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Early passive acquisition in Inuktitut*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Shanley E. M. Allen  and
Martha B. Crago
Shanley E. M. Allen*
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik
Martha B. Crago
Affiliation:
McGill University
*
Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, Postbus 310, 6500 AH Nijmegen, Netherlands.
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Abstract

Passive structures are typically assumed to be one of the later acquired constructions in child language. English-speaking children have been shown to produce and comprehend their first simple passive structures productively by about age four and to master more complex structures by about age nine. Recent crosslinguistic data have shown that this pattern may not hold across languages of varying structures. This paper presents data from four Inuit children aged 2;0 to 3;6 that shows relatively early acquisition of both simple and complex forms of the passive. Within this age range children are productively producing truncated, full, action and experiential passives. Some possible reasons for this precociousness are explored including adult input and language structure.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , February 1996 , pp. 129 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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Footnotes

[*]

This article is based on a portion of a doctoral thesis submitted by the first author to the Department of Linguistics at McGill University. The research was supported by funding from the following agencies: Kativik School Board Research Council, Northern Scientific Training Program, McGill University Department of Native and Northern Education, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies, and Fonds pour la formation de chercheurs et I'aide à la recherche. We are grateful to Mark Baker, Katherine Demuth, Michael Fortescue, Mick Mallon, Keith Nelson, Lizzie Ningiuruvik, Johnny Nowra, Clifton Pye, Matthew Rispoli, Tom Roeper, Lydia White, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on previous versions of this article. We also thank the children and families involved in this study and the many Inuit involved in transcribing and analysing the data.

References

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