The Acquisition of Ergativity

Editors

Edith L. Bavin | La Trobe University

Sabine Stoll | University of Zurich

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027234797 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027271235 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00

Ergativity is one of the main challenges both for linguistic and acquisition theories. This book is unique, taking a cross-linguistic approach to the acquisition of ergativity in a large variety of typologically distinct languages. The chapters cover languages from different families and from different geographic areas with different expressions of ergativity. Each chapter includes a description of ergativity in the language(s), the nature of the input, the social context of acquisition and developmental patterns. Comparisons of the acquisition process across closely related languages are made, change in progress of the ergative systems is discussed and, for one language, acquisition by bilingual and monolingual children is compared. The volume will be of particular interest to language acquisition researchers, linguists, psycholinguists and cognitive scientists.

[Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 9] 2013. v, 341 pp.

Publishing status: Available
Published online on 8 November 2013

https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.9

Table of Contents

The acquisition of ergativity

Sabine Stoll and Edith L. Bavin | pp. 1–14

Ergativity: Some recurrent themes

Bernard Comrie | pp. 15–34

Ergativity in child Basque

Jennifer R. Austin | pp. 35–70

The acquisition of ergativity in Inuktitut

Shanley E.M. Allen | pp. 71–106

The acquisition of ergative case in Warlpiri

Edith L. Bavin | pp. 107–132

The acquisition of ergative marking in Kaluli, Ku Waru and Duna (Trans New Guinea)

Alan Rumsey, Lila San Roque and Bambi B. Schieffelin | pp. 133–182

The acquisition of ergative case in Chintang

Sabine Stoll and Balthasar Bickel | pp. 183–208

Ergative case-marking in Hindi child-caregiver speech

Bhuvana Narasimhan | pp. 209–238

The acquisition of split-ergative case marking in Kurmanji Kurdish

Laura J. Mahalingappa | pp. 239–270

The acquisition of agreement in four  Mayan languages

Penelope Brown, Barbara Pfeiler, Lourdes de León and Clifton Pye | pp. 271–306

The acquisition of extended ergativity in Mam, Q’anjob’al and Yucatec

Clifton Pye, Barbara Pfeiler and Pedro Mateo Pedro | pp. 307–336

Index | pp. 337–342

“This important and path-breaking book will be a treat for researchers who work on ergativity. And psychologists who find it difficult to imagine alternative universes will be taken on a voyage of discovery, led by skilled guides. Prevailing acquisition models are challenged by the diversity of ergative systems. This book presents the diversity clearly enough to stimulate new thinking about child language, as well as linguistic universals.”

Dan I. Slobin, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley

Cited by (15)

Cited by 15 other publications

Order by:

Montrul, Silvina

2023. Heritage Languages: Language Acquired, Language Lost, Language Regained. Annual Review of Linguistics 9:1 ► pp. 399 ff.

de León, Lourdes

2022. Learning from Mayan Tzotzil: A commentary on Kidd and Garcia (2022). First Language 42:6 ► pp. 784 ff.

Kidd, Evan & Rowena Garcia

2022. Where to from here? Increasing language coverage while building a more diverse discipline. First Language 42:6 ► pp. 837 ff.

Kidd, Evan & Rowena Garcia

2022. How diverse is child language acquisition research?. First Language 42:6 ► pp. 703 ff.

Rodríguez-Ordóñez, Itxaso

2022. The role of frequency in the acquisition of structured variation: The case of Basque ergativity. International Journal of Bilingualism 26:5 ► pp. 656 ff.

PYE, Clifton

2021. Documenting the acquisition of indigenous languages. Journal of Child Language 48:3 ► pp. 454 ff.

Pereltsvaig, Asya

2020. Languages of the World,

Montrul, Silvina, Archna Bhatia, Rakesh Bhatt & Vandana Puri

2019. Case Marking in Hindi as the Weaker Language. Frontiers in Psychology 10

Bavin, Edith L.

2018. Features of some ergative languages that impact on acquisition. In Functionalist and Usage-based Approaches to the Study of Language [Studies in Language Companion Series, 192], ► pp. 1 ff.

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.

Stoll, Sabine

2015. Crosslinguistic approaches to language acquisition. In The Cambridge Handbook of Child Language, ► pp. 107 ff.

BERMAN, RUTH A.

2014. Cross-linguistic comparisons in child language research. Journal of Child Language 41:S1 ► pp. 26 ff.

Brown, Penelope & Suzanne Gaskins

2014. Language acquisition and language socialization. In The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology, ► pp. 187 ff.

Kockelman, Paul, N. J. Enfield & Jack Sidnell

2014. Process and formation. In The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology, ► pp. 183 ff.

LIEVEN, ELENA

2014. First language development: a usage-based perspective on past and current research. Journal of Child Language 41:S1 ► pp. 48 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 7 november 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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