two kangaroos were available, the child did not perform as well as with a sentence such as 'The big dog is hitting the small dog'. That is, the test condition affected the results. With two animals available, the child was only required to match one attribute and one animal, and the other animal, by default, filled the other role. But if the child had to match two attributes with two types of animals, the task was difficult. 7.2.4. Case as a Cue in Sentence Processing. A third series of tests used verbs that allowed inanimate subjects (e.g., katirni 'press down on') as well as verbs that required animate subjects (e.g., nyanyi 'see'). Fifty children were tested, 10 each from five age groups: 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 (Bavin & Shopen, 1989). Some sentences represented improbable events (such as 'The woman is biting the snake'). Other sentences were not acceptable Warlpiri sentences in that the necessary case markers were missing. Slobin (1981) reports that Turkish children

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would not respond to utterances that lacked the necessary case marker. It was hypothesized that Warlpiri children might also fail to respond to utterances without case markers. The adults tested always relied on the case forms to interpret the sentence, even when the action was highly unlikely. For the sentences without case marking, event probability or animacy were used as cues to interpretation. The children responded to all the sentences. Before they had sufficient understanding of the case forms to interpret the utterance as intended, the children relied on pragmatic and semantic cues. The fact that even the youngest children picked the animate nouns as subject more for those verbs that require an animate subject indicates knowledge of the lexical entries for the particular verbs. For example, nyanyi 'see' requires an animate subject, whereas katirni 'press down on' and pampirni 'touch' do not. Some of the test sentences violated the selectional restrictions. Even the youngest children were more likely to choose the animate noun for the verbs like nyanyi 'see' than for the verbs like katirni. Word order was not a strong cue. From the age of 5, children found case marking to be a stronger cue than semantic or pragmatic factors, and with reversible sentences and no animacy or pragmatic bias, the correct response rate was high. By age 7, case marking overruled probability and semantic factors. Thus at age 5, the children are aware of the form-function mappings but will be influenced by other factors, overriding the case forms until the age of 7. The test also revealed that at about the age of 5, the children showed a drop in the number of correct responses for the ergative-absolutive case frame, whereas the ergativedative sentences had an 80% correct response rate. That is, the children performed better on reversible sentences if both nouns were marked for their role. The difference leveled out between the ages of 5 and 7. 7.2.5. Conclusions. Overall, the tests show quite clearly that the Warlpiri children are familiar with the case functions from about the age of 5, but that mastery in using them to comprehend a sentence with two core nouns takes two more years. Discontinuous word order is not a problem if there is one attribute and core argument to match. However, the processing capacities of the children are not able to cope with matching a number of sets of items, and this is also hard for the adults. THE SETTING OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 8. Cognitive Pacesetting

8.1. Verb Meanings Although children learn the selectional restrictions on verbs and the thematic structure early, it should be pointed out that for some verbs only partial meanings are first acquired. For example, in a small follow-up to test 1 to test the children's

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knowledge of case and word order, the three-place predicates yinyi 'give' and puntarni 'take' were included. The 4-year-old children interpreted puntarni as yinyi; that is, the notion of exchange was associated with the verb, but the source and goal were not sufficiently worked out to be able to respond to the verbs in the test situation.

8.2. Grammaticization of Events The grammaticization of an event is not apparent in the early data. However, the basic events that are first grammaticized are related to an agent, unspecified and inferred from context, causing a change of state or location or an actor performing some activity. The onset of the grammaticization is related to the use of the auxiliary cluster with subject and object clitics as well as aspectual markings. For transitive sentences, it is not usual to have two overt nominals, and even for intransitive, the subject nominal is frequently not overt. The early appearance of the clitics lends some support to the view that the clitics function as the core arguments, with overt nominals as adjuncts (e.g., Jellineck, 1984). Laughren (1988), using a government-binding framework, argues that the subject clitic is assigned nominative case in the specifier of INF position.

8.3. Tense and Aspect The initial form-function mappings in the Warlpiri tense-aspect system show similarities with acquisition data from other languages. This suggests some general principles of semantic organization. The development of the temporal concepts and forms for marking these concepts proceeds gradually, indicating that general cognitive development guides the acquisition. The first uses of tense morphology is to encode the ongoing or end point of an action. Thus, the child encodes a change of state with past tense morphology and ongoing activities with nonpast. Weist (1986) argues that when a child first uses past tense morphology, both the event time and reference time are frozen at speech time. When event time is separated from speech time, tense concepts have been acquired, and tense morphology is used to establish event time as prior to, subsequent to, or simultaneous with speech time. Reference time is established later. This course of development assumes that cognitive development is the pacesetter for the acquisition of the form-function mappings and range of functions for the morphology in the adult system. The development noted for the young Warlpiri child shows that immediately completed change of state or durative event is the most salient. Berman ( 1988) reports that the Hebrew data show knowledge of past, nonpast, and future morphology at 3 years of age, but the thematic organization of a text is not evident until several years later. In organizing a text, tense morphology is important for establishing background information versus information relevant to the event

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sequencing. Similar patterns are noted from the Warlpiri acquisition data. It is not until the child is able to link clauses that one clause can be used as background information to another, and this is associated with establishing a reference time other than event time. Verb morphology develops gradually (Bavin, l989a). At 2;8, the present imperfective marker appears in the data and some examples of the temporal link lku then/now are also evident. However, lku is not used frequently until the child is able to link events in narratives, starting at around the age of 5. By age 3, the future marker appears. This allows the child to distinguish past, present, and future with respect to speech time. By 3;5, about 50% of the child's utterances are verbal; before that, only about 20-25% are. At 3;5, the data show spontaneous talk about the past. The past imperfective lpa is used from 3;10 but not necessarily to relate one event to another. Temporal words such as jalangu 'now' appear at around 3;8, as does nyurru 'complete, ready'. Weist and Buczowski (1987) found that Polish children first used adverbs meaning 'already', 'now', and 'soon'. Words relating to immediate past or future, words meaning 'yesterday', 'today', and 'tomorrow' appeared next, before words associated with more remote time. Similarly, in Warlpiri jalangu and nyurru appear first and then ngaka 'soon'. Temporal forms associated with remote time appear later, including nyurru-wiyi 'in the distant past' and kala, the past habitual form. The first uses of nyurru-wiyi refer to immediate past, but at age 6 the term is used for the olden days. The form kala appears in the data at age 11. These patterns indicate cognitive pacesetting.

8.4. Locatives Johnston and Slobin (1979) propose that if cognitive development were the sole determinant of the acquisition of locative terms, the order would be as follows: in/on/under< beside < backJfronl_r < between < back/front

The topological relations are assumed to be less complex than those which involve projective relations. In addition, if a reference object has an intrinsic back and front, then the positions 'back' and 'front' for a located object will be less complex than with a reference object with no intrinsic back and front. However, Johnston and Slobin also consider other factors that might influence the development of the locative terms, including language-specific properties. In Warlpiri, the reference object is marked by a general locative case marker. In addition, a location may be added with a separate nominal. Thus, in (37), kankarlu indicates that the stick is up in relation to the house, but its exact location is not indicated. This must be inferred, and the stick could be assumed to be on the house. Similarly, with kanunju in place of kankarlu, the stick is down

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at the house, and it might be assumed to be in the house or on the ground. However, there are no words that specifically encode 'on', 'in', and 'under''. (37)

yuwarlihouse-

ria LOC

ka IPFV

nyinami sit-NONPAST

maliki dog

kankarlu up

'The dog is up at the house/on the house'

The two words encode the up-down dimension. Affixes may be added to them, in which case there is some modification in the stem as with kankarla-rni 'uphither' and kaninja-rni 'down-hither'. The directional affix can be interpreted as facing this way or close proximity. Other directional affixes encode meanings of 'away' and 'along'. The word used to express the concept 'between' is kulurru, but it also means in the middle, as in the middle of a journey. The words that can be used to express the concepts 'back' and 'front' have a range of meanings. Thus, kamparru can be interpreted as 'ahead', 'first', or 'behind', whereas pirdangirli can be interpreted as 'last', 'behind', or 'ahead'. In that journeys are circular, a point of departure will also be a point of termination, and for this reason a point that is left behind will also be the one that the traveler is moving towards. The first locatives expressed in the naturalistic corpus are with the case marker alone. There are a few instances of kankarla 'up' or a variant. To test the children's understanding of the locative terms, a series of experiments was conducted. The hypothesis was that if there were a basic notion of 'on', 'in', and 'under', and if there were universal support that 'back' and 'front' of a featured reference object was an easier place to identify than 'back' and 'front' of other reference objects, then the young Warlpiri child might show some bias toward these, even though the language allows a wider interpretation for the terms that can be used to express these functions. In the elicited production data from the youngest children (3 to 4 years), the general locative case marker was the usual response without a specific locative nominal. The results of the experiments (reported in detail in Bavin, 1990) indicate that the Warlpiri children do not impose an 'on', 'in', and 'under' distinction. However, kankarla 'up' was never confused with 'under' or 'down', and it was understood first. There was no evidence that 'in' is a separate concept. Whether an item is interpreted as 'under' or 'in' depends on the reference object. Generally, kanunju was interpreted as on the ground if this was a possible interpretation. Given that a yunta 'shelter' is open-sided, and a lizard's hole is 'down' in the ground, the findings are not surprising. A concept of 'in', however, seems to develop later in that the children often used yinjayiti to represent the concept of containment, particularly if the reference object is not traditional to the Warlpiri people. Thus, a box or European style house would elicit the response yinjayiti. The dimension 'up-down', represented by the words kankarlu and kanunju, is

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acquired before the terms kulkurru 'between', kamparru 'ahead', and pirdangirli 'behind', as predicted by the cognitive complexity hypothesis. Kulkurru was understood before the other two terms, but even the 8 year olds tested varied in how this was interpreted. This indicates that the wide range of use for the terms hinders their acquisition. All three were rare in the naturalistic and narrative data. One of the experiments tested 33 children aged from 3;6 to 7;11 on the terms kamparru and pirdangirli. The responses did not show an advantage with a featured reference object. The child generally chose the space between self and object as kamparru. However, if the reference object faced away, there was some confusion, indicating that the child was aware of the potential ambiguity. The terms pirdangirli was kamparru were not treated as opposites by the youngest children; the front-back dimension developed. It is evident from the results that the case marker and locative noun can be interpreted separately so that, for example, pirdangirli together with a locative case marker is interpreted as back in the vicinity of the reference object, not back of the reference object. Thus if the child has a choice of selecting the dog that is in the pirdangirli relationship to a cow, the child is most likely to choose the back-most dog anywhere in the vicinity of the cow, not the dog that is behind the cow. Cognitive pacesetting works in conjunction with linguistic pacesetting. If the language allows a simple form, a single case marker attached to the noun, this will be used independently of the locative word, as reported by Schieffelin (1985, p. 539) for Kaluli. However, in the naturalistic data, kankarlarni was used independently of a case marker by a 2 year old, and the locative case marker appeared in the 2;8 data. The two were not used together at these early ages.

8.5. Kin Terms As reported in section 3, the kin term distinctions are adjusted in an attempt to simplify the complex system for the children. However, it still takes the child many years to be able to understand the terms and abstract the relationships between people. This indicates cognitive pacesetting. The modified input does not help the child to abstract beyond particular individuals. In studies of the acquisition of kin terminology in English, a number of factors have been proposed to account for the development patterns. These include semantic complexity and frequency in the child's experience (e.g., Benson & Anglin, 1987; Haviland & Clark, 1974). Haviland and Clark (1974) showed that children learn the relationships gradually, first being aware of some of the features encoded in a term, and then developing awareness of the relationship, and finally an awareness of the reciprocal nature of the terms. As children get older, they are able to change their definitions of kin terms from concrete based on personal experience to more abstract. Thus, a 3 year old will treat father as a particular individual, and only later, after 6, will the term be identified as the father of children.

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There are eight skin groups (subsections) in Warlpiri, with a separate name for a male and female in each group. A person holds relationships to others depending on his or her skin affiliation, and this is determined by the father's and mother's skin names. The groups are divided into two moieties, and these are important in selections of marriage partners and in ceremony and ritual. The kin names are associated with a skin name. Thus, if a child has a biological mother from the Napaljarri group, the woman's sisters are also referred to as 'mother', and all other Napaljarris may be referred to in the same way. Similarly, other relations are determined not on the basis of actual blood relative but on the basis of the subsection name. For a boy of the Jupurrula group or a girl of the Napurrula group to understand that any Napaljarri is in the 'mother' relation, the child must be able to abstract away from the particular relatives and understand the system as a whole. The naturalistic data show that children from 3;8 do use kin terms but only in relation to particular individuals. Words for 'bother', 'sister', 'mother', 'father', and 'father's mother' are the terms first used in the corpus. The BT forms appear before the adult system forms, and thus the age differentiation for brothers and sisters is neutralized. Based on findings from an elicitation study, it is clear that not until the child is about 8 years old is there any evidence of generalizing beyond particular individuals (Bavin, 1991). A few of the children did associate a kin term with more than one person, as in the adult system. For example, mamiyi was 'biological mother' and 'mother's sister' and warringiyi was 'father's father' and 'father's father's sister'. If a child had no siblings, the child would often respond lawa 'no' to questions about which skin group would be in the sister or brother relation. By age 11, some children were able to explain many of their relations, and the 13 year olds questioned showed understanding of the system from their own perspective. However, with few exceptions, they were not able to take another perspective. Knowledge of the complex system takes many years to acquire, and some of the terms and relations are not understood until much later, after the boys have been initiated and after the children have taken part in ceremonies that provide some motivation for understanding the system. Even some of the 13 year olds questioned used the BT forms for 'brother' and 'sister', 'mother' and 'father', and this might indicate some change in progress in the forms being used. Another indication of change is the use of 'cousin' for children of aunts and uncles, whereas in the Warlpiri system, children of mother's mother and father's father are siblings, and there are distinct names for cross-cousins. 9. Linguistic Pacesetting

9.1. General to Specific The locative data indicate that the structures being acquired influence the order of acquisition. Case forms and nominal locative expressions may be used independently at first. When the locative nominals appear in the data, they tend

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to appear without affixes, other than the rote-learned form that appears in the data from the 2 year o1ds. These inflections add specific information about direction or proximity. Similarly, directional morphology on verbs appears after the verbs with the tense affixes. In addition, preverbs, which add specific information to modify the meaning of the verb stem (such as direction, manner, and quantity), appear with the verb stems after the more basic forms. And compound verbs appear after basic verbs. That the child acquires the verb tense forms and yet strips away directional suffixes indicates that certain functions are more basic. Bybee's (1985) relevance hierarchy indicates that any affix that modifies the meaning of a verb will be closer to the verb stem than an affix that adds other information. Although the tense notion is not more basic in terms of modifying the meaning of a verb than aspect or a preverb, the Warlpiri child produces tense forms first. Because they are closest to the stem, and the stem does not appear without them, they must be more salient to the child. Thus, the regularity of their appearance and the ordering of morphemes are both significant in the acquisition task. The fact that clitics appear on more than one word class does not seem to create problems.

9.2. Plurifunctionality As indicated in section 7, case forms are problematic. Even though the language is basically agglutinating, it fails to provide one form-one meaning and it also fails to provide one meaning-one form. This applies to case forms as well as pronominal clitics. The problem areas in the grammar can be identified by observing where leveling of irregularities occurs and where the child applies one form for one function, as well as the changes in the pronominal paradigm. However, the presence of homophones is not necessarily going to hinder the acquisition of a form. The allative kurra is homophonous with the complementizer kurra, and yet the case form is acquired early. The complementizer is not as frequent as the allative, and the allative marks a less complex concept.

9.3. Clause Linking Where the language conflates several features of one meaning in one form, the forms are acquired later. A good example is the complementizers that conflate temporal and reference information. Slobin (1989) reports for Turkish that the gerund -erek is not used until about age 9. This late development is attributed to its function of relating two phases of a situation in the construction of a coherent event. Similarly, the Warlpiri complementizers that relate two phases of a coherent event are acquired late. However, other clause combining forms such as to establish purpose or sequential links, are not so problematic. 10. Individual Differences As indicated in section 7, individual differences are noted in the use of case forms. There are other indications of individual differences. For example, one of

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the two children aged 2;8 used the imperfective aspect marker ka, but not the other. Other differences show up in the clarity of expression. For one of the two children of 3;3, there was a great deal of phonetic distortion, but less for the other. The first child was much shyer than the other. Language maturity is related to the maturity of the child in other forms of behavior, for example, independence. Those children who were more willing to walk away from the camp and close family members were more productive, and the more productive children showed less phonological distortions and awareness of more morphology than the others. There may also be a family correlation. Adults in the community can identify the best talkers and the best storytellers, and the children of these were found to have more language knowledge than other children. However, the exact relationship between input and language development is an area that requires further research.

CONCLUSION 11. General Findings

Warlpiri is typologially quite distinct from other languages for which acquisition data are available, although it shares properties with some of these languages. For example, it is ergative, as is Kaluli; it is agglutinating, as is Turkish; it does not have citation forms for verbs, as with Hebrew and Japanese; and it allows ellipsis of core arguments, as does Japanese. Yet in other respects, the language is structurally distinct. Most notably, the language allows a flexible word order to the extent that a number of nominals can be in one clause and refer to the same referent. In addition, the amount of homophony and allomorphy is large. When the language provides a one form-one function mapping, the forms are acquired easily. When there is variation, both in the form of allomorphs and exceptions, there is delay in the acquisition of the forms. When there is fusion of two or more semantic notions, as in the forms which conflate person and number for the pronominal clitics and the complementizers which conflate time and subject identity, there is a leveling in the system or delay in acquiring the forms. There is also a tendency to level the system when some forms are marked and others are not, as in the marking for number on nominals. The flexibility in word order does not create difficulties for the child acquirer, and there is no evidence that the child imposes phrase-level or sentence-level ordering principles. In fact, discontinuous expressions are more frequent than continuous. However, ordering within the word is strictly adhered to. The major task facing the Warlpiri child is the acquisition of the form-function mappings. The more complex forms, cognitively as well as linguistically, emerge after the less complex forms. The language is filled with homophones. Some of these have already been pointed out. In addition, some particles function as both sentential particles as

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well as propositional particles, and the position in the clause may disambiguate. The scope of a sentential particle is the whole clause, whereas a propositional particle can have more local scope. Thus, the Warlpiri child must become attuned very early to form-function mappings in particular contexts. Pragmatic information is used to interpret potentially ambiguous messages, as with clauses with 3rd person singular arguments. The general locative case form is interpreted pragmatically, so that ngapa-ngka 'water-at' will most usually be interpreted as 'in the water', and parraja-rla cooliman-WC will be interpreted as 'on the cooliman'. The Warlpiri child becomes familiar with the patterns in the language. Just as the adult uses pragmatic information to understand utterances, so the child uses it as a clue in acquiring the form-function mappings. The child becomes familiar with the agreement patterns in the language and deals with some homophones at an early age. Repetition is apparent from an early age, and this is apparent in the repetition of information as well as in the use of synonyms. The syntactic cues used by the child relate to the asymmetry of the subject-object relations, and this is reflected in the ordering within the clitic cluster. As pointed out by Slobin (1989, p. 19), individual forms and constructions tend to reinforce one another. In Warlpiri, the large number of homophones and synonyms perhaps attunes the child to variation in the form-meaning correspondences. One of the interesting aspects that emerges is that children are from a very young age influenced by discourse patterns in the adult system. Yet, the child needs a level of cognitive maturity to be able to organize a discourse. Another aspect is that, even though adults attempt to level out some of the complexities in the kinship system in the BT forms, the child does not master the system any more quickly than does a child acquiring other languages. That is, a level of cognitive development is necessary before the child can abstract from the specific to the general. 12. Future Research It would be valuable to follow several children with regular taping sessions for a

period of years from the ages of 2 to 5, because it is during this period that the language develops from identifiable forms to sentences with some complex morphology. Given that the Yuendumu community now has television reception and telephones, exposure to the non-Aboriginal way of life is bound to increase. How much impact this will have on the social organization and the language would be an interesting study. Any further studies on the acquisition of Warlpiri as a first language might best be carried out in Willowra or an outstation. Both would be further removed from the Western way of life and language. There are many outstations settled now as the people move away from the settlements to their traditional land areas. Of particular interest would be a systematic study of the relationship between

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language development and the particular forms of language children are exposed to in the different communities. For example, adults in Yuendumu recognize differences in the way of talking in the different communities. Some claim that it is acceptable in Lajamanu to use ngkulngki on long words that are the subject of a transitive verb, whereas in Yuendumu it is not good Warlpiri. How this is reflected in children's forms remains to be studied. Although a verbal suffix yi is part of the grammar in some dialects of Warlpiri, I found no clear evidence for it in the data from the children. This may be one of the areas of change, but it needs investigating. Results from a test similar to experimental test 1 on word order and case conducted at Willowra and at Lajamanu showed that the Willowra children understood sentences with two case-marked nominals slightly better than the Yuendumu children, whereas the Lajamanu children had high error rates. The Lajamanu children also left off case markers in obligatory contexts in the production data. A more systematic study of the input language is crucial to understanding the relationship between language acquisition and language change. Another area of research is the relationship between written language and spoken language. Swartz (1988) notes that word order in the written language is significantly different from the spoken. As more people become literate in Warlpiri, there may be some reflection on the spoken forms. The relationship between language acquisition and language change is, perhaps, the most interesting aspect of the acquisition of Warlpiri (see Bavin, 1989b). Although the language is changing as the contact with English increases, some aspects of language change are internally motivated. Most notably, the formal complexity of the system causes problems in the acquisition task, and irregularities are leveled. Two areas that have been touched on briefly in the developmental data are the acquisition of the particles and of the preverbs. Both add information to more basic propositions, and both warrant further investigation.

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Schmidt, A. (1985). Young people's Djirbal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Simpson, J. (1985a). Wakirti Warlpiri (A short dictionary of Eastern Warlpiri with grammatical notes). Unpublished manuscript. Simpson, J. (1985b). Wakirti Warlpiri vocabulary. Unpublished manuscript. Simpson, J. (1988). Case and complementiser suffixes in Warlpiri. In P. Austin (Ed.), Complex sentence constructions in Australian languages (pp. 205-218). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Simpson, J. (1991 ). Aspects of Warlpiri morphology and syntax. Dortrecht: Kluwer. Simpson, J., & Bresnan, J. (1983). Control and obviation in Warlpiri. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 1, 49-64. Simpson, J., & Withgott, M. (1986). Pronominal clitic clusters and templates. In H. Borer (Ed.), The syntax of pronominal clitics (Syntax and Semantics 19, pp. 149-174). New York: Academic. Slobin, D. I. (1981). The origins of grammatical encoding of events. In W. Deutsch (Ed.), The child's construction of language (pp. 185-199). New York: Academic. Slobin, D. I. (1985a). Crosslinguistic evidence for the Language-Making Capacity. In D. I. Slobin (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition (Vol. 2, pp. 1157-1249). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Slobin, D. I. (1985b). Introduction: Why study acquisition crosslinguistically? In D. I. Slob in (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition (Vol. 1, pp. 3-24). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Slobin, D. I. (1989). Factors of language typology in the crosslinguistic study of acquisition. Paper presented at the I Oth meeting of the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development, Jyvlisky!a, Finland. [Cognitive Science.Report No. 66, August 1990, Institute of Cognitive Studies, University of California, Berkeley) Slobin, D. 1., & Bocaz, A. (1988). Learning to talk about movement through time and space: The development of narrative skills in English and Spanish. Lenguas Modernas, 15, 5-24. Swartz, S. (1982). Syntactic structure of Warlpiri clauses. In S. Swartz (Ed.), Papers in Warlpiri grammar (pp. 69-127). Work papers of SIL-AAB A-6, Berrniah, N.Y.: SIL. Swartz, S. (1988). Constraints on zero anaphora and word order in Warlpiri texts. Unpublished masters thesis, Pacific College of Graduate Studies. Weist, R. (1986). Tense & aspect. In P. Fletcher & M. Garman (Eds.), Language Acquisition, 2nd edition (pp. 356-374). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weist, R., & Buczowski, E. (1987). The emergence of temporal adverbs in Polish. First Language, 7, 217-229.

The Acquisition of Mandarin

Mary S. Erbaugh University of California at Berkeley

Contents Introduction 373 373 Descriptive Sketch of Mandarin Sources of Evidence 392 Chinese Culture and Language Acquisition 395 402 Overall Course of Development The Data 405 Errors 405 Word Classes 412 Word Order 416 Question Answering 419 420 Difficulties with Verb Segmentation Causatives and Enhanced Transitivity 420 Temporality 423 Conditionals and Counterfactuals 439 Topicalization 441 Problems with Sentence-Final Particles 441 Conclusion 442

INTRODUCTION

1. A Descriptive Sketch of Mandarin 1.1. Mandarin and Other Chinese Dialects One billion people speak Mandarin, the most prominent member of the SinoTibetan language family and the official language of media, government, and education in the People's Republic of China and Taiwan. Some 70% of the 1.1 billion citizens of the People's Republic are native speakers, as are some 10% of Taiwan's 20 million citizens, those descended from the mainlanders who retreated to the island with Chiang Kai-shek after the 1949 Communist victory. The

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vast remainder of Chinese are second-language Mandarin speakers. For the past two thousand years, successive forms of Mandarin have been the common language for officials all over the empire, as well as the ultimate model for both the classical and vernacular written language. Beijing pronunciation is standard, but native speakers predominate throughout most of north and southwest China, including Sichuan Province and Yunnan Province, which borders Myanmar (Burma), Laos, and Vietnam. The Mandarins spoken in Beijing and Taibei are mutually intelligible. Separated for only 40 years, they are vastly more similar than the English spoken in London and Boston (Norman, 1988, pp. 181-199; Ramsey, 1987; Zhongguo da baike, 1988, pp. 112-115). Chinese has an additional six major nonmutually intelligible "dialects," each different enough to be considered separate languages in Europe. The Roman Empire split into separate nations, so we call the modem descendants of LatinItalian, French, Portuguese, Romanian-different languages. But the Chinese empire remains united, and the written language is based on Mandarin, so Chinese is considered one language. Even the least-spoken dialects such as Gan have some 30 million native speakers, twice as many as all the Scandinavian languages combined (Crystal, 1987, pp. 312-313; Li & Thompson, 1979, 1981, pp. 2-3; Moser, 1985; Ramsey, 1987, pp. 85-115). 1

1 Academic discussions usually refer to the dialects by the names of the ancient kingdoms in which they were spoken, adding in parentheses where they differ from the English name. Cantonese (Yue) is about as different from Mandarin as French is from Italian. Cantonese is native to only 5% in the People's Republic (PRC), but it is the only Chinese spoken by 95% of Hong Kong and the overwhelming majority of Chinese who live outside China (Norman, 1988, pp. 214-221; Ramsey, 1987; Zhongguo da, 1988, pp. 500-504). The Wu dialect of the Shanghai region is native to 9% in the People's Republic (Norman, 1988, pp. 199-204; Ramsey, 1987; Zhongguo da, 1988, pp. 408411 ). The Xiang dialect, spoken in Mao Zedong 's central native province of Hunan Province, is spoken by 5% (Norman, 1988, pp. 207-209, Ramsey, 1987; Zhongguo da, 1988, pp. 421-424). Hakka, (Kejia, literally 'the guest people') is spoken by northerners who migrated to the southeast mountains of Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangdong, and Sichuan a thousand years ago. Hakka is native to 4% in the People's Republic and to about 5% of Taiwan (Norman, 1988, 221-288; Ramsey, 1987; Zhongguo da, 1988, pp. 237-242). The Gan dialect, contiguous with Jiangxi Province in the southeast is spoken by 3% (Norman, 1988, pp. 204-209; Ramsey, 1987; Zhongguo da, 1988, pp. 89-93). The Min dialects of Fujian Province are native to about 2% in the PRC. Northern and Southern Min are not mutually intelligible. Southern Min is often called Amoy Hokkien, or Taiwanese, because it is the native tongue for about 80% of Taiwan, as well as about 75% of Singapore (Norman, 1988, pp. 228-244; Ramsey, 1987; Zhongguo da, 1988, pp. 292-297). "Taiwanese" as a political term usually includes both southern Min and Hakkas whose Han Chinese ancestors settled Taiwan 300 years ago. "Taiwanese" almost always contrasts with the politically dominant "mainlander" 10% who fled to Taiwan after 1949. Most mainlanders were native Mandarin speakers, though many, including Chiang Kai-shek, were virtually monolingual Wu. About 0.5% of Taiwan residents are Malayo-Polynesian "aborigines" from a variety of ethnic groups. Currently, almost all Taiwan residents under 50 speak fluent Mandarin (Kaplan & Tse, 1982). An additional 7% of China's population is not ethnically Han Chinese but belong to some of the 56 national minorities who live on some 60% of Chinese territory (Norman, 1988, pp. 6-22; Ramsey,

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The Chinese dialects are far closer syntactically than are related European languages. About 80% of the difference between Chinese dialects is phonological. The Mandarin word for meat is pronounced /rou/, whereas the Cantonese word is /yuk/; Mandarin speech is pronounced /hua/; in Southern Min dialect is /ue/. Tones also differ dramatically. Only about 20% of difference among dialects is lexical variations comparable to the differing but overlapping scopes of English girl and maiden and German Miidchen 'girl, maiden'. Where one Chinese dialect prefers a particular form, such as niang rather than mii for 'mother', Mandarin typically also includes the cognate, but in restricted or archaic constructions. Syntactic variation among dialects is minor. Cantonese, for example, puts the indirect object before the direct object, whereas Mandarin does the reverse. Where syntactic variation exists, personal pronouns, negatives, and noun classifiers vary more than word order (Chao, 1968a, pp. 13-14; Li & Thompson, 1987; Moser, 1985; Norman, 1988, pp. 187-190; Zeng, 1988). Most of the grammatical trends described in this chapter are pertinent to other Chinese dialects. I use the term "Chinese" for general features, in contrast to "Mandarin," which refers to forms specific to that dialect. 1.2.

Misconceptions about Chinese

Few languages are as badly misrepresented as Chinese. Early misconceptions need discussion because they remain alive well into the 1990s. "Such a language, so constructed, invites to 'intellectual turbidity' as the incandescent heats of summer gently woo to afternoon repose" neatly summarizes these misconceptions, as stated by a sympathetic observer (Smith, 1894, p. 83). Early European descriptions of Chinese came from classically educated would-be colonialists and missionaries who glorified Greek and Latin inflectional morphology, which, they claimed, stimulated the rise of Western civilization. Even admiring linguists have argued that Chinese "has no grammar" (Karlgren, 1949) or is supra grammaticum 'above grammar' (Giles, 1964, p. xiv). Chinese civilization and the Chinese language are often denigrated together. The Chinese may be praised as gifted poets but are still condemned by their language to remain unscientific, illogical, premodern thinkers, "inscrutable." The orientalist vision of the Chinese as fundamentally alien (whether as

1987). Many are highly assimilated Chinese speakers who no longer speak their ancestral languages. The Democracy movement student leader Wuer Kaixi is ethnically a Uygur Turk but speaks the perfect Beijing Mandarin of his native city. Other important minority languages include very distantly related Altaic languages such as Mongol and Korean; Tibeto-Burman languages such as Tibetan and Yi; Thai-related languages such as Zhuang; and Miao-Yao languages such as Hmong, whose genetic relation is unclear (Crystal, 1988, pp. 306-307, 309, 310-311, 317-319; Ramsey, 1987). Japanese, however, is completely unrelated to Chinese, as typologically different as English is from Turkish or Swahili. Japan borrowed the Chinese writing system a thousand years ago and continues to use Chinese characters, called kanji in Japanese, along with two native syllabaries.

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superior or inferior) encourages extravagant claims of linguistic determinism, the notion that the structure of a language controls the complexity of thought: "The Asian thinks with his belly .... the non-logical character of the verbal expression of Chinese thought is, of course, intimately connected with the characteristics of the Chinese language" (Nakamura, 1960, p. 177). "For the Chinese speaker, speaking and thinking 'theoretically' remain pretty much confined to the domain of the scientist, but for the English speaker . . . they can become a part of the speaker's everyday linguistic and cognitive activity" (A. Bloom, 1981, p. 53). One reason China rejected Christianity is said to be that the grammar makes no morphological distinction between nouns and verbs, obscuring the Aristotelian difference between Being and Essence (Gernet, 1985, pp. 238-247). The Chinese people are said to think via concrete nouns "without having to invent a detour through mental images." Therefore, Chinese babies, unlike Englishspeaking babies, are claimed to be unable to form abstract categories (Hansen, 1983, pp. 6, 52). Not one of these claims stands up to detailed analysis of the language, to experimental test, or data from language acquisition. Psycholinguists have been more careful and have not published their informal, spoken assumption that a language with little inflectional morphology might be simpler to learn because it has "fewer paradigms" or is "just semantics." If this were true, Chinese children should learn their language rapidly, with few errors, with little problem with intelligibility, little difficulty with the grammatical morphemes that do exist, and much early stylistic variation. Yet Chinese aphasics make many grammatical errors (Bates, Chen, Tzeng, Li, & Opie, 1991; Tzeng, Chen, & Hung, 1991). And Chinese acquisition data uniformly reveal a gradual, error-sprinkled development that strikingly resembles that of European children, as well as young speakers of languages as diverse as Hebrew, Samoan, and Sesotho. The hoary misconceptions about Chinese can be summarized as condemning it as "musical, monosyllabic, and misleading." But each epithet can be analyzed to point us toward a more complex, if still incomplete understanding of how Chinese languages do differ from Indo-European. "Musical" is more usefully discussed by analyzing tones, the changes in pitch level that produce Chinese words that differ as much as English mitt and meat. Mandarin jl, pronounced with a high level pitch, means 'chicken'. Butji means 'to mail' if the pitch falls rapidly from high to low. "Monosyllabic" can be shorthand for the fact that virtually all Chinese morphemes are single syllables. English, in contrast, has many polysyllabic morphemes such as berry or -ism. More importantly, most Chinese morphemes can stand alone as full free words. "Misleading," charitably construed, can stimulate closer analysis of how Chinese grammar does convey complex notions of existence, negation, time, aspect, and hypothesis. Usable analysis demands seeing Chinese grammar as an integrated system, rather than isolating single categories to "stretch its flesh to fit the skeleton of European

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grammatical categories" (Kuo, 1937). Frequently, Chinese grammar does not fit Western categories. When we try to look for the boundaries between morphology and syntax on one hand, and between morphology and the lexicon on the other, we find that although some things can be said to be clearly within one or another of these three domains, other things lend themselves equally well to being included in either morphology or syntax, or else in either morphology or the lexicon. (Cikoski, 1978, p. 45)

1.3. Chinese as an Analytic Language with Covert Grammar Chinese is often called an isolating or an analytic language, according to early 19th-century terminology that has yet to be supplanted (Comrie, 1981; Crystal, 1988, p. 293). Analytic languages such as Vietnamese or Mandarin abound in words that are single morphemes. Word order and word choice vary by independent words rather than bound grammatical morphemes (Norman, 1988, pp. 712, 84-87). In agglutinative languages such as Turkish, strings of grammatical morphemes are affixed to the stem one after another. Inflectional languages such as Hebrew, Mohawk, Latin, or Russian make many changes in the word root itself. English has lost most of its Germanic inflectional morphology and become much more analytic like Chinese. But even in English, a past tense morpheme makes a vowel change between sit and sat, and adds a suffix for looked. The -ed past tense morpheme cannot function as a full word and is phonetically bound to the verb; the vowel change is an abstract rule, not a word at all. The English subject first person pronoun is /, but me is the only grammatical choice for a direct object. But in Mandarin, the same verb is used for past and present tense, the same pronoun for both masculine and feminine, for subject and direct object. ( 1)

Wo zu6tiiln yesterday

kiln look

til, him/her,

til jfntiiln she/he today

kiln look

wo

me

'I looked [at] him [or her] yesterday, he [or she] is looking at me today'

Note that word order is SVO for both clauses and that conjunctions are usually omitted. Much more syntactic complexity and explicitness are also possible. In many languages, most grammatical distinctions are marked by surface morphemes, as with French gender and number agreement or with English tense or plural. But other grammatical categories can be described as covert, that is, unmarked lexical categories that must be learned for each word. The distinction between English transitive and intransitive verbs forms a covert category. No surface morpheme signals learners that she dreamed a dream is transitive, but sleep is an intransitive verb. *She slept a dream is ungrammatical. The notion of covert and overt grammatical categories was first developed by Whorl.

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A covert category is marked, whether morphemically or by sentence pattern, only in certain types of sentence, and not in every sentence in which a word or element belonging to the category occurs. The class-membership of the word is not apparent until there is a question of using it or referring to it in one of these special types of sentences, and then we find that this word belongs to a class requiring some sort of distinctive treatment .... They easily escape notice, and may be hard to define, yet they may have profound influence on linguistic behavior. (Whorf, 1956, pp. 88, 96)

Chao organized his monumental Chinese grammar around the delineation of covert categories (1968a, p. 9). In these terms, Chinese word order and negation are overt grammar. The main features of Mandarin are typical of other analytic languages such as Burmese, Thai, and Vietnamese, as well as other Chinese dialects. This chapter discusses them by moving from the phonological level to a discourse level, both for linguistic description and acquisition data. Phonologically, Mandarin has numerous HOMOPHONES. Every morpheme has a distinctive pitch level or TONE, which is as central as its vowel to conveying its meaning. Grammatically, Mandarin has numerous covert WORD CLASSES, including distinctive NOUN CLASSIFIERS, which specify a noun by its shape (e.g., long skinny things) or by function (such as vehicles, books, or clothing). Mandarin uses extremely strict WORD ORDER, which is overwhelmingly Subject-Verb-Object, without inflections for agreement with the verb. It also uses TIME ADVERBS and ASPECT MARKERS, which are often suffixed on the verb, rather than tense for time relations. At the discourse level, TOPICALIZATION and SENTENCE FINAL PARTICLES knit together meaning beyond the sentence. 1.4. Phonology

1.4.1. Lexically Contrastive Tone. Chinese, like many other related and unrelated East Asian languages such as Thai or Vietnamese, assigns a lexical pitch called tone to every morpheme (Chao, 1968a, pp. 25-39; Li & Thompson, 1981, pp. 3-9). Tone changes produce words as different in Chinese as beat and bet. Written Chinese uses different characters for different meanings. Pitch contours can be diagrammed iconically with "tone letters." But alphabetic transcriptions use the more easily printed diacritics for each morpheme. With only four tones, Mandarin has fewer tones than any other dialect. Table 6.1 gives a sample of the various elements of written Mandarin. Morphemes can lose their tone in unstressed syllables, becoming "neutral tones," written without a diacritic. Neutral tones are common for grammatical morphemes. Ql 'rise' has a low dipping tone when used as a verb. The first word of the Chinese translation of the Communist Internationale is q{-lai 'rise-come' 'arise!' But q!has a neutral tone when suffixed as a directional complement to the

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TABLE 6.1 Mandarin Tones Word

Character

Tang

~

Pitch

Tone Letter

Meaning

High level

I

'soup'

Tang

Wi

High rising

~

'sugar, candy'

Tang

Mn1

Low dipping

-../1

'to recline'

Tang

~

High falling

~

'scorching hot'

main verb for stand, zhan-qi-lai 'stand-rise-come' .2 Full tone often signals that a grammatical syllable can also function as a free word, usually as a verb. Neutral tone signals bleached, bound status in Mandarin more than in any other dialect. Additional tone rules, called SANDHI, alter the citation tone when syllables with particular tones follow one another (Chao, 1968a, pp. 27-29). Stress and intonation rules also apply to Chinese sentences in a manner that is still poorly understood. (Chao, 1968a, pp. 35-44, discussed many patterns; see also Norman, 1988, pp. 148-149; Shen, 1990.) Some people wonder if it is possible to whisper or sing in Chinese (con brio!) Others wonder whether Chinese sounds like singing. In fact, phonemically contrastive pitch range is much narrower and more rigidly patterned than song. Others ask if Western music can be sung in Chinese. (Yes, including La Boheme, though occasionally tone interference can mean that "Happy Birthday to You" can be sung perfectly in Mandarin but not in Cantonese [Chan, 1987].) 1.4.2. High Homophony. Chinese has more homophones than most languages. And Mandarin has fewer phonemes than any other dialect, having moved farthest away from the more complex historical sound system. Mandarin has a particular small inventory of possible syllables, some 400 compared with tens of thousands of potential English syllables. In Mandarin, only a few consonants can begin a word. No consonant clusters are allowed, and no syllable can end with a consonant. The sole exceptions are final-nand -ng, both of which are rapidly disappearing into nasalized vowels in Yunnan and Taiwan. (Final nasals did something similar in French, where vin 'wine' is actually pronounced vf.) Even multiplying 400 possible Mandarin syllables by four tones yields only 2 Romanization of spaces as opposed to hyphens in this chapter involves a few compromises between linguistic conventions for neutral tone affixes and standard orthography as described in Yin and Felley (1990).

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about 1,200 possible syllables, once we exclude nonoccurring syllables comparable to a nonexistent English word such as keet. Non-Chinese who have learned the written language character by character from dictionaries often exaggerate the degree of homophony, claiming that Chinese is inherently ambiguous. The misconception that Chinese words are monosyllabic is reinforced because Chinese characters are written with a space between every morpheme. And morphemes in isolation make the most impressive puns. As the classical language had many more phonemes, many more words were monosyllabic, and an extremely terse style was favored (Li & Thompson, 1987). Chao (1968b, pp. 120-121) used classical grammar to construct tongue twisters composed entirely of what are single syllables, such as shi or xi in modem Mandarin, about 10 stone lions shooting arrows at one another. But modem Mandarin uses compounds very heavily. Far from being monosyllabic, the average Mandarin word now has two-and-a-half morphemes. That is, one now usually talks about 'candy' not as tang but tang-guo 'sugar-fruit'. Translating I like reclining as *wo xlhuiin tiing *'I like [to] recline] is ungrammatical. One must add a complement, e.g., tiing zai ciiodi shang 'recline LOC [the] lawn LOC:on' ('recline on the lawn'). Compounding is so widespread that in this chapter I give syllable-by-syllable translations only for those compounds whose grammar is under discussion, thereby sparing the reader the etymology lesson forced on readers who must decode the characters for 'papaya' mit-guii as 'wood melon'. Spoken Mandarin, in fact, is no more ambiguous than English, which copes with homophones such as right, wright, and write or can of tomatoes as well as can laugh (Chao, 1968b, p. 173; DeFrancis, 1984, chapters 4, 5). In 72 hours of transcribed adult and child conversations, I found only a few dozen ambiguous words. 1.5. Word Classes are Morphologically Identical If grammar is defined as inflectional morphology, which must include case, number, gender, and verb agreement, with stem changes, then Chinese has no grammar. Chinese morphemes do not vary internally. Surviving English inflectional morphology marks adverbs such as ridiculously with an -ly suffix; nouns can be marked with many suffixes, such as -tion or -ness. Chinese has almost nothing like this. Context often determines case. yu chf-le 'fish eat-PFV' can mean either '[someone] has eaten up the fish' or 'the fish has finished eating [its food]' (Chao, 1968a, p. 75). 'Your horse rides very well' nf de mii qi de zhen hiio is perfectly clear in a riding stable. Ungrammatical sentences would be impossible in a language without grammar. Yet, Chinese learners produce great waves of ungrammatical sentences until they master overt word-order rules and the covert and irregular word class distinctions. Pronouns, it seems, could hardly be simpler, as shown in Table 6.2. There are

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381

TABLE 6.2 Mandarin Pronouns wo nT tii

'I/ me' 'you' 'he/she/it; him/her/it'

women nTmen tiimen

'we/us' 'you:PL' 'they/them'

no case or gender distinctions, no honorifics, and no familiar-polite variants. W6 xlhuiin tii means 'I like him/her/it'; ta xlhuiin w6 means 'he/she/it likes me'. Yet covert complexity arises because 3rd person tii refers primarily to human beings, particularly in sentence-initial subject position. Tii sounds very bad even to refer to animals. It is ungrammatical to use tii as an equivalent of English it for an inanimate in subject position for first mention of an item. Describing a papaya as 'it [is] really sweet' *tii hen tian' is bad. The plural suffix -men is even more strongly human, so *tiimen hen tian 'they [are] really sweet' is worse still. (Tii is tolerated as a dummy pronoun in object position in informal speech.) The grammar of tii is also strongly controlled by verb usage. Statives sound bad enough with inanimate subjects, but active verbs are worse. Zero subject is preferred. Even climatic conditions are zero subject, as in xia yule 'down rain PFV' for 'it's raining'. If we translated an English sentence about the 1906 earthquake, It destroyed San Francisco, as *tii huimie-le Jiujfnshiin 'it destroyPFV San Francisco', the result is so ungrammatical that it is nearly incomprehensible. An idiomatic translation topicalizes San Francisco and leaves the agent unstated: Jiujfnshiin huimie-le 'San Francisco [was] destroyed'. Inanimate subjects should not be pronouns, but rather a noun or a demonstrative plus a noun classifier, as in na-ge 'that CLASS:general' ('that one'). Subject ellipsis is very extensive. An "empathy hierarchy" and preference for informative rather than dummy initial noun phrases mean that "San Francisco" should appear sentenceinitially, followed by a subject marker for adverse events, and then the verb Jiuifnshiin bei miediao (Li & Thompson, 1981, pp. 492-508). Chinese traditionally had no morphological markers for word class. Traditional grammars simply distinguished between FULL WORDS with semantic weight, as opposed to EMPTY WORDS, grammatical morphemes such as particles and aspect markers. But almost all grammatical morphemes also have an independent meaning. Guo, for example, is the neutral tone verb suffix for past experience, as in (2). (2)

wo

chf-

guo

she-rou

I

eat-

PAST.EXPERIENCE

snake-meat

'I have had the experience of eating snake meat'

Experiential past contrasts with simple perfective, which typically implies definiteness as well. W6 chf-le she-riJU 'I eat-PFV snake meat' translates as 'I have

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eaten the snake meat', perhaps as one of many dishes on the table. But guo in full citation tone, using the same character, can also stand alone as a full verb that retains its historic meaning 'to cross over' and, metaphorically, 'to experience'. Guo malu means 'cross [the] street'; guo shengri means 'to experience a birthday'. Contrary to popular belief, word classes are not intechangeable in Chinese. Unlike English, modem Mandarin does not allow nouns to be used as verbs or adjectives as in "let's table the motion" or "that jacket is very New York." Word classes are fluid, but are still defined distributionally, not merely by their position in the sentence (Chao, 1968a, pp. 496-505; L. Wang, 1977, pp. 20-34). Nouns follow determiners, take nominal and diminutive suffixes such as -zi and -er, and cannot be directly preceded by a negative. *Bu zhuozi 'not table' is ungrammatical. Verbs are any word that can be directly preceded by a negative. Verbs subdivide into active, stative, and process verbs (Teng, 1975). Each verb type controls its own subset of rules for aspect, complementation, and causation, as described in a schematic decision tree in Figure 6.1. Covert categories govern predication for each verb, and its complements depend on whether it is classified covertly as an active or stative or process. Active verbs, such as xie 'write', can take a completive complement -wan 'finish' as well as perfective -le, as in xiewan-le wenzhiing 'write essay' 'finish writing essay'. Active verbs can take preverbal subjects that are either agents or patients: wo xie-wan-le wenzhiing 'I finished writing the essay' or wenzhang xie-wan-le 'the essay is finished' 'as for the essay, [someone] finished writing it'. However, stative verbs, which often correspond to English adjectives, cannot take either agents or completions: shu{ hiio Leng 'water very cold' '[the] water is very cold', shulleng-le 'water cold-PFV' '[the] water got cold'. But *shullengwan-le 'water cold-finish-PFV' and *wo Leng-le shu{ 'I cold-PFV water' 'I cold-ed the water' are both ungrammatical. Figure 6.1 diagrams these verb relations as a flow chart. After choosing a verb, the speaker must sort it as an active or a stative. If stative, it may take a patient and a perfective. If active, the verb must be further subcategorized as perfective, potential, or progressive. If it expresses a change of state, then cause, result, and potential also require analysis. Stative verbs are often equivalent to English adjectives: (3)

Gui expensive

de MODIFIER

mugua papaya

hiio very

tian sweet

'The expensive papayas are really sweet'

But unlike English adjectives, Chinese stative verbs also function as full verbs that take verbal suffixes. They do not require a copula or an auxiliary.

w w

00

State Stative, Perfective

Add Patient

State Verb

Add Patient

N

y

y

FIG. 6.1.

Add Agent, Patient

Citation Form

State Object Complement

Add Agent, Patient

State Modal +Main Verb

Add Agent, Patient

Choose Verb eg YAO 'want' au 'go·

Add Agent, Patient

Simple Completion Verb + b.£

Schematic decision tree for Mandarin verb types.

Add Agent, Patient

Progressive

State Verb +

Auxiliary eg t!J.!! 'can' NENG 'able'

N

Add Agent, Patient

Process- Action State Verb + Result + Perfective

N

y

Add Agent, Patient

State Verb, Result, Perfective

384 (4)

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Muguii papaya

guiexpensive-

le PFV

'Papayas have become expensive'

Although many Mandarin stative verbs can be used as causatives, many others cannot. Each case must be learned individually, with no inflectional clues to show that wo re-le tang 'I hot-PFV soup' 'I heated up the soup' is fine but *wo xian-le-tang 'I salty-PFV [the] soup' 'I salty-ed the soup' is ungrammatical because it lacks a lexical causative such as wo bii tang nang de tai xian-le 'I OBJ.MKR soup make MOD too salty PFV' 'I made the soup too salty'.

1.6. Case Functions Expressed by Verbs Chinese has an additional class of grammatical words called COVERBS, which express the equivalent of case relations. Coverbs are often translated with English prepositions (Li & Thompson, 1981, pp. 356-359). But coverbs are all descended from full, free verbs and can frequently function independently as such (Li & Thompson, 1981, pp. 172-183). Table 6.3 lists case functions of coverbs. (5)

Wo ziii I

l.DC

chezi car-

shang l.DC.on

kiinread-

shu book

'I'm reading on the bus' Shei who

shiingl.DC:on-

le PFV

chezi? car?

'Who got on the bus?'

1. 7. Noun Classifiers Mandarin is one of hundreds of unrelated languages, such as Thai, Mohawk, Bantu, and American Sign Language, that use noun classifiers. Classifiers specTABLE 6.3 Case Functions Expressed by Coverbs Co verb

Meaning as Full Verb

Case Role

b{J

'grasp' (archaic) 'give' 'use' 'follow' 'be present' 'follow' 'arrive'

Object Marker Dative, Benefactive Instrumental Comitative Locative Ablative Terminal

gei yong g{m

zai c6ng

dao

Adapted from Norman, 1988, p. 163.

6.

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385

ify a noun when it is used with a determiner or a number or to stand in for it, much like a specialized pronoun. In Chinese, one cannot say the literal equivalent of a bird or those two tables. One must say 'one CLASS:animal bird' yl zhl niao, or 'that two CLASS:flat object table' na liang zhiing zhuozi. At the market one points to the nicest bird in the cage, saying wo mai zhe zhz 'I buy this CLASS:animal' 'I'll buy this one [animal]'. Chinese noun classifiers, as recorded from about 1400 B.c., developed much like the classifier systems in numerous world languages (Erbaugh, 1986). Historically, culturally valued objects received classifiers earliest. These objects then became prototypes whose features were extended, as when the Chinese word for 'branch' came to classify long, skinny things as tiao. Special classifiers rather than general ones appear in discourse settings where the referent is not present and in danger of being misconstrued, such as narratives, inventories, lists of booty. Current dictionaries list over a hundred special classifiers in addition to a general-purpose ge classifier. Specialized dictionaries of classifiers, etymologies, and usage discuss up to 900 (B. Chen, Chen, Chen, & Zhang, 1988; Wang & Wu, 1989). Special classifiers can be divided roughly into shape classifiers and function classifiers. Shape classifiers are especially prominent for the three dimensions, several each for long, flat, and roughly spherical objects. Important function classifiers denote animals, vehicles, clothing, buildings, and machines. Unlike most classifier languages, Chinese has never had a classifier that defines either animates or humans (Chao, 1968a, pp. 654-683; Erbaugh, 1984, 1986; Li & Thompson, 1981, pp. 104-113). Prescriptive grammars claim that each object must take a special classifier. Chinese adults say that using the general ge classifier rather than a special one sounds typically childish. But special classifiers are actually rare in conversation. Tape-recorded adult narratives and conversations average only one special classifier for every 30 to 100 sentences. Even classical Chinese teachers routinely use ge where they would claim a special classifier is required, as in yz ge chezi 'a CLASS:general car' rather than yz liang chezi 'a CLASS:vehicle car'. The same referent can be described by a variety of special classifiers, according to context and the speaker's emphasis. Twenty young Chinese women taped descriptions of the same 7-minute film; not a one used the same set of classifiers to describe the identical objects. Even the interviewer, who taped a film narrative based on the interviews, watched the film and then taped her first-hand narrative, used different classifiers in each telling. A goat, for example, on screen only 7 seconds, was described with different classifiers, including 'long-thing' tiao, 'animal' zhl, 'head' t6u, as well as general ge (Erbaugh, 1984, 1986).

1.8. Strict SVO Order Mandarin word order is far stricter than English. Chinese word order has been Subject-Verb-Object for at least three thousand years (Norman, 1988, pp. 113-

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132). Over 90% of modem spoken and written Mandarin sentences are SVO (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 250-258; Sun & Givon, 1985). There are only a few mutually exclusive choices for reordering in Mandarin. Order is strict because Chinese has no inflectional morphology for subject-verb agreement, number, gender, or case. Subject is either the Agent of an active verb or Patient of a stative or process one. Canonical order for the full range of sentence elements is: (6)

Agent

wo

Time

Place

Action

jintiiin

ziio shang

zai

jia li

biio-le

today

morning

at

home LOC:in

wrap-PFV

I

Patient hiio

jlge

llwu

very

many CLASS

gift

'This morning at home I wrapped quite a few gifts'

Virtually any order variation yields an incorrect or incomprehensible sentence. English order, though rigid compared with Russian or Hebrew, is far more flexible. Varying time, location, or indirect object is routine: I wrapped quite a few gifts at home this morning; This morning, at home, I wrapped quite a few gifts; At home, I wrapped quite a few gifts this morning; Lois sent me an armadillo; Lois sent an armadillo to me. English also allows sentence order that reverses real-time order: Give me a call before you eat brealifast. Before you eat brealifast, give me a call. Mandarin allows only iconic order (Tai, 1985). Mandarin equivalents to these variants are so jarring that they prompt the normally tolerant Chinese to ask with annoyance, "Why do you foreigners always talk like that?", much as an American cabby would react to a visitor who said *Take me to airport the. Mandarin order is so crucial that it cannot be permuted. Unlike speakers of Yiddish or Turkish, Mandarin speakers do not reorder for emphasis, embellishment, or clarification. They repeat, emphasize parallel grammatical forms, and vary their intonation, particle use, and word choice (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 263265). The only important Mandarin order variant allows object fronting to OV to highlight a completed action on a concrete patient. An object marker, bii, etymologically 'to take in one's hands', often marks such fronted objects, as in (7) (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 191-220; Li & Thompson, 1981, pp. 463-491). (7)

Wo bii

muguii

qie-

hiio-

le

I

papaya

slice-

finish-

PFV

OBJ.MKR

'I've finished slicing up the papaya'

1.9. Question Forms that Match Declaratives Question forms are simple. Wh-question order matches declarative, using a wh-pronoun:

6. (8)

a. Nl you

zhiio search

The Acquisition of Mandarin

387

shei? who?

'Who are you looking for?' b. Zhiio [I] search

Lfn Lin

ay1

Aunt

'[I'm] looking for Aunt Lin'

Yes-no questions can be formed several ways. Rising intonation on a declarative, much like English, is permitted in informal conversation. A question particle can also be added to the end of the sentence, as inn{ x{huiin ma? 'you like PART.Q' 'do you like it?' Particles such as ma also include subtle discourse assumptions. Ne solicits agreement or requests omitted information, as in hai you ne? 'also exist PART.Q' 'and what else?' The extremely common V-not-V construction is grammatically complex but more neutral socially. The main verb stem is followed by a negative and a verb. (9)

Nl You

yao want

bu not

yao want

kan look

dianylng? movie

'Do you want to watch a movie?'

Mandarin has no single word for 'yes' or 'no'. Answers must copy or negate the verb in question. (10)

Yao want '[Yes, I] want [to]'

(11)

Bu not

yao want

'[No, I] don't want [to]'

Negative bit also divides compound verbs such as xie-zi literally 'write characters' 'write', as in Nl xie bit xie-zi? 'You write-not-write characters?' 'Are you writing?' The answer must copy the verb stem. Answering xie 'write' is equivalent to 'Yes, [I am] writing'. 1.1 0. Time-marking Without Verb Tense

Chinese, like other isolating languages such as Thai and Vietnamese, has no tense changes on verbs. Event time is marked by adverbs comparable to yesterday or later. Time then remains unmarked in subsequent utterances until the temporal reference changes. But the verb root itself remains unchanged. Note how the verb chang 'sing' in (12) remains constant, even when used as a sentence subject equivalent to an English gerund or infinitive.

388 (12)

Erbaugh

Meimei little sister

qunian last year

changxl, sing opera,

chang sing

de MOD

bu-cuo not bad

'Last year [when my] little sister sang Chinese opera, [she] sang pretty well' Tii jfnnian she this year

chang sing

alqing love

gequ song

'This year she's singing Jove songs' Nl you

tfng, listen,

tii s/he

zheng this moment

zai PROG

chang sing

'Listen, she's singing right now' Zheyang this way

chang sing

zhen true

tfng listen

hiio-

good

'This kind of singing sounds really good' Dengwaittii she

yione-

zai again

xia moment chang sing

changsing-

shenme what

wanfinish-

le, PFV,

nl you

xiang think

gequ? song?

'In a minute, when she's done, what do you think she'll sing next?'

Following Berman and Dromi (1984), time adverbials can be subcategorized into aspectuals, connectives, and temporals. Aspectuals define internal properties of the situation (e.g., already). Connectives link situations sequentially (e.g., later). Temporals specify local situations in time. These may be deictic (e.g., now), or they can be indexed to an external reference point (e.g., on Sundays).

1.11. Aspect Prominent Aspect is a second major time category, one that describes the internal contour of events. The distinction between completed events, such as I have baked a cake, and ongoing ones, such as I'm baking, is particularly important in Mandarin. Mandarin aspect defines event boundaries, particularly a contrast between perfective and imperfective aspect. Perfective is marked by the -le verb suffix. Durative is marked by an unbound zai progressive, as well as by a much less frequent -zhe verb suffix for durative. (A sentence-final particle ne also implies duration in a restricted set of discourse contexts.) The fourth important aspect morpheme is the -guo suffix for past experience (P. Li, 1990; Li & Thompson, 1981, pp. 184-237). Table 6.4 summarizes the four Mandarin aspect markers. The -le perfective is by far the most common aspect marker. Unmarked, wo chilo fidan 'I fry egg[s]' is tacitly present, translatable as either 'I fry egg[s] (habitually)' or 'I am frying egg[s]'. Suffixing perfective -le means either 'I have fried [the] egg[s]' or I fried [the] egg[s]'. Adding time adverbs can alter these to the equivalent of past or future perfect. A clear demonstration that -le marks

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389

TABLE 6.4 Mandarin Aspect Markers

Morpheme

Function

Form

Example

-le

perfective

verb suffix

zai

progressive (main verb) durative (posture or background) past experience

adverb

huai-le 'bad-PFV' 'has broken' zai xlzao 'PROG wash' 'is bathing [now]' chuiin-zhe ylfu 'is wearing clothes'

-zhe

-guo

verb suffix

verb suffix

fei-guo 'fly-EXP' 'has experienced flying'

aspect, not tense, is sentences such as kiii-le, guiin-le 'boil-PFV, shut-PFV' used to mean 'when [the tea water] boils, shut if off'. The -le perfective verb suffix has a near-pair in a sentence-final particle le, which is pronounced identically and written with the same character. The final particle adds what Li and Thompson (1981) call "Current Relevance." Wo chao jfdiin le highlights the immediate social importance of an activity; it might imply 'hey, don't eat that cereal' or 'look at me, at last I've learned to fry eggs'. Both perfective -le and Current Relevance le can appear in the same sentence. Wo chO.o-le jfdiin le implies 'I have fried [the] egg[s] (so now you can eat breakfast, it's your tum to make toast, call everyone to the table)' (Li & Thompson, 1981, pp. 185-217, 296-300). Many researchers claim that both perfective -le and sentence-final Current Relevance express the same basic notion of inchoative or "contrast to previous state" (Chappell, 1988; Li, 1990). Note, however, that many dialects, including Cantonese and Wu, distinguish phonologically between the perfective and sentence-final Current Relevance (Chao, 1968a, pp. 798799n.). The other important aspect markers are imperfective and past experiential. Mandarin marks imperfective only contrastively. English I'm writing translates as simple wo xie-zi 'I write-characters'. Mandarin has two imperfective morphemes. The preverbal ziii progressive adverb highlights prominent actions, as in wo ziii xie-zi 'I PROG write-characters' 'I am writing now (so don't bother me, I'm not drawing, tell the guests to wait)'. A second imperfective, the bound -zhe durative verb suffix, is added to a backgrounded, subordinate verb, to provide a context for the main verb, as in wo xie-zhe-zi ting yinyue 'I write-PROGcharacters listen music' 'I listen to music while writing' (Li & Thompson, 1981, pp. 202-203, 217-226; Light, 1989).3 A second, less frequent usage of -zhe

3 Note that -zhe progressive cannot describe two simultaneous actions described as being equally prominent. 'I'm writing and I'm listening to music' translates as wo xii!-zi tfng yfnyue 'I writecharacter listen music' or wo you xii!-zi you tfng yfnyue 'I both write-character both listen music'.

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describes postures and locations, as in qiangbi-shang gua-zhe ylfu hua 'wall-on hang-PROG one CLASS:painting' 'a painting hangs on the wall'. The adverb hdi 'still', usually combined with a modal or a progressive, can also mark imperfective: shui-zhdo-le mei? 'sleep-rest-PFV NEG-PVF? 'are you asleep yet?' Hai mei ne. Hai xiang kan-shii 'Still NEG-PFV PART. Still want read-book' 'Not yet. I still want to read for awhile.' Iteratives are marked by reduplicated verbs, usually in the sense of 'do something a little bit'. Shei lai gen wo pao-pao-bu? 'who come with me run-run-foot' 'who's coming jogging with me?' Often, the word yl 'one'; 'a bit' is infixed: shei lai pao-yi-pao? 'who come run-one-run' 'who wants to come run a little?' Reduplications abound in speech to young children.

1.12. Negation and Aspect Negatives also distinguish between perfectives and nonperfectives. The mei negative appears with existential verb you 'have, exist', as in mei you lai 'NEGPFV exist come' 's/he has not come yet'. Often, you is omitted in casual speech. Mei also negates verbs with the zai progressive. Mei perfective occurs in complementary distribution with the general negative bu. *Bit you lai is gratingly ungrammatical. Bu negates all nonperfective verbs. Experientials and stative verbs with bu include: nage wo bu xlhuiin 'that I not like' 'that one, I don't like'; zhege bu h6ng 'that not red' 'this one isn't red'. Bu does modify generic and habitual statements using active verbs: jlijiren bu chi rim 'robot NEG eat meat' 'robot's don't eat meat'; Lin Shiishu bu ch6uyiin 'Lin Uncle NEG smoke' 'Uncle Lin doesn't smoke'. Many active constructions, of course, use a modal before a bu negative: tii bu hui Jiang Riyu 's!he is not able to speak Japanese'; bu xiang tiaowu de xiao pengyou bu duo 'NEG want dance-MOD little friend NEG many' 'only a few children don't want to dance'.

1.13. Sentential Nominalization for 'What Happened Was ... '

Sentential nominalizations affirm or deny a supposition. The following example might explain why someone could not speak English. Merely stating that they had arrived the day before takes the simple perfective. With the shi ... de sentential nominalization, the subject and the shi "copula" are followed by a verb phrase and a de nominalizer: Til shi zu6tiiin lai de 'slhe COP yesterday come NOMINALIZER' '[the situation is that] s/he came yesterday' (Li & Thompson, 1981, pp. 587-593.

1.14. Conditionals Conditionals set the conditions under which a second proposition would be true. They contain two clauses by definition: 'if you go, I will'. English conditionals are divided into three types: reality conditionals in the "real world" as in If

6.

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391

you heat water to 100 degrees, it boils; If you are tired, stay in bed this morning. Imaginative conditionals describe unreal or imagined conditions. One type is hypothetical, as in If I won the lottery, /' d be amazed. A second type is counterfactual; it describes what could have been true BUT wAS NOT: If John Kennedy had not been assassinated, he would be in his 70s; If you had taken my advice, you wouldn't be in this mess. English makes grammatical distinctions for conditionals using conjunctions such as if or unless, as well as changes in auxiliary verbs, tense and aspect markers, as well as the more literary (and moribund) subjunctive mood, as in if I were a carpenter (Li & Thompson, 1981, pp. 646656). Mandarin makes no verb tense or mood changes for conditionals. Clauses are often juxtaposed without a conjunction. If you go, I will too can be translated N{ qu, wo ye qu 'you go, I also go'. As the condition required is frequently a time, a place, or a series of events, Mandarin conditionals are often implicit, based on the speaker's understanding of the relationship between events. They overlap strongly with serial verb constructions, particularly those describing time or place. Order is iconic, first the condition, then the consequence. Unmarked conditionals have either a reality or an imaginative reading: Zuo jeijf, n{ ylding tai de j{ 'take airplane, you certainly come-POT-reach' '[if] you fly, you can certainly make it on time'; '[if] you were to fly, you would certainly be able to make it on time';. '[if] you had flown, you would have been able to make it on time' [but you didn't]'. Greater explicitness is always possible, in both classical and modem languages (Norman, 1988, pp. 106-108). Informal conditionals often insert conjunctions, such as jiu 'as soon as, then, in that case' or na conjunction meaning 'then, in that case', between the clauses. More explicitly conditional conjunctions comparable to if or in that case also exist and include ruguo, yaoshi, and jiiishl (< stative verb }iii 'false' + shl 'if, supposing'). Explicit conditionals begin with a conjunction, followed by the clause, and then a tag de hua 'MODspeak' comparable to English so to speak. Modal auxiliaries, including hui 'can', and key{ 'have permission to, may', and -le perfective, are often included as well. (13)

Ruguo

n{

zuo

Jeijf

de

hua,

if

you

take

airplane

MOD

speak,

yfding

Lai

de

jf

certain

come-

POT

reach

'If you fly, you can certainly make it on time' Jiii-

shl

n{

zuo-

le

jeijf

de

hua,

jiu

false-

suppose

you

take-

PFV

plane

MOD

speak,

then

hui

Lai

de

ji

sure

come

POT

reach

'If you had flown, you would have made it on time'

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1.15. Frequent Topica/ization Topic is a discourse-level function. Subject, in contrast, reflects a sentencelevel grammatical relationship with the predicate. In Mandarin, a topic can be appended before the beginning of any socially appropriate sentence, typically before the subject. Topics can always be set off by an optional sentence-internal particle. Although the subject is often the topic, a sentence often has both a subject and a topic. (14)

Miiguii papaya

a,

zhe xie

PTL:topic

this

TOPIC

group

dou all

ldnrot-

diaooff-

le PFV

SUBJECT

'As for papayas, these are all rotted'

2. Sources of Evidence

The Chinese people traditionally delight both in language and in small children. Pre-modem Chinese believed that the songs children sang while playing revealed the supernatural. They transcribed and analyzed them, even basing political decisions on them (Eberhard, 1986, p. 63). The cynical philosopher Xunzi (Hsun Tzu), himself in exile from his native kingdom, noted in the third century B.c. that "while the children of various regions make the same sounds at birth, they learn to speak quite differently as a result of training." Xunzi argued that the importance of environment was so strong that he could not accept the prevailing Chinese belief that humans were born with a single, normal, "good" pattern of conduct (Creel, 1953, p. 120). An article on child Chinese acquisition of phonology appeared in 1759 (cited in S.-M. Tse, 1980, summarized in Kam, 1975). The very influential late 19th century reformer and politician Kang Youwei advocated universally available nursery schools for communal childrearing. Impressed at hearing that infants worldwide made the same basic sounds, he selected 16 sounds as basic and elaborated on them with explanatory material to be used for a phonetic primer. His daughter was to pursue the scheme, but no records survive (DeFrancis, 1972, p. 36; I. Hsu, 1983, pp. 364-373). Twentieth-century work on child Chinese is sparse and uneven. The very homogeneity and relative progressiveness of traditional views of child development made the subject less intriguing and controversial than in the West. The cataclysms of the 20th century, a Japanese occupation, 40 years of civil war, a world war, and the strain of building a new society in a bitterly poor nation all took a toll on social science. Soviet psychology was influential in the 1950s, but orthodox Chinese Marxists look askance at psychology as encouraging elitist individualism at the expense of broader social reform. Research on personality, individual differences, and IQ testing has been particularly discouraged. All university social science departments closed for 10 years during the Cultural

6.

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393

Revolution (1966-76); most contact with foreign research ceased. Recent research is often restricted to physiological and pedagogical applications. Similar forces handicap psychology in Taiwan. However, psychologists have managed to contribute a great deal to developing modem preschool and grade schools; improved reading curricula are especially successful. Despite these obstacles, a 1925 textbook on child psychology discussed language acquisition (H.-Q. Chen, 1925). Kuo (1937) took a Piagetian approach in analyzing shorthand transcriptions of spontaneous speech by 3 to 7 year olds. She found a gradually increasing but still incomplete mastery of complex sentences and narratives. Kuo's work appeared 1937, the year the Japanese invaded. In 1951, Y. R. Chao produced the first extensive study of child Chinese, a phonological analysis of phonograph recordings of Canta, his 28-month-old Mandarin-speaking granddaughter. Canta lived with Chao's extended family in Berkeley, California. Chao (reprinted in 1973) provides phonetic transcription of an extensive vocabulary, useful grammatical notes, as well as short but authoritative discussions of syntax, semantics, and context. Unfortunately, Canta's Mandarin seems heavily influenced by English. All Chao's work, including his monumental grammar (1968a), uses the extremely complex romanization of his own invention. The pinyin romanization developed in the People's Republic has been the standard for the United Nations and the United States since 1979. All examples in this chapter are rendered in pinyin. Since 1978, the Center for Developmental Psychology at East China Normal University in Shanghai has performed dozens of experimental studies with hundreds of Mandarin-speaking children between the ages of 1;6 and 10. Topics include: comprehension (Zhu & Wu, 1986b); compound sentences (Zhu, Wu, & Miao, 1986; Zhu & Miao, 1989); word order and animacy (Miao, Chen, & Ying, 1986); personal pronouns (Zhu, Chen, Ying, & Zhang, 1986); demonstrative pronouns (Zhu, Cao, & Zhang, 1986); datives and instrumentals (Y. Wang, 1986); time adverbs (Zhu, Wu, Ying, Zhu, & Zhuang, 1986); noun classifiers (Ying, Chen, Song, Shao, & Guo, 1986); adjectives (Yuyan fazhan, 1986); causatives (Zhu & Wu, 1986b); questions (Miao, 1986); spatial direction (Zhang, 1986); picture description (Wu, Ying, & Zhu, 1986); social influences on language acquisition (Wu & Zhu, 1986); comparisons between deaf and hearing children (Zhu & Wu, 1981) and normal, deaf, and blind children (Zhu & Wu, 1986a). Phonology has also attracted much interest. Clumeck ( 1977) and Li and Thompson ( 1977) are experimental and observational studies of Mandarin tone acquisition. J. K.-P. Tse (1978) discusses his son's acquisition of Cantonese tone. Hashimoto (1971) and Light (1976) discuss acquisition, the extensive tone play, and tone loss among their children who grew up in North America speaking Mandarin and Cantonese respectively. P. J.-K. Li (1978) describes the overall acquisition of Mandarin phonology. Word-class distribution and sentence length are the focus of short articles by

394

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Yuan ( 1977), who taped a 2 year old as he looked at picture books with his mother; by Wu and Xu (1979), who taped four children from birth to age 3; and by Chen and Ryback (1974), who also discuss numerous tone errors, vocabulary, and syntactic examples based on 15-minute recordings from four children aged 1;4 to 2;8. Chen (1973) finds more imitation errors in picture descriptions by lower-class children than upper-class ones. Su (1978) briefly discusses IQ and language among 2- to 3-year-old English-Chinese bilinguals. Huang and Hatch (1978) present a detailed quantitative discourse analysis of the acquisition of English by a 5-year-old Taiwanese-speaking kindergartner in Los Angeles. Studies of the acquisition of negation, and early question comprehension, based on extensive analysis of tapes and diaries of the author's son appear in Lee ( 1981, 1982). An experimental study of the acquisition of quantificational scope appears in Lee (1986, 1989). Spontaneous speech and storytelling by 461 4 to 6 year olds are analyzed in R. Wu (1987), who finds that the temporal, conditional, and emphatic functions of the jiu adverb develop in tandem. Li ( 1990) is a major experimental study of the acquisition of aspect, analyzed in terms of inherent verb semantics (Aktionsart). Some syntactically oriented research is deeply flawed because it selects a single "universal" syntactic structure from English, translates it into ungrammatical Chinese, then elicits single-sentence responses, out of context, with ambiguous materials (Bloom, 1981; Chien & Lust, 1983; Chien & Wexler, 1989; Lust & Chien, 1984; Packard, 1988; Yau, 1981). Skepticism is justified. Two separate replications of A. H. Bloom (1981), by Au (1983, 1988) and Liu (1985), found that once test materials were translated idiomatically, even grade-school Chinese children could master abstract concepts that Chinese grammar was alleged to make inaccessible to adults. Using socially appropriate subject matter enhanced children's scores even more. Pragmatic and sociolinguistic studies remain rare, but Poggi (1982) discusses spontaneous imitations and those elicited while reading picture books with the mother. Farris (1988a, 1988b) extensively videotaped Taibei nursery schools to analyze the acquisition of a peculiarly female, flirtatious sa jiao speech style and its selective use by little boys. Careful cross-cultural comparisons between American and Chinese children are the focus of Flavell, Zhang, Zou, Dong, and Sen's (1983) experiments on the appearance-reality distinction, as well as Stevenson, Stigler, Lucker, and Lee's (1982) study of reading and dyslexia in school children. "Literate" strategies in preschool narratives are analyzed in HongFincher (1987). Erbaugh's studies (1978, 1982, 1983a, 1983b, 1984, 1985, 1986) focus on the pragmatic context for the acquisition of syntax. They are based on 64 hours of audiotaped longitudinal home visits with four Chinese children aged 1; 10 through 3;10 in Taibei, Taiwan, and constitute the main data for this chapter. All four were Mandarin monolinguals, selected after interviews with 20 Mandarinspeaking families who had immigrated to Taiwan from north China. Three moth-

6.

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395

ers and one father were teachers of Mandarin. One father was a police officer; the other parents did business. I audiotaped hour-long visits with Pang, a girl aged 1;10, and Kang, a boy aged 2;10, every other week for 12 months in 1979-80. I also recorded seven hour-long visits with Laohu, a boy aged 2;0, over 2 weeks' time and 9 hours with a girl, Zhongrong, aged 2;6, in an 8-week period in 1976. A young Chinese woman followed the child with one tape recorder, while I whispered a running contextual description into a second machine. I became friendly with all the families, visiting them many times without taping. Adult conversations on the tapes form a control, as do 19 adult Chinese descriptions of a short film. Chinese consultants and I transcribed, contextualized, and checked the corpus. I coded the 135,000 interpretable child utterances for syntax, checking the analyses with native speakers. I then performed statistical tests (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 45-113). The four unacquainted Taibei children acquired language in strikingly similar patterns, despite their varied personalities. Two of the children, Kang and Zhongrong, both only children, were highly verbal and aggressive; both frequently experimented with language. The two youngest children, Pang and Laohu, were relatively taciturn but precise. The Taibei children were talented. Follow-up visits to Zhongrong when she was 6 years old found her spontaneously reading books written for sixth graders. At age 14, Kang earned an A average at the best junior high school in an Ivy League university town, a mere 18 months after his family immigrated to the United States. Pang's family also immigrated. Both the former "wild children" grew into lively but quietly courteous school children. Overall, speech style and language acquisition in the Taibei homes strongly resembled that of Chinese children of similar class backgrounds in the People's Republic, Hong Kong, and Singapore, as well as the conversations recorded among intellectual families in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Berkeley, Tel Aviv, and Tokyo (Slobin, 1985b). 3. Chinese Culture and Language Acquisition

3.1. Beliefs about Child Development Chinese traditionally believe 'from the very beginning, humans are good by nature', ren zhl chii, xing ben shan 'person MOD beginning, nature root good' (San zi jing 1988). These are the first two phrases in The Three Character Classic, the first text memorized by new readers for over a millennium and still in print today. In a view much closer to modem psychology than traditional European values, children are considered as neither innocent nor sinful but in need of education. No single critical moment is seen as igniting a "divine spark" or an age of reason. The behavior of pregnant women is believed to influence the fetus through 'fetal education' tiii jiao. A two-thousand-year-old annal says:

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In ancient times, before manners grew corrupt, princesses used to be careful to eat correctly when they were pregnant, and to listen to nothing but sacred music. They were especially strict about their language, keeping it moderate and dignified so that the child in the womb should not be exposed to any harmful influence (Levi, 1989, p. 58).

Legend has it that the mother of the Qin Shi Huang Emperor ignored this advice when she was pregnant with the tyrant who later unified the empire and commissioned a pottery army for his tomb at Xi'an. At birth, the future emperor cried so fiercely that his nurse refused to take care of him, saying he would be the ruin of his family (she was beaten to death) (Levi, 1989, p. 58). In the 1990s, the tradition of "fetal education" has reappeared in modem form to include widelyused educational tape recordings for pregnant women to play by their bellies. Newborns are believed to continue a rudimentary gestational consciousness and to have some understanding. Healthy, intelligent babies should be calm and happy, not cry too much or "babble senselessly." Parents and older children look newborns in the eye and talk with them, often supplying dialogue for conversations with other adults. At 18 months, the vegetative stage of infancy or yfng er is complete. The child is considered a developed person because "its form and spirit are complete," because it walks, understands speech, and can express human emotions of joy and sorrow. Once children 'understand reality' dong shi, a more orderly education can begin (Furth, 1987, pp. 12, 21, 23-26). Even bitterly poor, illiterate peasants distinguish the same words used for childrearing among intellectuals. Yang 'to raise' is used like its English equivalent, to refer to plants and animals, as well as children. It contrasts withjiao 'to teach' in a more active sense, which is the parent's responsibility. Children's duty is xue 'to memorize, to learn' practical, scholastic, and moral skills (Ward, 1985a, p. 191). Informal surveys of parents in Beijing and Taibei indicate that parents spontaneously mention both biological destiny and parent's modeling as crucial for language development, but they disagree as to when children are considered to understand language. Traditional and modem beliefs about children, morality, and education are discussed in the first chapters of Munro ( 1977), in Chiang (1952), Chin (1988), D. Y. F. Ho (1986), Liljestrom et al. (1982), Tobin, Wu, and Davidson (1989, pp. 72-125, 195-205), and Wolf (1968, 1972). China is justly famous for strikingly uniform, long-sustained ideals about childrearing and education. But social class and poverty, of course, force tragic compromises (D. Wu, 1981). In famines of the 1930s, men stood by the roadside selling their wives and children as laborers, priced by weight. "Bathing the baby" was the euphemism for drowning a newborn girl whom the family could not afford to feed. Urban intellectuals bitterly criticize peasants for treating their children "like animals." A proverb equivalent to "still wet behind the ears," derides naive young bumblers as "still wearing dirt trousers." In the 1990s, millions of babies, born near the upper reaches of the Yellow River, still spend

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their days sitting alone, immobilized, stuffed into bags of porous clay with only their heads and arms peeping out. This region is bitterly poor even by Chinese standards; a full-time worker earns only U.S. $25.00 PER YEAR. Parents are away all day, except for noon, when the baby is nursed. They take the baby out of the bag only to change the clay. Parents say "bagging" produces model children who seldom cry and are "more polite and obedient, as well as more intelligent." They resent efforts, such as those by Wu Fenggang, deputy head of the Beijing Child Development Center of China, that encourage parents to change the silt more often, to pick up their children, and to play with them more (Branson, 1990). The Chinese traditionally believe that childrearing is a group responsibility, too important and demanding for parents to handle alone. Contrary to popular belief, the Communists did not introduce child care outside the nuclear family. In traditional China, Taiwan, and the People's Republic alike, Chinese parents routinely send young children to live with distant relatives or families of servants, with little concern about possible trauma (Tobin et al., 1989, p. 103). Grandparents, other older relatives, and preschool teachers are believed to provide more patient and stimulating childcare than inexperienced and impatient young mothers (Chin, 1988, pp. 47, 66, 74, 77, 172-173). Mothers are traditionally expected to work to augment family income. Pang lived with her maternal grandparents in Taibei while her parents spent most of their time doing business in the United States. Both mainland and Taiwan intellectuals are distressed to hear that American (and Japanese) women are pressured to stay home full-time. They expressed concern about the waste of the mother's talents, education, and income-earning ability, as well as the possible harm to children from overindulgence and lack of social stimulation. Like the Japanese, the Chinese indulge preschoolers in a "universal amnesty" for much behavior that Americans consider unacceptable, such as emptying the contents of an adult's purse or hitting the mother. (Although from first grade on, Chinese schoolchildren are among the most disciplined in the world.) Several factors seem to reinforce the toddler's "amnesty." In the extended family, someone, often an older sister, is expected to hold the child in her arms or carry the child on her back at all times. Crawling is discouraged from revulsion at dirt and cold. Subsistence-level families own very few breakable objects, and children are included in almost all activities, where their presence provides a welcome diversion. Children's uninhibited comments and antics provide a welcome release to disciplined Chinese adults. Unsophisticated adults, who love children, will often deliberately knock a toy out of the child's hands to provoke a reaction. Adults comment, "these are children, it doesn't matter. They don't feel pain the way adults do." Adults are also unlikely to fuss over scrapes, falls, or tantrums. The adult Chinese ability to remain calm and avoid conflict even under intense crowding may be developed under childhood conditions that combine frustration and indulgence (Ward, 1985, pp. 173-176). Politeness, other than using names and titles, is much less emphasized and

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discussed with Chinese preschoolers than among young Japanese (Clancy, 1985) or Mexican-Americans (Eisenberg, 1982). Adults also traditionally do not say 'please' or apologize to children, although some foreign-influenced Chinese now criticize this as unfair (Bo, 1985, pp. 28-29). Preschool is seen as extremely desirable, especially for only children. But contrary to popular belief, only about 23% of children in the People's Republic attend preschool (57% in the cities; 14% in rural areas, where 80% of the population live) (Zhongguo ertong, 1988). Taiwan preschool attendance rates are similar. Rural children who do not attend preschool are discussed in Wolf (1968, 1972) and Lofgren (1982). Reports from Western scholarly delegations describe family life and nursery school curriculum in a wide range of cities, both during the Cultural Revolution, when questions about ability grouping understandably made teachers uneasy (Kessen, 1975), and in the 1980s (Liljestrom et al., 1982). Tobin et al. (1989) videotaped representative Chinese, Japanese, and American nursery schools. Videotapes of orchestrated, uniform group activity in the Chinese school elicited negative comments from some elite Chinese, as well as many Japanese and Americans. Chinese cultural continuity is so strong that preschools and childcare for corresponding social classes are very similar throughout China and Taiwan, according both to published reports and my own observations. Taiwan preschools are as structured and politicized as mainland schools, but with a Nationalist rather than Communist ideology (Tobin et al., 1989, pp. 122-123 ).

3.2. Language Addressed to Children Chinese from every social background use a distinctive speech style when talking to very young children. Chinese "adultese" includes a phonological component that aids children in segmenting compound words; a social component that emphasizes names and kinship terms; and a quiz style of conversation that prepares children for success in school. Preschool children are also vigorously drilled in memorization and precise retelling of adult model stories (HongFincher, 1987; Noren-Bjorn, 1982, pp. 59, 81-83; Tobin et al., 1989, p. 81). 3.2.1. Chinese Adultese as an Aid to Segmentation. Child and adult speakers of both sexes address toddlers in a register that resembles the crosslinguistic patterns for baby talk (Ferguson, 1977) and motherese (Snow, 1977). Chinese adultese includes much reduplication, is higher pitched than ordinary speech, and exaggerates pitch contours in both tone and intonation. Reduplication highlights the root noun or verb in a compound. Often it eliminates the modifying noun or verb complement. In Mandarin, niii 'milk' always means HUMAN milk. (Many "foreigner jokes" focus on this distinction.) All other milk is niu-niii 'cow

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milk', reduplicated as niiiniii 'milk-milk'. The reduplicated noun receives a high level tone. Similarly, the verb tiao-wu 'dance-hop' ( = 'to dance') eliminates the noun complement, reduplicating the main verb as tiaotiao. A slightly more complex variant reduplicates the noun complement, especially if it is free. 'To eat' is literally 'eat [cooked] rice' chfjan, reduplicated as chifanjiin. Reduplication and the perceptually salient high level tone aid segmentation and substitution in this analytic language (see Peters, 1983). A comparison of motherese in other analytic tone languages such as Thai would determine how universally accessible such tone alternations are. 3.2.2. Names as a Model for Social and Linguistic Structure. Confucian societies stress that adults must teach children their social roles. Every 2 year old I asked could tell me that he or she was a Chinese. Personal names also reflect the clan-based Chinese social organization. In old China, first graders learned one hundred of the most common surnames when they memorized their second primer (San zi jing, 1988). In China, the ratio between surnames and given names is inverse to Europe. Chinese surnames are a closed set of a few hundred; over half the population has one of the 10 most frequent names such as Wang, Chen, or Li. Given names, in contrast, are an open set, chosen from ordinary vocabulary. Traditionally, same-sex cousins or siblings are given the same first name, followed by a different but semantically parallel middle name. Brothers or cousins might be named Wei-guo 'protect the nation', Wei-zong 'protect the clan', and Wei-min 'protect the common people' (Chao, 1956; Yang, 1945, pp. 68-72, 257-263). With the rise of one-child nuclear families, single-syllable, phonetically pleasing names such as Ylng 'hero' have become fashionable all over the Chinese-speaking world. Mastering names is important for English-speaking children (Katz, Baker, & Macnamara, 1974). But naming is socially central in China. Where English mothers will say what do you say, dear? to prompt a please or thank you, Chinese mothers will say, what do you call Uiao] so and so?, that is, "use the right term of address and greet this adult politely" (Ward, 1985b, p. 191). Even newborns are playfully urged to say 'Mama' and 'Papa', as well as kinship titles. Parents, other adults, and older children interpret early vocalizations as names. A squealed /iii/, for example, will be interpreted as yi 'maternal aunt', used for adult women in general. Babbling babies are conventionally asked playfully but persistently, jiao baba hai shi jiao mama? 'say papa or COP say mama?' 'Are you asking for papa or mama?' until they produce a syllable that can be glossed as a name. Strangers in the park or on a bus greet babies with this phrase rather than a hello. Two and 3 year olds are urged to address adults and older children by name when they enter the room. Starting just after age 2, children are coached to master surnames, given names, and kinship terms for themselves and their parents (mothers use maiden names) and relatives. Surname plus title is usual, as in Yang Liioshf 'Teacher

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Yang' or Mfw Zhi1x[ 'Chairman Mao'. Surname also appears in family titles: Chen Biaojie 'Chen maternal-line older sister', 'older female maternal cousin surnamed Chen' 'Cousin Chen'. At 2;4, Canta's (Chao, 1973) vocabulary included productive use of: English daddy, mommy (used for her own mother only), grampa and grandma (used interchangably); Er y[ 'Second [in birth order, maternal] Aunt'; Er ylju '[second in birth order, maternal aunt's husband] Second Uncle'; Bobo 'Older Paternal Uncle', used for addressing men of her father's generation; Gonggong 'grandfather', for men of her grandfather's generation; Gong-b6 'great uncle-uncle', a coinage for men of an intermediate generation; Meimei 'younger sister', for girls (and sometimes boys) her age or younger; Nainai 'granny', usually used with surname, for women of her grandmother's generation; Xiao Yl 'little aunt'; Siin Yi 'third aunt'; Si Yl 'fourth aunt'; and Yi 'maternal aunt'. Xiao Jing ('Little Classic') (1 ;4) produced nine different kinship terms during a single 2-hour visit (Erbaugh, 1982, p. 171). Children address strangers with kinship or occupational titles, as in Siji Bobo 'Elder Uncle Busdriver', Hushi Ayi 'Auntie Nurse', or even Jlefangjun Shushu 'Younger Uncle Soldier from the People's Liberation Army' (= 'Uncle PLAman'). (Beijing editors finally rebelled at translating that one for English-edition children's books.) The Chinese expand the human family to include unknown children in ~icture books and on the street. They become xiao di 'younger brother' or xiao mei 'younger sister', not 'the little girl' or 'the little boy'. Foreign researchers sound friendlier and more respectful if they talk about 'little friends' xiao pengyoumen, rather than 'children' xiao haizimen. 3.2.3. The Quiz Style of Conversation. The quiz style of conversation is normal for older children and adults who talk to young children. The adult asks a question with a preselected answer in mind, then persists in asking the child until he or she produces precisely the designated answer. Often the answer is modeled as well. The quiz style develops even before children begin to talk, frequently at around 18 months. Lin (1968) reports a child (1;3) who eagerly responded to her mother's scripts that began 'say... ' Slightly older children are prodded until they answer queries like 'is the bunny cute?' or 'what does the bunny look like?' Divergent replies such as 'no' or 'funny' are dismissed as luanjiang 'disorderly talk', 'nonsense'. Questioning is lighthearted but persistent. One godmother rephrased the same question for 5 minutes before her 2-year-old goddaughter said the microphone 'looks like an ice cream cone'. (Lee, 1981, and Poggi, 1982, contain many examples.) The quiz style appears among all social classes in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and American Chinatowns as well as the People's Republic. Older children of both sexes use it with younger children. Children as young as 2;6 use it with infants and dolls, much as Andersen (1977) found American 2 year olds able to code-switch to a younger speech style. Remnants of the quiz style remain in teachers' speech at all levels, as well as in adult speech to

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subordinates, particularly when consensus is expected, as in 'is everybody happy?' The quiz style emphasizes VERB-NOT-VERB questions. Copying the verbs for an answer helps segment verbs and complements, as in xl-bu-xlhuan chang gu6-ge? 'like-NEG-like + enjoy sing nation-song?' '[Do you] like singing the national anthem?' American-style open-ended questions such as what would you like to play? or what did you do today? are often inappropriate. Children (and adults) often go silent before replying. The quiz style prepares the child for success in Chinese schools, which stress obedience, choral response, and memorization. Strong support for education allows Taibei (and Tokyo) children to do much better in grade school reading and arithmetic than carefully matched Minneapolis children do, according to Stevenson et al.'s comparative study (1982). Cross-culturally, the same speech act plays vastly differing roles. Chinese recitations differ from American ones less in kind than in their importance, frequency, and classical emphasis. The Chinese value an exact repetition of standard printed texts. Adults and older children model rhymes, stories, and songs routinely throughout the day (Chin, 1988, pp. 64, 182-183; Lee, 1981; Poggi, 1982). Three year olds from intellectual families proudly recite Tang dynasty poems for guests, comparable in difficulty and incomprehensibility to an Arkansas child's reciting passages from Beowulf. Popular anthologies print thousand-year-old poems and stories for 4- to 8-year-old children to memorize. One series publishes a dozen such titles, each with original texts, modern colloquial translations, notes on obscure vocabulary, and coaching tips for parents (Xia & Gu, 1987). White American working-class Southern families also prefer standard stories (Heath, 1983, pp. 149-165). However, where the Americans, prompted by religion, worry that childish variations are lies, the Chinese typically see a need for tighter discipline to insure scholastic and financial success. Middle-class Chinese expand children's comments and rehearse the children on naming objects, much like middle-class Americans and Japanese (Clancy, 1985). Rural working-class African-Americans (Heath, 1983) and the Kaluli of New Guinea (Schieffelin, 1985, p. 531) avoid such expansions, the African-Americans because they seem trivial, the Kaluli because expansions imply a witchlike ability to read minds. Chinese adults often ask children to imitate their expansions. The Kaluli and the Japanese also frequently model speech. But the goals differ. Kaluli models teach the child to be verbally assertive (Schieffelin, 1985, pp. 531-532), whereas Japanese models train the child in empathy and politeness (Clancy, 1985, pp. 491-492). In the United States, intensive adult modeling is associated with pressure from status-conscious, upwardly mobile parents. But the Chinese quiz style transcends social class as the ordinary, relaxed, and happy style of conversing with small children, one that guarantees them both lines to speak and rewards for responding successfully.

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4. Overall Course of Development

4.1. The One-word Stage Before age 2, speech is simple and relatively error free, because uninflected single words are grammatical. The mean length of an utterance (MLU), which corresponds very closely to English norms (Brown, 1973, p. 54), hovers below 2.0 (Chen & Ryback, 1974; Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 88, 670; Lee, 1981, pp. 20, 1982). Adults and older children scaffold a very high percentage of children's speech. Vocabulary and speech acts are distributed across all major categories, including social routines. In addition to kinship terms, concrete nouns are the most numerous subcategory. Examples include hud 'flower', ml 'uncooked rice', fan 'cooked rice, food', and dian 'electric', which was used for 'TV' (dianshi 'electric vision'), dianhua telephone ('electric speech'), and dianxian 'electric cord'. The same early predominance of nouns appears crosslinguistically in English, Turkish, Japanese, and Kaluli. Gentner ( 1983) argued that the perceptual salience and stability of nouns make them particularly accessible. Nouns also predominate in other Mandarin studies (Kuo, 1937; T. Wu & Xu, 1979; Yuan, 1977). Verbs, the second most numerous group, spread across many categories, including actions such as qu 'go', activities such as niao 'urinate', experiences such as pa 'fear, be afraid', stative verbs for adjectival states such as piaoliang 'pretty', and directional coverbs such as xia 'down, get down'. Modals are extremely rare, confined to answers to adult questions. No time adverbials such as 'tomorrow' appear. Aspect markers are extremely rare, largely confined to the zai adverb meaning 'again'. Niu's clear but ungrammatical request *zai@ tang! 'again 0 soup' omits a verb such as lai 'bring' or yao 'want'. The null sign 0 signals omission of a grammatically required morpheme. Manner, modality, coverbs, serial verbs, and particles other than generally emotive a are nonexistent or extremely rare (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 152-160, 295-307, 455-458, 538-553, 567-577, 670-671). The Taibei error rate is lower than that for older Chinese children, but still significant, with about four errors for every one hundred utterances. Lee (1981, pp. 22-44) records development, including ability to copy verbs, in answering questions, pragmatic imperatives, omission of main verb such as 'drink' he, in statements like *yao@ shu! 'want 0 water'. By age 1;8, Min had four negative concepts: nonrecurrence, nonexistence, negative volition, and negative imperative. These were often distinguished by intonation or gesture rather than word choice. Occasional spontaneous statements used agent-actionpatient or serial verbs at 1;9, as in 'Minmin blows balls [bubbles]' and 'drive a car to see Big Sister Xingxing' kai che kan Xingxing Jiejie 'drive car see Xingxing Sister' (Lee, 1981, p. 29). Children under 2 converse very informatively.

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Niu (1;10) thinks she hears someone outside the window in the bamboo grove (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 174-75). Shei? 'Who?' (Looks outside, answers self.) Mei not

you exist

fJ

0

(Standard Order

=

Mei you ren 'not exist person')

(A few minutes later.)

Aunt:

You exist

ren person

mei? not?

'Is/was anyone there or not?' Niu:

You exist '[There] is/was'

Here, Niu introduces a topic, asks a question, answers, excites some adult consternation, then answers a later adult follow-up question by copying the verb in the question.

4.2. The Emergence of Strong SVO Order The clearest overt syntactic marker is strong SVO order. It emerges as multiword utterances become more common with MLUs fluctuating between 1.8 and 2.5 (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 81, 87; Lee, 1981, p. 45). Children produce many sentences that are either SV or VO, but very few SVO. However, they have mastered the order contrasts for subject and object. Patient-objects consistently come after active verbs. Preverb subject position is reserved for agents of active verbs and subjects of statives and processes. Reordering aVO phrase to topicialize it as OV does not occur in my data. The majority of verbs are agentive actions, with the child as agent, as in wo chf 'I eat' or wan zhege 'play [with] this'. The second most common predicates are also SV patient-punctual descriptions of inanimate objects, usually objects the children themselves manipulate, as in chezi huai-le 'car break-PFV' 'the car is broken'. A few SV patient-state descriptions appear, for example, huii hiio piaoliang 'the flower [is] very pretty'. The most common modal is yao 'want', used for the child's own desires as in *yao hua fJ gougou 'want [to] draw 0 doggie'. Time marking remains extremely rare, with the exception of an occasional deng-yi-xia 'wait a moment', largely restricted to the child's description of his or her own imminent plans, rather than, say, as an imperative. Le sprouts up everywhere but is ambiguous between perfective and current relevance as it appears only as a sentence-final element.

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4.3. Rigid Order and Enhanced Transitivity Fluent speech blossoms when the children are between 2;3 and 3;2, with MLUs fluctuating between 3.0 and 4.0. Word order is rigidly SVO at first, as the children apparently refuse to vary the clearest and most overt rule they know. Separating compounded verbs seems very difficult. Modals such as hui 'can, might', neng 'can, able to' proliferate. Children emphasize highly transitive relations, especially with themselves as agents. They use many causatives, both conventional ones, such as nong-huai-le 'make-break-PFV' 'broke', and anomalous ones, such as peng-fang 'bump-put down' to describe an unsuccessful attempt to smash a balloon. Causatives emphasize result but often omit a verb for the process. Verb complements for completion are common and correct. But progressives and duratives lag far behind perfective. Event time is rarely marked, except for an occasional xianzai 'now' or mlngtian 'tomorrow', usually used appropriately. Duration is almost never marked. Manner is only rarely modified with kuai 'fast' and hiio 'well'. Benefactive gei 'give' becomes common, usually with the child as giver or recipient. Serial verbs expand to include lai 'come, gonna', qu 'go', giin 'dare', and bang 'help'. Re-ordering experiments appear with both the bii object marker and the bei agent marker, especially in emphatics and imperatives. Children frequently misinterpret such purely grammatical morphemes as semantically full verbs. *Bu yao bii wo@ *'not want OBJ.MKR me 0' 'don't BA me' is incorrectly used to mean 'don't bump me' bu yao bii wo pengshang. Discourse-controlled topicalization and idiomatically used final particles remain largely beyond reach.

4.4. Full Sentence Predicates After about age 3;2, MLU above 4;0, children good control of full-sentence syntax. They frequently mention someone other than themselves as agent. Threeterm sentences with agent, action, and patient become common. The most common modals are used correctly, as are serial verbs. Main verb is still often omitted. Aspect expands to include the past experiential -guo, as in nl qu-guo Taizh6ng mei you? 'you go-EXP Taizhong not have?' 'have you ever been to Taizhong?' Several events can be ordered within a single sentence, including contingent events. As in adult speech, these are usually not marked with conjunctions, tianqi hao, women qu y6uyong 'weather good, we go swim' 'when the weather is good we [can] go swimming'. But background aspect, especially progressive, remains problematic. Sentences such as ta shut}iao de shlhou tamen jiu ldi-le 'she sleep-MOD-time they that moment come-PFV' 'They arrived while she was asleep' are almost nonoccurring. Irrealis begins to be marked lexically with jiiizhuang 'pretend'. Result, goal, and end location are usually correct. But process, duration, and background location of activities are usually unmarked. The children experiment with discourse-sensitive particles, reordering, topicalization, and time marking, but they frequently have difficulty.

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Sentence-internal re-ordering emphasizes salient patients (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 321-326). Unmarked frontings are usually correct, as when Pang (2;10) picked up a chess piece saying zhege na gei jiejie 'this take BEN big sister' 'this one [I'll] take for big sister'. But struggles with coordinating aspect between foregrounded and backgrounded actions and states continue throughout late childhood.

THE DATA 5. Errors

5.1. Typical Errors If learning Mandarin really were "just semantics," grammatical errors would not exist. I calculated an overall error rate for the Taibei children as a preliminary crosslinguistic comparison (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 136-171). Little opportunity for grammatical error exists at the one-word stage, but error rates rose rapidly as soon as multiword sentences appeared. Taibei children as a group showed a surprisingly high rate of utterances that are ungrammatical by adult standards: eight errors of omission, misuse, or word order for every one hundred utterances. (This does not mean that 8% of all utterances were ungrammatical, as many sentences had more than one error.) Omission errors were defined as a nonappearance of a grammatically obligatory element. I scored these conservatively according to the most taciturn adult equivalent. The very frequent, colloquial ellipsis of contextually clear subject or object, chf-bao-le 'eat-full-PFV' '[1/you/someone] has finished eating, is scored as correct. Pang, showing off five stuffed animals, remarked *w6 hOi fJ zhege 'I also 0 this'; I scored one error for the missing main verb. Laohu asked me to pull down the bars of his crib by saying *fJ-xia 'down' (= lii-xia-lai 'pull-down-come'). I coded two omissions, one for the missing main verb and one for the missing directional complement. Misuse errors included inappropriate word choices, such as describing applying a salve as fang 'put down' rather than cii 'wipe'. Inappropriate double markings also counted as misuse errors, as when a child showed off a doll saying *zhe shi w6 de de 'this COP I POSS/NOM POSS/NOM' 'this one is mine's'. Later and higher-frequency order errors include locatives that displaced source position to the end of the sentence.* W6 kiii che zai zhebian 'I drive car be at here' 'I'm here driving the car to there' is incorrect for w6 zai zhebian kiii che 'I LOC here drive car' 'Here I am driving the car'. Overall, the Taibei children had an error-to-utterance ratio of 8%. "Sins of omission" far outweighed other errors: 58% of all errors were omissions. Misuse errors comprised 35%, and order errors a mere 7%. The youngest children had the lowest error rates: Errors averaged 4% at age 1; 10. Errors then rose steadily: 7% at 2;4; 11% at 2;10; between 7% and 21% between 3;0 and 3;8. After 3;8,

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errors fell rapidly to about 5% thereafter. For Pang, all error types rose between ages 1;10 and 2;10, whereas Kang's error rate first rose then fell between ages 2;10 and 3;10. Kang's omission errors declined, whereas misuse and order errors held constant. The Taibei children had stunningly similar error patterns. The five most frequent errors were: (1) omission of main verb (12% of all errors), (2) bad verb choice, (3) omission of the de possessive/nominalizer, (4) bad adverb usage, (5) omission of an auxiliary verb such as yao 'want' or hui 'able to'. These five most frequent errors accounted for 44% of Pang's errors and 31% of Kang's (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 148-150). These errors appear frequently in accounts of other children (Chao, 1973; Kuo, 1937; Lee, 1981). Yet this error pattern testifies to the children's increasing grasp of the covert structure of Mandarin. The very size and flexibility of the verb class encourages children to omit main verbs. They behave as though auxiliaries, coverbs, and locatives preempt the main verb. The rarity of grammatical morphemes, as well as their many competing functions, trigger many errors. De, for example, functions as a possessive, a nominalizer, a potential marker, and a relativizer. Order errors were rare by comparison; less than one in every 100-200 utterances for Pang and Kang. This comparative rarity testifies to the overtness and consistency of standard order. The more covert, irregular, or discontinuous the grammatical device, the more slowly the children mastered it. Re-ordering to SOY, instrumentals, benefactives, infixes, separated verbs, and complements; and descriptions of processes, potentials, and durations all continued to develop after the children were 4 years old. Double-marking the few purely grammatical morphemes (the bii object marker, bei subject marker, the de nominalizer/possessive, and -le perfective) persisted through elementary school. Sentence-internal grammar was far easier than grammar for discourse relations, which required coordinating chains of sentences. Topicalization, sentence-final particles, backgrounded progressive aspect, backgrounded source location and source time, quantified distance and duration, and stative sentences were particularly difficult.

5.2. Nonoccurring Errors The pattern of nonoccurring errors also testifies to the children's grasp of the fundamental organization of Mandarin. The strength of SVO means that SVO was occasionally retained even where object fronting was obligatory. 'I give older sister this' *wo gei jiejie zhege incorrectly preserves familiar SVO order. But the child avoids the more complex, obligatory OV re-ordering with or without the bii object marker, wo (bii) zhege gei jiejie 'I (OBJ.MKR) this give older sister'. Only five examples of the reverse error, substituting OV for the dominant VO, exist in the Taibei corpus. All five appeared in the extremely early preorder stage, before age 2;0. They included *zhege kan 'this look' rather than kan

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zhege 'look [at] this' and *yfnyue tfng 'music listen' for tfng yfnyue 'listen [to] music'. Agentive role was salient. The Taibei children always put agent in correct preverbal agent-V position. They did not ever make the reverse error, V-agent, which would put agent in the postverbal patient position after an active verb. Errors like *tiitowu w6 'dance I' for 'I'm dancing' simply did not occur. A postverbal noun must always be interpreted as a patient (if no other verb follows it). Nor did experiencers appear after a stative verb in patient position. Errors such as *lei w6 'tired I' did not occur. Nor did the children put patients before actions, as in *h6uzi huit 'monkey draw' for the meaning 'draw (a) monkey'. Bowerman (1985, p. 1296) suggests that subjects of intransitives provide the critical test of whether children begin with a language-neutral or languagespecific strategy for nominative-accusative or ergative patterning. The Mandarin-speaker's intransitives indicate that children are sensitive to languagespecific patterns equivalent to case relations from the beginning, as their intransitive subjects are all correct. Children also adhered closely to an empathy hierarchy. They strongly preferred human and animate agents and inanimate patients. The ba object marker and the bei "passive" subject marker are especially sensitive to this weighting. Children never produced sentences like the following, which, to non-Chinese, sound like logical translations of English passive sentences such as the disease killed her, the puppy was chilled by the cold wind, and the box was kicked in. *Blng ba tii shii-s!-le 'disease OBJ.MKR s/he kill-die-PFV'; ?jeng ba xiao gou guit-leng-le 'wind OBJ.MKR little dog blow-cold-PFV'; ?hezi bei tf-huiti-le ?'box SUBJ.MKR kick-bad-PFV'. In Mandarin, the more animate being must be subject. Cause may be demoted to a resultative verb in tii bing-s!-le 'she sick-diePFV' 'she died of disease'. Animals can take the bei subject marker xiao gou bei jeng guit-leng-le 'little dog SUBJ.MKR wind blow-cold-PFV' 'the puppy was chilled by the wind'. But lowly inanimates such as boxes seldom merit a bei. A patient subject with a causative verb suffices: hezi tf-huiti-le 'box kick-bad-PFV' 'the box was kicked in'. Children as young as 4 years responded much like adults. They weighted animacy very strongly in interpreting word order. A total of 120 Chinesechildren between 4;0 and 13;6 and adults-used toy animals to act out scrambled sentences with uninflected verbs (Miao, Chen, & Ying, 1986). The experiment included both animate (animals) and inanimate nouns (adapted from Sinclair & Bronckart, 1972; Slobin & Bever, 1982). Children and adults performed almost perfectly on sentences with NVN order, so long as order followed animateanimate (the puppy pushes the kitty) or animate-inanimate (the bunny throws the ball). Without SVO order, performance deteriorated dramatically. However NNV (the bunny the kitty push), with 54% correct overall, was much better than the aberrant VNN (push the bunny the kitty) at 32%. OV subject marking accounts for the difference.

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Animacy was critical. Both children and adults performed very badly on inanimate-animate order (the bowl throws the kitty). Adults were very unwilling to act these out with first noun as actor; only 35% were correct, even with canonical NVN order. Children were less sensitive to animacy and/or more willing to suspend disbelief. Among 4 year olds, 64% acted out inanimateanimate sentences. Willingness rose to 96% of the 7 year olds, then fell to adult levels by age 13. School-age children were learning to topicalize and permute word order, and so loosened their rules. Noncanonical order with inanimates decimated performance. NNV the ball the kitty push scored 16% overall, 8% for adults. Push the ball the kitty, VNN, was even worse: 4% overall, and a mere 0.8% for adults. These results contrast dramatically with European results in which both children and adults were willing to permute both word order and animacy, though they were sensitive to dominant order in their language (Sinclair & Bronckart, 1972). Native English speakers, fluent in Mandarin, also differed from native Chinese in their willingness to permute order and animacy (Miao, 1981).

5.3. Generally Error-free Acquisition 5. 3 .1. Tone. Tone is a critical clue to morpheme boundaries. It develops smoothly and is nearly error-free, under control many months before the segmentals (Chao, 1973; Clumeck, 1977; Lee, 1981, Li & Thompson, 1977; Tse, 1978). The earliest words use correct tone, though the high rising and low dipping tones are sometimes closer in pitch than they should be. Very young children often use exaggeratedly correct citation tone even on neutral syllables, probably to enhance analysis by creating maximally distinct citation forms. Comprehension of tonal contrasts appeared perfect. At 3;4, Kang performed perfectly in a comprehension experiment. He acted out directions that contrasted tonal minimal pairs using dolls named Xiao Xing (high level tone) and Xiao Xlng (high falling). He fed them soup tang (high level) or sweets tang (high rising). He acted out the "good daddy" who 'rocked them a little' yao yf yao (high rising tone) and the "bad daddy" who 'bit a little' yiio yfyiio (low dipping). He covered them with a blanket biioqilai (high level) or picked them up and hugged them baoqilai (high falling) (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 400-401). Numerous factors support precocious tonal acquisition: ( 1) Pitch changes are very salient. Even 6-month-old infants are highly sensitive to pitch contrasts and have a rudimentary ability to imitate them (Bundy, Colombo, & Singer, 1982; Sachs, 1977). (2) Chinese adultese uses exaggeratedly contrastive tones. (3) Tones, more than phonemes, form a small, closed set. (4) Tones are obligatory on every syllable. (5) Tone changes are contrastive: They yield either a meaning change or nonsense. (6) Tones typically remain constant for each morpheme, regardless of grammatical role. People who learn a tone language in childhood can typically master even unrelated tone languages as adults. But tones remain the most difficult aspect of

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Chinese for speakers of non-tone languages such as English or Japanese. Tones also appear especially fragile for Chinese children who grow up in Englishspeaking countries, (or in Hong Kong, if English is spoken extensively at home) (Chao, 1973; Hashimoto, 1971; Leung & Mok, 1989; Light, 1976). Even in a monolingual Chinese household, outside exposure to English weakens tone. Loss of Chinese seems to begin with blurred tonal contrasts, even when segmentals, vocabulary, and syntax are intact. Overseas Chinese children vigorously resist tone corrections. An Oregon child (1;10), whose Mandarin greatly outdistanced her English, distressed her parents by pronouncing 'elephant' as *dil xiiing, with a high level rather than a high falling tone on the second syllable (= dil xiilng), yielding an unintended homophone meaning 'big box'. She also asked to 'go home' by saying *dao jiii-jiii (incorrect low dipping tone, rather than high falling tone on dilo jiii-jiii 'reach house-house'). This error yields a nonsense reading, 'tum over the house-ie'. She also added tones to her very small English vocabulary, as when she persistently pronounced dog with a low dipping tone (Ye Wa, personal communication, 1988). She rejected her mother's corrections with puzzled annoyance, as did a Chinese-speaking child in Singapore, a native Min Hokkien speaker, who typically added high level tone to stressed English first syllables and mid-level to second syllables (Kwan-Terry, 1989). Tone play is common among Chinese-speaking children growing up overseas (Chao, 1973, p. 28; Hashimoto, 1971; Light, 1976). But it was almost nonexistent among the Taibei children. 5.3.2. Questions. Both YES-NO and WH-questions appeared early and correctly. Both question forms are high frequency, consistent, and match declarative order precisely. About a third of all the Taibei children's questions were YES-NO. The earliest questions were marked by rising intonation alone. VERB-NOTVERB questions appear first as sentence-final tags, much like English ok?, as in gei wo, hiio bu hiio? 'give me, good-not-good' 'give [it to] me, ok?' After about age 2;2, full questions developed using the auxiliary verb, as in nl hui bu hui huil yfge dil xingxing 'you can-not-can draw one gorilla?' 'can you draw a gorilla?' Among WH-questions, 'what' questions are far and away the most frequent, especially 'what's this?' zhe shi shenme? Distant reference with 'what's that?' nil shi shenme was quite rare, however (Chao, 1973, p. 26; Erbaugh, 1982), probably because of low adult usage. Shei 'who', and zenme 'how' questions appeared far less frequently, typically in set phrases, especially zenme ban? 'how do?' 'what [shall we] do [about it]?' (Chao, 1973, p. 26; Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 453456; Kuo, 1937, p. 354; Lee, 1981; Miao, 1986; Yuan, 1977). 'When' and 'where' questions also developed early. Cognitive complexity caused 'why' questions to emerge much later. Lee ( 1990) notes that emergence of question comprehension did not match the order of question production. 5.3.3. Personal Pronouns. Personal pronouns are extremely simple. Chinese style prefers nouns, names, or ellipsis over pronouns, so pronouns are

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rarer than in English. But children mastered them early and used them appropriately. They honored the human-animal distinction and did not use personal pronouns inappropriately to refer to animals. Nl 'you' and wo 'I' emerged first before the age of 2;0. Third person ta and the plurals appeared much later, still lagging behind at age 5;6 (Zhu, Chen, et al., 1986). Around age 2;6, Chinese children occasionally confused pronominal "shifters." They would say wo biw 'I carry [you]' instead of baa wo '[you] carry me' (Chao, 1973, p. 25; Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 406-409; Zhu, Chen, et al., 1986, p. 124). This confusion reflects both adult input frequency, as well as being an apparent cognitive universal. Young Europeans make the same error, as do 2-year-old users of American Sign Language where 'I' is signaled by pointing to oneself and 'you' by pointing to the addressee (Bellugi & Klima, 1982, K6-Kll). 5.3.4. De for Possessive, Nominalizer, and Relative Clauses. De confounds word-order theory because it is both left-branching and right-branching. Nominal modification is left branching and head final: wo de shu 'I POSS book' 'my book'; hdi mei jeng-hiio de nil jian yifu 'still NEG sew-finish MOD DET CLASS:clothing' 'that piece of clothing that still isn't finished'. When the same -de character is used for verb complements and potentials, order is rightbranching after the verb: liiohU piio de hiio kuai 'tiger run MOD very fast' 'tigers run very fast'; jiejie hui na de-qi-lai 'older sister will take-POTENTIAL-risecome' 'older sister will pull it up'. The left-branching, prenominal uses of -de appear very early; the rightbranching verb complements are rarer and later. They are also much lower frequency and restricted in adult speech. Children as old as 8 understand leftbranching relative clauses more easily, according to comprehension experiments (Lee, 1990). 5.3.4.1. Possessive!Nominalizing de. The earliest use of de is very common with possessives, as wo de 'I POSS' 'mine', Mama de 'mama's', and the like. Most stative verbs followed by de are nominalized. Children 2;0 and under did this easily and correctly: hOng de 'red NOM' 'the red one', gao de 'tallNOM' 'the tall one'. The overwhelming majority of these were correct. It is tempting to call this precocious acquisition of nominalization and possession. But various errors cast doubt on the children's understanding of de as anything more than a multipurpose, utterance-final grammatical marker. De has a neutral tone like other purely grammatical particles. Its multiplicity of usage is confusing. It often IS correct as a sentence-final element. And other purely grammatical morphemes, such as -le perfective, and sentence-final particles also appear in that slot. One sign of lack of productive control is that children below approximately 2;8 sometimes omit an obligatory de for nominal. Pang was asked about a pair of gloves shi shei de 'COP who-POSS', but answered *wo fJ 'I' rather than wo de 'mine'. Second, de is sometimes used with inappropriate nouns. Laohu

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(2;0) pointed at objects in the living room. He used an idiomatic possessive for the air conditioner, *Baba de lengqi-fJ 'Papa POSS air condition' (rather than lengqiji 'cold air machine'). Then he immediately added a redundant and incorrect NOM/POSS de to two nouns. He called an 'ashtray' *yiingiing de 'ash-basin NOM' 'the ashtray's'; a Taiwan flag was called *qu6qf de 'national flag NOM' 'the flag's'. This error may indicate an embryonic understanding of de as a sentential nominalizer comparable to 'and this is what it is'. Third, de was often displaced to the end of the noun phrase. N deN became N Nde, as in *nainai wawa de 'granny doll-POSS' (= nainai de wawa). Laohu (2;0) repeated an adult comment but displaced the de to sentence-final position. I told him not to disturb his sister's toys, shi tii de dongxf 'COP she POSS thing' '[those] are her things'. He mimicked my intonation, repeating *tii dongxi de *'she thing POSS' *'she thing's'. Once children began using a grammatical morpheme spontaneously, they frequently double-marked it. Three of the four Taibei children double-marked -de, as in *zhe shi wo de de *'this COP I NOM POSS' 'this is mine's'. This appears to be an effort at one-to-one surface marking for both functions, possessive and nominal. Karmiloff-Smith (1979) found French-speaking children making analogous possessive-nominal double markings as in *les miennes des voitures, translatable as 'the rriine of cars'. All these errors are common in children under approximately 2;6 (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 413-431; Saville-Troike, 1989). 5.3.4.2. Nominalization with V + N + de. Children as young as 2;0 coined correct nominals by using the very simple V + N + de form. Children, like adults, often coined new words when they forgot an old one (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 380-384). Pang (2;0), shown a flashcard picture of a sewing machine, called it a zuo yifu de ren de 'make clothing MOD/NOM person NOM/POSS' 'what a person makes clothes with', 'a clothes-maker's thing'. 5.3.4.3. Serial Verb Constructions and Relative causes with de. Serial verb constructions make the distinction between main and subordinate clauses artificial for Chinese. Order is the same as in the main clause, there are no obligatory relative pronouns or changes in verb morphology. Such constructions are simple and virtually error-free for children once they enter the three-word stage, as in yao qu kan dianylng 'want to go see a movie'. The direct object of the first clause is frequently the subject of the second but makes it very easy for Pang (2;5) to produce correct sentences such as: jiejie dai wo qu shang xue 'older sister take lime go enter school'. Children master headless verb + nominalizers such as da de 'the big one' before they control these constructions followed by the noun, as in da de xi6ngmiio 'big MOD panda'. Packard (1988) analyzes these as headless relative clauses in his study of 27 Taiwan children aged 2;3 to 2;11. More complex nominalizations take a serial verb and follow it with de. These were especially

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common with the verb miii 'buy' in descriptions of gifts the child had received or still coveted, zhe shl bdba miii gei wo de 'this COP Papa buy BEN lime NOM'. De is both a nominalizer and a modifier. Mandarin is a left-branching language for noun phrases, so adding another noun makes the whole phrase a relative clause. Canta (2;4) said zhe shl grampa miii de bl 'this COP grampa buy MOD pencil' 'this is the pencil grandpa bought' (Chao, 1973, p. 24). Zhongrong (2;6) fantasized that 'the puppy [that] Papa brought might bite me' baba lai de xiiio gou hul yiio wo 'Papa bring MOD little dog can bite me'. Early Mandarin mastery of the simple and regular serial verb constructions contrasts sharply with school-age Turkish children's difficulty with and avoidance of the complex Turkish constructions (Slobin, 1986). Early mastery of Chinese demonstrates that embedding is conceptually simple for even 2 year olds, who are also capable of complex linguistic mapping. However, the relations expressed are no more intricate than those expressed by young Turks by means of loosely coordinated clauses. 5.3.4.4. Infixed Negatives and Potential with de. Children below 2;0 skillfully infixed negatives to describe unsuccessful attempts, for example, kan-bujian 'look-not-see' 'can't see' or na-bu-dao 'take-not-reach' 'can't reach' (Erbaugh, 1982; Lee, 1981, Saville-Troike, 1989). The analytic structure of Chinese strengthens the child's preference for one-to-one mapping strongly enough to overide the competing Avoid Interruptions (Slobin, 1973). But the children younger than 3;5 almost never used the parallel positive potential, kiln-de-jian 'look-POT-perceive' 'able to see'. This expresses mere potential rather than a completed or desired experience. Interrupting the verb is difficult, and the multiple uses of de for possessive, nominalizer, adjectival, and adverbial modifier weigh against its less salient use for marking potential.

6. Word Classes

6.1. Word Class Detectors: If It Isn't a Noun, Treat It Like a Verb

The Taibei children followed the historical Chinese principle of flexible word classes. They behaved as if they had a "noun detector," which works virtually without morphological clues to separate out concrete nouns from a very broad class of possible verbs (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 114-119). The special perceptual status of concrete nouns in early child speech reinforces this ability (Gentner, 1983). Evidence for the noun detector is widespread. The Taibei children alternated nouns with other word classes as a primitive means of balancing sentential relations. They did not produce NN utterances comparable to the "Mommy sock"

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413

statements of young English speakers (see Bloom, 1973). (They did use the grammatically permissible pronoun + N wo yifu 'my clothes'.) Instead, they typically alternated V + N. An NN sequence is easily misinterpreted as a compound. Mandarin-speaking children being raised in the United States, however, produced NN constructions comparable to English speakers. Examples include 'baby sock' *bei fJ wclzi (Chao, 1973), as well as Min's (1;7) *Baba fJ yiin *'Papa 0 cigarette' and *didi fJ niiinai *'little brother 0 milk' 'little brother drinks milk' (Lee, 1981). As a second piece of evidence, the Taibei children did not use nouns as verbs, as in *wo dianhua n{ 'I telephone you'; a verb is required: wo gei n{ dii yl ge dianhua 'I make a telephone [call] to you'. Foreign students frequently make such errors. Taibei children also distinguished between VV and VN compounds. VV can take a noun object, but VN compounds are intransitive because of the compounded object (Li & Thompson, 1981, pp. 45-84). The children never produced typical foreigner errors such as *wo chljan mianbiio 'I eat-rice bread' for wo chi mianbiio 'I eat bread'.

6.2. Noun Classifiers Special classifiers were surprisingly rare. The Taibei children produced only 134 in 64 hours of recording, or one every 200 utterances. (Adults average one between every 30-100 utterances). Children never omitted a classifier where it was obligatory; instead, they overused the general ge form. But both children and adults frequently used ge where prescriptive grammar says special classifiers are obligatory, when referring to books, paper, pens, tables, chairs, real and toy vehicles, animals, machines, and clothing. All conversations took place in rooms crowded with these objects, but the very presence of the objects preempted special classifiers. (The only consistent exception was the ben classifier for books, revered objects in Chinese culture.) Early classifier use reflected purely distributional information. Generalizing by semantic category developed slowly over several years (Erbaugh, 1984; Ken, 1991). Thai children followed a similar, early, purely grammatical strategy (Carpenter, 1991). The youngest Mandarin speakers rarely used special classifiers. Before approximately 2;6, special classifiers were used lexically, to refer only to a single object rather than to a category. Zhiing 'flat thing', for example, referred only to loose sheets of paper. After approximately 2;6, the children formed prototypes using particularly clear classifiers, such as zhl 'CLASS:animal' for dogs, tiao 'CLASS:extended' for ropes or ribbons. They usually overgeneralized by shape rather than by function. *Tiao 'CLASS:extended' was used incorrectly for a sword and stepladder, but convention requires bii 'handle' for both. Generalization by shape is encouraged because classifiers typically describe small, easily handled objects, which are not unique. There is no classifier for the

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sun, for example, or for a whole city. Manipulation may have triggered a violation of the uniqueness condition when a girl aged 3;6 tore up pieces of paper to make a paper sun, repeatedly referring to *yl zhl taiyang 'CLASS:small object or animal sun' (Kuo, 1937, p. 351). Special classifiers increased gradually after age 2;6, though 4 year olds still used only half as many as adults. Picture-labeling experiments elicited many fewer special classifiers than the Taibei children produced; children as old as 7 still made many errors (Zhu, Wu, Ying, et al., 1986). An even later and more gradual acquisition appears in Thai (Carpenter, 1991; Gandour, Petty, Dardarananda, & Mukngoen, 1984), Japanese (Matsumoto, 1985), Bantu (Demuth, Faraclas, & Marchese, 1986), and American Sign Language (Newport & Meier, 1985, p. 915). Perceptual salience gives children large vocabularies for concrete nouns and helps them distinguish nouns from verbs. Special classifiers for objects emerged nearly a year before classifiers for activities such as meals, movies, and periods of time (e.g., yi dunfim 'one CLASS:meal rice' 'a meal'). These remained rare at least to age 6. Quantified time, of course, develops late in the time adverb system as well. Clark (1977) notes the primacy of shape, particularly vertical extension, in semantic overgeneralizations in several European languages. Classifying new or ambiguous objects by shape ("that little round thing") is more informative than classifying by function, which may be variable, ambiguous, or unknown. Carroll and Casagrande (1958) attempted to show that a language with noun classifiers may enhance children's ability to categorize. They tested extremely poor Indian children, monolingual either in Navajo or English. The Navajo speakers did score better than the English monolinguals. However, middle-class, Boston English monolinguals did as well or better than the Navajos. If classifiers enhance mental development, they may do so only when the child's environment is extraordinarily deprived. I find no evidence that privileged Chinese children derive any special benefit from classifier use. Overgeneralizations by shape also appear in children learning Thai (Gandour, Petty, Dardarananda, Dechongkit, & Mukngoen, 1984), Japanese (Matsumoto, 1985), and American Sign Language (Newport & Meier, 1985, p. 900). But function generalization (e.g., classifiers for vehicles, clothing, machines) outweighs generalization by shape in these experimental studies of Thai and Japanese, as well as in experiments on Mandarin (Zhu, Wu, Ying, et al., 1986). Picture arrays may make function more available to children than in spontaneous overextensions about frequently handled objects. Demuth, Faraclas, and Marchese (1986, pp. 465-467) stress the discrepancy between experimental studies in which Bantu-speaking children made errors and overgeneralizations that never appeared in spontaneous speech. Discourse context, not the referent, triggered the appearance of special

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classifiers. Children as young as 2;4 shadowed the adult pattern of using special classifiers to add extra information for the first mention of nonpresent objects. The more of the following conditions that were present, the more likely a special classifier was: Physically manipulable referent. Not physically present. Familiar to the speaker. New topic. Request, fantasy, or narrative. First mention of referent. Indefinite reference rather than definite. Classifier used with the noun, not as a pro-form. These discourse conditions appear in the following: The child requests a sheet of paper using zhang 'CLASS:flat-thing', asks the mother to kneel down and play horsie using p[ 'CLASS:horse', describes watering flowers the previous summer using duo 'CLASS:flower, cloud'; imagines bringing home a puppy using zhf 'CLASS:animal', and answers the perennial 'what did you draw?' by describing her latest scribble as yf gen t6ufa 'one CLASS:thread hair'. Like the adults, the children used special classifiers only with first mentions of new topics. Subsequent reference only the general ge classifier or zero.

6.3. Extended Verbs Young Mandarin speakers act as if they decided "if a morpheme isn't a noun (a pronoun, or a classifier), treat it like a verb." Overextending the already-broad Mandarin verb class caused problems. Children interpreted even purely grammatical morphemes as verbs. Most overextensions involved action verbs rather than statives. The ba object marker was a case in point. Most purely grammatical morphemes and bound usages have neutral tone. But ba is an unbound grammatical morpheme with a full low-dipping tone. Children seemed to prefer single morpheme predicates. The most frequent error is the entire corpus was omitting the full main verb, as in *bu yao ba w6 fJ 'not want OBJ.MKR me 0' 'don't 0 me'. Auxiliary verbs and modals frequently functioned as main verbs, *w6 hui fJ zhege 'I can 0 this'. Children also used adverbs and locatives as main verbs. At age 2;6, a child said *w6 yao hai 'I want still', 'I want to still' for the intended w6 hdi yao tan 'I want to continue playing [the piano]'. Sometimes the error springs from copying the wrong part of morpheme in a question.

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(16)

Kang (3;0) did not enjoy visiting his cousins. Mother:

Gen COMIT

shei who

wan? play?

'Whom did they play with?' Kang:

*Gen 0 COMIT 0 *'With 0' (5-second pause) *Mei

not

you exist

genCOMIT-

zhe

fJ

PROG

0

wan play

*'They weren't with-ing'

On another occasion Kang said, *wo yao gen 0 'I want to COMIT 0' 'I want to with'. Children also suffixed verb aspect to adverbs, clear evidence they were analyzing them as verbs. Zhongrong (2;6) protested that she wanted to keep on sweeping the floor by saying *hai-zhe 'still-PROGRESSIVE', '[I'm] stilling'. 7. Word Order

7 .1. The Inviolability of Word Order Young speakers of more flexibly ordered languages such as Turkish, Polish, Russian, Hebrew, or even English often play with word order. But Mandarin order was literally "too important to play around with." The only Taibei example of order play occurred during a fantasy monologue in which agent and patient were ambiguous. Laohu (2;0) talked to himself while crashing a tiny car in and out of a mug of water, using both zhuang-dao-le chezi 'crash-reach-PFV car' '[someone] crashed the car', and chezi zhuang-dao-le '[the] car crashed'. Here, the child, the imaginary driver, and the car itself, a powerful moving object, alternate as potential agents (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 297-299, 1983b). Early agents were also limited to people and vehicles in Bowerman's (1973) case grammar of Finnish and English.

7.2. Strict SVO Order Mandarin-speaking children's canonical sentences used strict SVO order. They did not attempt discourse-sensitive variations of word order until basic sentential relations were under control. Children mastered SVO early, with few errors, except when highlighting OV constructions with the bii object marker. They often erroneously produced YO for OV. Far from being the innovators of word-order change, the Chinese children's limited processing capacities and

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desire for consistency made their word order more conservative than that of adults. Canonical word order seems to be an important and accessible clue to children in general. Young speakers of English, Italian, and Serbo-Croatian all failed to respond to sentences that violated canonical order in their native languages (Slobin & Bever, 1982). And adult Mandarin speakers are unable to process sentences that violate SVO order restrictions for canonical animate subject and inanimate object (Miao, 1981).

7 .3. Acquisition of Order and Reordering To discuss order and reordering, we need to know how many sentences even have the potential to be reordered. Single-word sentences and many other simple utterances have only one possible order. The vast majority of adult-adult utterances in ordinary conversation could have been reordered; about 20% of these were OV. But only about 55% of the adult speech to the 2- and 3-year-old children had OV potential; only 10%-15% of this was actually reordered (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 250-258). 7.3.1. The Pre-order Stage. A mere 22% of early child utterances had OV potential. Many utterances were single words, intransitive verbs such as ku-le '[I] cry-PFV' or objectless verb phrases such as fang zheli 'put here' 'put [it] here' (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 251-260). Early order was almost perfect SV or VO, almost entirely action-patient, agent-action, or patient-state. Less than 1% of utterances had order errors. These rare errors appeared to follow the new-given "hot news" order in which a toddler blurts out a novel contribution before his or her planning capacity gives out (Bates & MacWhinney, 1979). *Wanju zhege 'toy this' for zhege wanju 'this [is a] toy' is an example. Chinese-speaking children in English-speaking countries seem more prone to make order errors than the Taibei children, though no figures are available (Chao, 1973; Hashimoto, 1971; Light, 1977; personal communications from Chan Ningping and Ye Wa). Even relatively freer English order seems to loosen the Chinese. 7.3.2. Rigid Order Stage. A rigid order stage held sway between ages 2;0 and 2;9, with an MLU just over 3.0. Children produced more three-term sentences, about one third of them potentially OV. However, once the children discovered the SVO principle, they were loath to let it go. They reordered only 5% of the sentences with OV potential. 7.3.3. Incorrect VO for OV. The Taibei children also used VO where OV fronting is preferred for a definite, completed act on a patient (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 306-307).

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( 17) Pang (2;2) gives a towel to her sister. *Gei jiejie zhege BEN older:sister this (Standard order = Zhege gei jiejie) Canonical order made fronting difficult. Pang attempted to use object-fronting bii, paused, then retreated to SVO. (18) Pang (2;2) is pulling on an electric cord. *Wo bii I I Iii zhege I OBJ.MKR I I pull this 'I with/ /pull this' Two months later, Pang used bii correctly but added a redundant object, yielding *SOVO. (19)

Pang (2;4) is unhappy that Auntie touched her puzzle. * Bu yaa not want

bii

tii

OBJ.MKR it

aiitear-

diaa zhege down this

au PTL:WARNING

'Don't tear it apart it!' (Standard order = Bu yaa bii tii cai-diaa au. 'not want OBJ.MKR it tear-apart PTL') Occasionally, a child misordered a modal. (20)

Canta (2;4) wants to put on a brooch (from Chao, 1973, p. 23). hlii yaa zhege dai still want this wear

*Bei Baby

'Baby still wants this to wear' (Standard order = Bei hlii yaa dai nage 'Baby still wants to wear that') Children also omitted dative, benefactive, or instrumental markers, yielding superficially correct SVO sentences for intended indirect object-direct object. (21) Zhongrong (2;6) wants me to wear her barrette. Wo

'I

yaa want

dai carry/wear

nl you'

This is grammatical but means 'I want to carry you' or 'I want to wear you'. The adult glossed this as Wo yiw nl dai zhege 'I want you to wear this'. Clancy (1985, pp. 390-391) and de Villiers (1985, pp. 92-96) also remark on the relative fragility of indirect objects. Benefactives seem particularly fragile.

6.

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419

Pang (2;5) describes molding feet for a clay bird. Xiiio little

niiio bird

Jzao foot

zuo

make

'Birdie makes a foot'

This is wellformed for the wrong meaning. Pang accepted and repeated the assistant's gloss with benefactive gei: gei xiao niao zuo yige jiao 'make a foot for the birdie' . 7.3.4. Dijficulties in Reordering with the ba Object Marker. Three of the four Taibei children used the bii object marker as a main verb substitute for 'to use' or 'to do'. Sentence-final intonation indicates that they saw the utterances as complete. These sentences are gratingly ungrammatical in modem Mandarin, but eerily recapitulate ba's archaic origin as a free verb meaning 'to grasp'. (23)

Kang (3;1) warns us not to drink his tea.

•Bu Not

yao want

bii

wo

fJ!

OBJ.MKR

me

0!

'Don't BA me!'

An adult would say, 'Don't drink up my tea!' bu yao bii wo de cha he-guiing! 'not want OBJ.MKR I POSS tea drink-empty'. Three Taibei children also showed their partial grasp of bii as marking high transitivity when they misused it as a dative or benefactive. (24)

Kang (3;2) diapers his doll. * Wo

bii

I

OBJ.MKR

tii her

cii wipe

pigu buttocks'

'I bottom-wipe her'. (Standard order = Wo gei tii cd pigu 'I BEN her wipe bottom' 'I wipe her bottom for her')

8. Question Answering

Questioning is easy and straightforward (see section 5.3.2). Answering is harder. Children struggled for months to answer by copying the verb in the question. Min (1;6) was asked shi bu shi xi6ngmiio a? 'COP NEG COP bear-cat PTL?' 'Is it a panda?' He answered informatively with a noun mao, miiomao a 'cat, kitty'. But shi '[it] COP' 'it is' is the correct reply (Lee, 1981, p. 31a). Pang escaped verb copying until she was 2;2 by using dui 'correct' as an all-purpose affirmative. (See also the following section.)

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9. Difficulties with Verb Segmentation Segmenting compound verbs causes problems for Chinese children and foreign learners. For example, the verb 'to sing' is a V + N compound meaning 'sing+ song'. Answers to yes-no questions copy only the verb, if the compounded noun is a potentially free morpheme. The question 'are you singing' nl chimg bu chang-ge 'you sing NEG sing-song' must be answered as chang 'sing'(= '[I'm] singing'), not *chang-ge. Overgeneralizing this rule caused problems. The very frequent question 'do you know?' nl zhf bu zhfdao 'you know-NEG-know-way?' uses the noun dao 'way', which, in modem Mandarin, is free only in discussions of Daoism. The answer must be zhfdao. Min (1;8), however, logically assumed that dao was free, and incorrectly answered his father's question with *zhf-fiJ alone (Lee, 1982, p. 32). Canta (2;4) made similar errors. Verb compounds that violate normal order also cause problems. Asked nl hai-pa bu hai-pa? 'you fearscare-NEG-fear-scare?' 'Are you scared?', Pang replied *hai 'fear', rather than the conventional pa. More intricate verb + complement combinations remained difficult even for children over 3 years of age. They sometimes refused to disrupt SVO order by separating verb and nominal complement for indirect objects. *Wo jiang-hua fiJ nl 'I talk-speech 0 you' 'I talk you' is simpler and maintains SVO order, in contrast to the correct wo gei nljiang yf ju hua 'I BEN you talk one CLASS:word speech' 'I'm telling you something' .4 A slightly more sophisticated error, *Wo yao jiang nl hua 'I want talk-you-speech', appeared at age 2;10. Foreign speakers have similar, more persistent problems. 10. Causatives and Enhanced Transitivity The children overextended their highly transitive agent-action-patient prototype. Many causatives were grammatical with an agent-action interpretation, but not for the intended action-patient. (25)

Zhongrong (2;6) is handing me a barrette. * Nl you

@

0

shang on

zhege this

Nl shang zhege is grammatical with an agentive reading, as in 'you get on this [bus]'. But shang needs a main verb as a locative postposition, nl ba zhege daishang 'you OBJ.MKR this wear LOC:on'. Zhongrong also spilled some hand lotion and said *wo fiJ-chu-ldi-le 'I LOC:out-come-PFV'. This means 'I've come out', inappropriate for 'I've poured [it] out', wo dao-chu-lai-le, with dao 'pour'.

Another transitivity error made inanimate objects sound agentive by position4 Gei

is acceptable in Taiwan Mandarin. Northern mainlanders, however, use gen 'COMIT' here.

6.

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421

ing them in agent/subject position before action verbs. Zhongrong (2;6) dropped a crayon, saying *lab( pao-diao-le 'the crayon ran-away-PFV' (= lab( gun-xiaqu-le 'crayon roll-down-go-PFV'). Questions about the use of unfamiliar objects triggered many such errors. Kang watched a TV show about how to dry and carve the bowling-pin-shaped lucky gourds, hUlu, which traditional Chinese string around their waists for carrying things. (26)

Kang refers to the gourd.

*Hulu gourd

gan do

shenme? what?

'What is the gourd doing?'

Kang's mother assumed he was asking about a person, but he rejected her explanations. His mother finally satisfied him by explaining "gourds are THINGS, they don't DO anything" (Erbaugh, 1982, pp. 264-265). The children frequently marked result or end location, particularly in causatives. Process and source, however, were seldom mentioned. When these did appear, they often incorrectly appeared in the sentence-final goal location. Tai (1975, 1985) argues that Chinese is iconic in putting end result and location at the end of the sentence. Children highlight goal early, well before the source location and time, which also go iconically before the verb. Order variants highlighting source or static location appeared later and less correctly. Cantonese-speaking children make similar errors (Cheung, 1990, 1991; Leung, 1989). The four Taibei children frequently remarked *Wo huai-le 'I bad-PFV' 'I'm broken'. Context required wo bii zhege nong-huai-le 'I OBJ.MKR this make-bad-PFV' 'I broke it', 'I made it break'. Omitting the process verb can render a sentence incomprehensible. The assistant quizzed Pang (2;10) seven times before realizing that *wo xlhuiin 8 sui 'I like 0 fragmentary' meant wo xlhuiin nong-sui 'I like to make [it] fragmentary' 'I like to smash [clay] to bits'. Other examples include: (2;0) completing a block tower: *wo giio-le 'I tall-PFV' 'I've tailed'; (2;6) planning to paint nail polish on a doll's toenails: *wo yao hOng tii de jiao 'I want red her-MOD foot' 'I want to red her foot'; (3;4) pretending to cook disgusting food: *key( chou cai 'can stink food'(= '[I] can stinky food'). Cantonese-speaking 2-year-olds followed a similar strategy by stating the result alone without a process verb, 80% of the time in Cheung's 1991 experiments. Redundant causatives and benefactives double-mark transitivity. (27)

Pang (2;3) is writing. *Wo I

gei BEN

Xle-

write-

zi character

'I'm giving a writing'. (Standard order = wo xie-zi)

422 (28)

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Pang (2;7) holds out her hand for a puppy to lick.

*Wo

nang make

gei BEN

ta her

tian-tian lick-lick

shOu hand

'I make for her give a lick'. (Standard order = Wo rang ta tian-tian shOu 'I allow her lick-lick hand')

English-speaking children also coin novel causatives and transitives, such as don't fall me down for years after they have used standard adult forms (Bowerman, 1982). Young speakers of English, Hebrew, and Portuguese coin similar causatives, preferring highly transitive forms in which a stative is used actively (Bowerman, 1982; Hochberg, 1986). Smoczynska (1985, pp. 635-636) notes the privileged status of coined causatives in Polish. Adding redundant directional or resultative suffixes is another common means of emphasizing transitivity. (29)

Pang (2;4) sticks her hand in the slot where a drawer had been removed from a chest.

*Zhege pothis break-

diaodown-

xiaoff-

qugo-

laicome-

le

ye!

PFV

PTL:excitement

'This has broken-off-down-gone-come!'

Pang accepted and repeated the assistant's gloss, diao-xia-qu-le 'fall-down-goPFV' '[it] has fallen out'. Discourse factors often trigger enhanced transitivity. Taibei children were particularly likely to double-mark cause when they were emphatic, misunderstood, and/or describing a fantasy. (30)

Pang (2;11) comments about killing demons with her toy sword.

*Gei give

name so

duo many

huai bad

ren diisfdiaoperson beat- die- off-

lei PFV

'Make so many bad people beat to death dead!'

In adult speech, dii-sl 'beat dead' suffices. Double-marking demonstrates that Mandarin-speaking children have more ability to use grammatical morphology than their language happens to require. Children are also more likely to double-mark when a single morpheme serves two different grammatical functions following the principle of one-to-one mapping (Karmiloff-Smith, 1979; Slobin, 1985b). The Mandarin perfective -leis homophonous with the sentence-final particle for current relevance. Children often exclaim *wo tiao-le-le! 'I jumpPFV/CURRENT RELEVANCE' 'I've jumped-ed!' Chinese adults often mention this error when asked for examples of childish speech, adding that they had

6.

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423

tried vainly to correct it in their own children as old as 12. Because adults discourage double-marking, the children evidently double-mark in order to provide themselves with consistent and overt feedback. 11. Temporality 11.1. Aspect and Time-marking in a Language Without Tense

11.1.1. Pre-narrative Roots of Time and Aspect. A narrative model of language is an improvement on a vision of language as simply an accretion of words and rules. But looking to narrative for the roots of time concepts has serious drawbacks. Anthropology and stylistics focus on elaborate adult styles; storytelling is a specialized and culture-specific genre. A narrative model is convenient for the linguist, but too narrow for child discourse. In narrative, the basic sentence is agent-action-patient; the agent is a third person, outside the speech setting. Stories follow a time line and resolve a problem. Early child speech, however, could hardly be farther from narrative. Infants use a wide range of speech acts, especially imperatives. Much speech concerns their interior experiences, I gotta pee now. Usually the subject is the child, or something the child is handling, in the here-and-now. Much early speech is a monologue, especially reenactments of family routines. These follow a time sequence but seldom solve a plot problem or end with a moral. More importantly, time distinctions appear months before the first narratives. Young Mandarin speakers (e.g., at age 1;10) frequently use time adverbs several months before they regularly produce spontaneous, two-utterance descriptions of two events. Time adverbs appear almost a year before three-utterance sequenced descriptions become common. A semantic model of time/ aspect assumes that time and aspect distinctions will first appear disproportionately on a particular class of verb, especially highly transitive punctual verbs with a clear result, such as hit or break. The development of perfective -le (Erbaugh, 1978, 1985) follows this prediction to some extent. But Mandarin time adverbs develop in a near-complementary distribution with the contexts for -le (see Table 6.5). Perfective -le is grammatically obligatory. The children in my study used it to describe ongoing, visible actions, such as da-po-le 'hit-break-PFV' '[I] have broken [it]' or kii-le 'cry-PFV' '[I]'ve cried'. Some 85% of event times in my data referred to the immediate past. Children, like adults, often use -le to call attention to a noteworthy change of state, such as breaking a cup or finishing a block tower. In contrast, time adverbs were deployed selectively to brief the hearer on the not-here not-now. They are usually grammatically optional. Children used them to communicate their own internal experiences, especially wanting, hunger,

424

Erbaugh TABLE 6.5 Early Complementary Contexts for -/e Perfective and Time Adverbs

-le Perfective OBLIGATORY grammatically DIALOGUE CURRENT context DECLARATIVE ACTION on small objects ('hit', 'break') TRANSITIVE, punctual events REAL, hear-and-now PAST (85%) UNUSUAL experiences-"hot news"

Time Adverbs OPTIONAL MONOLOGUE NONSHARED context IMPERATIVE, REQUEST, PROCEDURAL EXPERIENCE ('want', 'sleep', 'pee', 'be hungry') DURATIVE, sustained PRETEND or desired FUTURE, PRESENT, PAST, or CONDITIONAL HABITUAL, sustained

pain, sleepiness, and need to urinate. Time adverbs clustered with nondeclaratives, especially requests, imperatives, and the procedural instructions found in family routines, and the fantasy monologues that reenact them. Sustained or habitual experiences tend to receive time adverbs, unlike the "hot-news" conveyed by perfective. Eventually, of course, as the child neared 3;0, perfective and time adverbs became increasingly integrated with all utterance types. Time adverbs increasingly marked an event time as a background for a chain of foregrounded actions. 11.1.2. Time/Aspect Stages. Children mastered time/aspect in four cumulative overlapping stages. A general boundedness stage before age 2;4 focused on completion and current relevance with perfective -le. An enhanced transitivity stage between 2;4 and 2;9 frequently double-marked completion and result. A sequenced temporal relations stage, age 2;10-3;4, coordinated two or more events within a sentence. Progressive and sustained aspect became more important, as did event-time adverbs. After approximately age 3;4, a stage for developing narratives and backgrounded events emerged, along with rudimentary topicalization. Refinements continued through late childhood. 11.1. 3. Real Time and Perfective. Early talk focused on the here-and-now. Events described sounded like "universal baby talk" with nothing Mandarin about it. Before age 2;3, only about 35% of utterances had verbs. Of these, 70% were actions; just over half described the child's own actions. Of these, 62% referred to the immediate future; 13%, to the ongoing situation (see Table 6.6). Although 62% of past verbs referred to the immediate past, children also talked about the distant past and the future-about having a family picture taken several months before or plans to go swimming a few months in the future (see Table 6.7).

6.

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425

TABLE 6.6 Real Time for Events Mentioned (Speaker < 2;3)

Overall Speech With -le

Past

Present

Future

25% 85%

13%

62% 8%

7%

Mandarin has no tense, but Chinese children gradually increased their ability to describe distant past and future events, with less and less adult scaffolding. Their gradually increasing distance of both past and future reference stunningly resembled that of young speakers of English, Polish, Romance languages, Japanese, and Hebrew (Berman, 1985; Berman & Dromi, 1984; Eisenberg, 1985; Weist, 1984). 11.1.4. Early Aspect: The Perfective Axis. Young children first master whichever time/aspect system their language makes central. Young English speakers contrast past tense to progressive/simple present. Young Spanish speakers contrast perfective with imperfective (Eisenberg, 1985). Young Turks and Hebrew speakers concentrate on past tense (Aksu-Ko