Aspects of Argument Structure Acquisition in Inuktitut

Author
ORCID logoShanley E.M. Allen | Max Planck Institute, Nijmegen
HardboundAvailable
ISBN 9789027224798 (Eur) | EUR 105.00
ISBN 9781556197765 (USA) | USD 158.00
 
e-Book
ISBN 9789027299154 | EUR 105.00 | USD 158.00
 
Google Play logo
This book discusses the first language acquisition of three morphosyntactic mechanisms of transitivity alternation in arctic Quebec Inuktitut. Data derive from naturalistic longitudinal spontaneous speech samples collected over a nine-month period from four Inuit children. Both basic and advanced forms of passive structures are shown to be used productively by Inuktitut-speaking children at an early age relative to English-speaking children, but consistent in age with speakers of non-Indo-European languages reported on in the literature; potential explanations of this difference include frequency of caregiver input and details of language structure. Morphological causatives appear slightly later in the acquisition sequence, and their first instances reflect use of unanalyzed routines. Lexical causatives are present from the earliest ages studied. Evidence of a period of overgeneralization of lexical causatives in one subject at the same time as the morphological causative shows signs of being productively acquired suggests that the seeming overgeneralization may reflect nothing more than as yet unstable use of the morphological causative. Noun incorporation structures are shown to be used productively by Inuktitut-speaking children at an early age relative to Mohawk-speaking children; potential explanations of this difference include details of language structure and relative language use in the environments of the learners. Findings are considered in light of current debates in the literature concerning continuity versus maturation of grammatical structure, and concerning the functional categories available to the child at early stages of acquisition. Data presented argue against late maturation, and suggest that all functional categories may be accessed by the Inuktitut-speaking child early in the acquisition process.
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 13] 1996.  xvi, 244 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Table of Contents
“Allen’s book is an impressive survey of children’s acquisition of (certain aspects of) an interesting and complicated language; and it is evident that Allen is a very engaged and careful researcher. The book is well balanced between theoretical discussions on the one hand and analyses on the other hand and analyses of concrete data on the other. Allen constantly keeps two perspectives in mind: to describe and analyze (the acquisition of) an interesting language, and to get greater insight into universal grammar and acquisition theories in the light of new data. A crosslinguistic approach is essential for her. This makes the book highly relevant not only for researchers of Inuit languages, but for general linguistics as well.”
Cited by

Cited by 31 other publications

ALLEN, SHANLEY
2007. The future of Inuktitut in the face of majority languages: Bilingualism or language shift?. Applied Psycholinguistics 28:3  pp. 515 ff. DOI logo
Allen, Shanley E. M. & Catherine Dench
2015. Calculating mean length of utterance for eastern Canadian Inuktitut. First Language 35:4-5  pp. 377 ff. DOI logo
Allen, Shanley E.M., Martha Crago & Diane Pesco
2006. The Effect of Majority Language Exposure on Minority Language Skills: The Case of Inuktitut. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 9:5  pp. 578 ff. DOI logo
Barrière, I., M. Lorch & M. T. Le Normand
2000. Argument Structure Alternation in French Children’s Speech. In New Directions In Language Development And Disorders,  pp. 139 ff. DOI logo
BERMAN, RUTH A.
2014. Cross-linguistic comparisons in child language research. Journal of Child Language 41:S1  pp. 26 ff. DOI logo
Brown, Penelope & Suzanne Gaskins
2014. Language acquisition and language socialization. In The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology,  pp. 187 ff. DOI logo
Compton, Richard & Heather Bliss
2023. Polysynthesis. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology,  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Courtney, Ellen H.
2010. Learning the Meaning of Verbs: Insights from Quechua. First Language 30:1  pp. 56 ff. DOI logo
Crago, Martha B. & Shanley E. M. Allen
2001. Early Finiteness in Inuktitut: The Role of Language Structure and Input. Language Acquisition 9:1  pp. 59 ff. DOI logo
DE GARAVITO, JOYCE BRUHN & ELENA VALENZUELA
2008. Eventive and stative passives in Spanish L2 acquisition: A matter of aspect. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 11:3  pp. 323 ff. DOI logo
Haznedar, Belma & F. Nihan Ketrez
2016. Introduction. In The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 20],  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
HENKE, Ryan E.
2019. The development of possession in the L1 acquisition of Northern East Cree. Journal of Child Language 46:5  pp. 980 ff. DOI logo
Johnson, Olga Alice & Shanley E. M. Allen
2022. The use of complex structures with a word class change in Inuktitut child-directed speech. Frontiers in Psychology 13 DOI logo
Kelly, Barbara, Gillian Wigglesworth, Rachel Nordlinger & Joseph Blythe
2014. The Acquisition of Polysynthetic Languages. Language and Linguistics Compass 8:2  pp. 51 ff. DOI logo
Kelly, Barbara F., William Forshaw, Rachel Nordlinger & Gillian Wigglesworth
2015. Linguistic diversity in first language acquisition research: Moving beyond the challenges. First Language 35:4-5  pp. 286 ff. DOI logo
Kockelman, Paul, N. J. Enfield & Jack Sidnell
2014. Process and formation. In The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology,  pp. 183 ff. DOI logo
Lee, Hannah, Olga Alice Johnson & Shanley E. M. Allen
2023. The use of verbal inflections in Inuktitut child and child-directed speech. Journal of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech 5:1  pp. 29 ff. DOI logo
Montrul, Silvina
1999. Causative errors with unaccusative verbs in L2 Spanish. Second Language Research 15:2  pp. 191 ff. DOI logo
Montrul, Silvina
2001. First-language-constrained variability in the second-language acquisition of argument-structure-changing morphology with causative verbs. Second Language Research 17:2  pp. 144 ff. DOI logo
Montrul, Silvina
2001. The Acquisition of Causative/Inchoative Verbs in L2 Turkish. Language Acquisition 9:1  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Montrul, Silvina A.
Morgan, Gary, Isabelle Barrière & Bencie Woll
2006. The influence of typology and modality on the acquisition of verb agreement morphology in British Sign Language. First Language 26:1  pp. 19 ff. DOI logo
Norcliffe, Elisabeth, Alice C. Harris & T. Florian Jaeger
2015. Cross-linguistic psycholinguistics and its critical role in theory development: early beginnings and recent advances. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 30:9  pp. 1009 ff. DOI logo
Pesco, Diane & Martha Crago
2008. Language Socialization in Canadian Aboriginal Communities. In Encyclopedia of Language and Education,  pp. 2832 ff. DOI logo
Pesco, Diane & Martha B. Crago
2016. Language Socialization in Canadian Indigenous Communities. In Language Socialization,  pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Pesco, Diane & Martha B. Crago
2017. Language Socialization in Canadian Indigenous Communities. In Language Socialization,  pp. 291 ff. DOI logo
Stoll, Sabine
2020. Sampling linguistic diversity to understand language development. In Current Perspectives on Child Language Acquisition [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 27],  pp. 247 ff. DOI logo
Michael Tomasello
2001. First steps toward a usage-based theory of language acquisition. cogl 11:1-2  pp. 61 ff. DOI logo
Tomasello, Michael
2007. Acquiring Linguistic Constructions. In Handbook of Child Psychology, DOI logo
Weist, Richard M.
2018. Whorfian potential in child language. Psychology of Language and Communication 22:1  pp. 467 ff. DOI logo

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Subjects

Main BIC Subject

CF: Linguistics

Main BISAC Subject

LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General
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U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  96038627 | Marc record