Acquisition of an ergative language

[Tasaku Tsunoda]

28 June 2002

Dear Colleague,
   On the 25th June, I posted the following request.

===========================================================
Dear Colleague,
   I am writing to seek your advice.
   Is there any work which investigate the acquisition of an ergative
language:
(a-i) as a first language,
(a-ii) as a second language,
(b-i) at the level of simple sentences, and/or
(b-ii) at the level of subordination or coordination (i.e. syntactic
ergativity) ?
   I know only one work:
Pye, C. 1990. The acquisition of ergative languages. Linguistics
28:1291-1330.

   Thanking you in advance for your help,
Tasaku Tsunoda
========================================================

   So far, the following people have kindly responded. Many thanks to you
all.

Peter Bakker, Penelope Brown, William Foley, Geoffrey Haig, Alexandr E.
Kibrik, Stephen Levinson, Elke Nowak, Anna Siewierska

   All the works cited by the above-mentioned scholars are listed below. In
addition, those works which I have discovered via the cited works, too, are
listed.
   All the languages investigated possess ergativity at the level of simple
sentences, but they do not appear to exhibit ergativity at the level of
subordination and/or coordination (i.e. syntactic ergativity). That is, the
works cited below investigate the acquisition of ergativity at the level of
simple sentences. But I have not been able to find any work which looks at
the acquisition of syntactic ergativity.

   Again, thank you all for your help.

Best wishes,

Tasaku Tsunoda

====================================================
Allen, Shanley E.M. 1996. Aspects of argument structure acquisition in
Inuktitut. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Allen, Shanley E.M. 1998. Categories within the verb category: learning the
causative in Inkuktitut. Linguistics 36:633-77.

Allen, Shanley E.M. 2000. A Discourse-pragmatic explanation for argument
representation in child Inuktitut. Linguistics 38:483-521.

Allen, Shanley; and Heike Schröder. In press (?). Preferred argument
structure in early Inuktitut spontaneous speech Data. In John W. Du Bois,
Lorraine E. Kumpf, and William J. Ashby (eds.), Preferred argument
structure: grammar as architecture for function. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Bavin, Edith L. 1992. The acquisition of Warlpiri. In Dan Isaac Slobin
(ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, Vol.3, 309-71. New
Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Bavin, Edith. 2000. Ellipsis in Warlpiri children¹s narratives: an analysis
of frog stories. Linguistics 38:569-89.

Brown, Penelope. 1998. Children's first verbs in Tzeltal; evidence for an
early verb category. Linguistics 36:613-53.

Ezeizabarrena, M.J. & M.P. Larrañaga .1996. Ergativity in Basque: a problem
for language acquisition? Linguistics 34:955-991

Fortescue, Michael. 1992. The acquisition of West Greenlandic. In Dan Isaac
Slobin (ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, Vol.3,
111-219. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Imedadze, Natela; and Kevin Tuite. 1992. The acquisition of Georgian. In Dan
Isaac Slobin (ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition,
Vol.3, 39-109. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Ochs, Elinor. 1982. Ergativity and word order in Samoan child language.
Language 58:646-71.

Ochs, Elinor. 1985. Variation and error: a sociolinguistic approach to
language acquisition in Samoa. In Dan Isaac Slobin (ed.), The
crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, Vol.1: The data, 783-838. New
Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Ochs, Elinor. 1988. Culture and language development. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Pye, C. 1990. The acquisition of ergative languages. Linguistics
28:1291-1330.

Pye, Clifton. 1992. The acquisition of K¹che¹ Maya. In Dan Isaac Slobin
(ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, Vol.3, 221-308.
New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Schieffelin, Bambi B.  1985.  The acquisition of Kaluli. In Dan Isaac Slobin
(ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, Vol.1: The data,
525-93. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Schieffelin, Bambi B. 1990. The give and take of everyday life. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Van Valin, Robert D., Jr. 1992. An overview of ergative phenomena and their
implications for language acquisition. In Dan Isaac Slobin (ed.), The
crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, Vol.3, 15-37. New Jersey:
Lawrence Erlbaum.

-- 
Tasaku Tsunoda
Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology
University of Tokyo
Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan

Phone: +81-3-5841-3790
Fax:   +81-3-5803-2784