How universal is agent-first? Evidence from symmetrical voice languages

Riesberg, Sonja; Malcher, Kurt; Himmelmann, Nikolaus P.

doi:10.1353/lan.2019.0055

Cited by 22 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Tagalog is a widely-spoken language of the Philippines, and is often cited as a representative of the symmetrical voice system (Foley, 2008;Riesberg et al, 2019). In Tagalog, verbal and nominal morphology are used for thematic role assignment.…”

Section: Tagalogmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the current paper, we present research on the acquisition of the Tagalog symmetrical voice system. Symmetrical voice is a typologically rare but theoretically important feature of grammar commonly associated with Western Austronesian languages (Foley, 2008;Riesberg et al, 2019). The languages are unique because they show no preference for the agent to be the subject (Foley, 2008;Riesberg, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Acquisition of the Tagalog Symmetrical Voice System: Evidence from Structural Priming

Garcia

Kidd

2020

Language Learning and Development

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We report on two experiments that investigated the acquisition of the Tagalog symmetrical voice system, a typologically rare feature of Western Austronesian languages in which there are more than one basic transitive construction and no preference for agents to be syntactic subjects. In the experiments, 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old Tagalog-speaking children and adults completed a structural priming task that manipulated voice and word order, with the uniqueness of Tagalog allowing us to tease apart priming of thematic role order from that of syntactic roles. Participants heard a description of a picture showing a transitive action, and were then asked to complete a sentence of an unrelated picture using a voice-marked verb provided by the experimenter. Our results show that children gradually acquire an agent-before-patient preference, instead of having a default mapping of the agent to the first noun position. We also found an earlier mastery of the patient voice verbal and nominal marker configuration (patient is the subject), suggesting that children do not initially map the agent to the subject. Children were primed by thematic role but not syntactic role order, suggesting that they prioritize mapping of the thematic roles to sentence positions.

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Section: Tagalogmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Acquisition of the Tagalog Symmetrical Voice System: Evidence from Structural Priming

Garcia

Kidd

2020

Language Learning and Development

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“…This pattern is a universal tendency, as a mirror image of differential object marking (e.g. [DeLancey, 1981;Schmidtke-Bode, Levshina, 2018]). Differential object marking is much better known, but it is not so well-known yet that an analogous pattern is also found in ditransitive constructions and in scenario splits, and can be generalized as follows:…”

Section: ) the Dam Generalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ergative constructions provide a good example in the present context, because the Moscow-trained linguist Igor A. Mel'čuk developed an interesting account of ergativity in Lezgian which inspired me early in my career, and the Moscow-trained linguist Maria Polinky has a recent book about ergative constructions [Polinsky, 2016]. 1 But I will also discuss Mark Baker's recent book Case (2015), because it represents a particularly influential line of thought in comparative grammar.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

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Ergativity and depth of analysis

Haspelmath

2019

Rhema

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In this paper, I argue that “depth of analysis” does not deserve the prestige that it is sometimes given in general linguistics. While language description should certainly be as detailed as possible, general linguistics must rely on worldwide comparison of languages, and this cannot be based on language-particular analyses. Rigorous quantitative comparison requires uniform measurement, and this implies abstracting away from many language-particular peculiarities. I will illustrate this on the basis of ergative patterns, starting out from I.A. Mel’čuk’s (1981) proposal for Lezgian. This proposal was not successful, but why not? And why is Baker’s (2015) theory of dependent case likewise unsuccessful? By contrast, quantitative worldwide research has found striking similarities of ergative coding patterns, which can be explained by the efficiency theory of asymmetric coding. I will argue that this success is due to a more cautious approach to understanding Human Language, which does not rely on the Mendeleyevian vision for grammar (that all grammars are made from the same innate building blocks).

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Is There a Particular RC Attachment Preference in Turkish? Negotiating the Effects of Semantic Factors

Başer

Hohenberger

2020

J Psycholinguist Res

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How universal is agent-first? Evidence from symmetrical voice languages

Cited by 22 publications

References 49 publications

The Acquisition of the Tagalog Symmetrical Voice System: Evidence from Structural Priming

The Acquisition of the Tagalog Symmetrical Voice System: Evidence from Structural Priming

Ergativity and depth of analysis

Is There a Particular RC Attachment Preference in Turkish? Negotiating the Effects of Semantic Factors

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