TY - JOUR
T1 - Acquisition of the Malagasy voicing system
T2 - Implications for the adult grammar
AU - Hyams, Nina
AU - Ntelitheos, Dimitris
AU - Manorohanta, Cecile
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to express our deepest appreciation to the children and families who participated in our study. Our gratitude also to Ed Keenan, who spent countless hours going through the acquisition data with us and who never tired of explaining the fine points of Malagasy or sharing with us his adventures in Madagascar. Thanks also to Matt Pearson and Lisa Travis for their very detailed comments on an earlier draft of this paper, to Murat Kural, Nathan Klinedinst, and three NLLT reviewers whose careful reading has greatly improved this paper. Our appreciation also to Marcel den Dikken for his help throughout the review process. Parts of this paper have been presented at AFLA XIII and at GALA 2005. We are grateful to the audiences at these conferences for their helpful comments. Finally, our thanks also to Zahra Khalili and Nathan Klinedinst for editorial assistance. This project was partially supported by a UCLA Faculty Senate Grant to Hyams. All errors are of course our own.
PY - 2006/11
Y1 - 2006/11
N2 - In this paper we discuss the acquisition of the voicing system of Malagasy, an Austronesian language. Our study is based on the longitudinal data of three children ages 19-32 months, and is to our knowledge the first systematic investigation of the acquisition of Malagasy. The Malagasy voicing system has a distinctive morphology and involves the promotion of an argument (actor, theme, instrument, etc.) to a referentially and syntactically prominent position, typically clause-final. We look at two competing accounts of the Malagasy voicing system, one in which the promoted argument is analyzed as a subject and the promotion operation an instance of A-movement [Guilfoyle, E., Hung, H., & Travis, L. (1992) Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 10, 375-414] and a more recent account in which Malagasy is analyzed as a V2-like language in which the promoted argument is a topic and the promotion an instance of A-movement (Pearson, M. (2001) Pearson, M. (2005)). Both analyses have clear implications for acquisition, which we examine in this paper. Our acquisition results favor the analysis of the promoted argument as an A-element. We also show that there is a developmental stage in Malagasy that parallels the root infinitive (RI) stage widely observed in various European languages. Apparent differences between the Germanic RIs and the analogous phenomenon in Malagasy are derived from differences in the functional structure associated with a voicing system as opposed to an agreement system.
AB - In this paper we discuss the acquisition of the voicing system of Malagasy, an Austronesian language. Our study is based on the longitudinal data of three children ages 19-32 months, and is to our knowledge the first systematic investigation of the acquisition of Malagasy. The Malagasy voicing system has a distinctive morphology and involves the promotion of an argument (actor, theme, instrument, etc.) to a referentially and syntactically prominent position, typically clause-final. We look at two competing accounts of the Malagasy voicing system, one in which the promoted argument is analyzed as a subject and the promotion operation an instance of A-movement [Guilfoyle, E., Hung, H., & Travis, L. (1992) Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 10, 375-414] and a more recent account in which Malagasy is analyzed as a V2-like language in which the promoted argument is a topic and the promotion an instance of A-movement (Pearson, M. (2001) Pearson, M. (2005)). Both analyses have clear implications for acquisition, which we examine in this paper. Our acquisition results favor the analysis of the promoted argument as an A-element. We also show that there is a developmental stage in Malagasy that parallels the root infinitive (RI) stage widely observed in various European languages. Apparent differences between the Germanic RIs and the analogous phenomenon in Malagasy are derived from differences in the functional structure associated with a voicing system as opposed to an agreement system.
KW - A-chain maturation
KW - A-movement
KW - Acquisition
KW - Austronesian
KW - Continuity
KW - Malagasy
KW - Passive
KW - Root infinitives
KW - Topicalization
KW - Voice
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U2 - 10.1007/s11049-006-9009-2
DO - 10.1007/s11049-006-9009-2
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:33751573710
SN - 0167-806X
VL - 24
SP - 1049
EP - 1092
JO - Natural Language and Linguistic Theory
JF - Natural Language and Linguistic Theory
IS - 4
ER -