Generic noun phrases (e.g., "Cats like to drink milk") are a primary means by which adults express generalizations to children, yet they pose a challenging induction puzzle for learners. Although prior research has established that English speakers understand and produce generic noun phrases by preschool age, little is known regarding the cross-cultural generality of generic acquisition. Southern Peruvian Quechua provides a valuable comparison because, unlike English, it is a highly inflected language in which generics are marked by the absence rather than the presence of any linguistic markers. Moreover, Quechua is spoken in a cultural context that differs markedly from the highly educated, middle-class contexts within which earlier research on generics was conducted. We presented participants from 5 age groups (3-6, 7-9, 10-12, 14-35, and 36-90 years of age) with two tasks that examined the ability to distinguish generic from nongeneric utterances. In Study 1, even the youngest children understood generics as applying broadly to a category (like "all") and distinct from indefinite reference ("some"). However, there was a developmental lag before children understood that generics, unlike "all", can include exceptions. Study 2 revealed that generic interpretations are more frequent for utterances that (a) lack specifying markers and (b) are animate. Altogether, generic interpretations are found among the youngest participants, and may be a default mode of quantification. These data demonstrate the cross-cultural importance of generic information in linguistic expression. A developmental analysis of generic nouns in Southern Peruvian QuechuaGeneric noun phrases (e.g., "Dogs like to chew bones") are an important means of expressing generalizations to children. Generic noun phrases refer to kinds as opposed to individuals . Much of our world knowledge concerns kinds, yet kinds are abstractions (Prasada, 2000). Although one can view instances of a kind (e.g., Lassie, Rover, Rin-tin-tin), one can never view the kind fully or directly (e.g., dogs as a class). For this reason, generic language is a particularly crucial source of information to children regarding generic knowledge.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Bruce Mannheim, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, 101 West Hall, Ann Arbor MI 48109-1107, mannheim@umich.edu.. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptLang Learn Dev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 July 19. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptPrior research on children learning English has found that generics are common in childdirected speech (Gelman, Coley, Rosengren, Hartman, & Pappas, 1998), produced from an early age (Gelman, Goetz, Sarnecka, & Flukes, 2008), and understood appropriately by age 3 or 4 years (Chambers, Graham, & Turner, 2008;Cimpian & Markman, 2008;Gelman & Raman, 2003). Moreover, 4-year-old English-speaking children distinguish generics from the quantifiers "all" and "some" (Hollander, Gelman...
This paper sketches Spanish colonial policies toward Southern Peruvian Quechua in order to identify long-term trends and constants. I emphasize the following conjunctures in the debate on the status of the indigenous languages: (1) the simultaneous efforts to restrict the inroads of bilingualism in the legal and political domain and to encourage bilingualism among local headmen so as to facilitate indirect rule in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; (2) the debate as to the role of the vernacular in religious education and missionary work in the same period, a debate in which the position favoring use of the vernacular held out for a time against calls for forced liquidation of the indigenous languages; (3) the ascendancy of the position calling for liquidation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; and (4) the role of Southern Peruvian Quechua as a nationalist emblem during the eighteenth century.These conjunctures have considerable relevance today. Differences in vocabulary and ideological justification have obscured the continuity between colonial and modern language policy. The issues debated, the limits of the alternatives proposed as solutions, and even the practical efforts carried out on behalf of alternative policies, have been surprisingly perdurable. For four and a half centuries the “Andean language debate,” the issues and terms of language policy, have continued to have at their center the question of whether or not the Quechua have a right to exist as a separate community. (Language policy, colonialism, South America, Quechua)
Southern Quechua conversational narratives are dialogical in four senses. First, at the formal level, the narrative is produced between interlocutors; second, narrative embeds discourse within discourse by means of quotations or indirect discourse; third, implicit or hidden dialogue between texts is brought out through the intertextual reference to other coexisting narratives; and, fourth, there is a complex pattern of participation through which dialogue takes place not only between actual speaking individuals but between distinct, intersecting participant roles that evoke multiple interactional frameworks. Rigorous attention to each level allows us to integrate narrative analysis more closely into ethnographic study, in terms of both the social tactics of specific narrative events and the broader discursive frameworks that they illuminate.
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