The acquisition of ergative languages

Cross-linguistic psycholinguistics and its critical role in theory development: early beginnings and recent advances

“…CHILDES). It has grappled with a much broader typological slice of languages and has covered a range of linguistic phenomena that have been barely or not at all yet addressed in adult processing research, for example, evidentiality (Aksu & Slobin, 1986;Fitnever & Matsui, 2009 and papers therein;Papafragou, Li, Choi & Han, 2007), ergativity (Allen, 1996;Bavin, 1992;Bavin & Stoll, 2013;Fortescue & Olsen, 1992;Imidadze & Tuite, 1992;Narasimhan, 2005;Ochs, 1982;Pye, 1990Pye, , 1992Slobin, 1985Slobin, , 1992Van Valin, 1992), and serial verb constructions (Fung, 2011;Lee & Naigles, 2005).…”

Comparing different models of the development of the English verb category

“…For example, use of the semantic category "agent" as a bootstrap to the syntactic category of "NP subject" would represent a false step in the acquisition of some ergative languages that carve up the semantics of agency in a rather different way from nominative-accusative languages (e.g. Bowerman 1985;Braine 1988aBraine , 1992Pye 1990).…”

Child language acquisition: Why universal grammar doesn’t help

“…by Pye 1990) that the existence of morphologically ergative(-absolutive) languages (e.g. Dyirbal) constitutes a problem for Pinker's (1984) proposal, as such languages do not map semantic roles onto syntactic roles in the same way as (nominative-)accusative languages such as English (and the majority of IndoEuropean languages).…”

“…Van Valin 1992) are languages that exhibit true syntactic ergativity (e.g. Dixon 1972, Woodbury 1977, Pye 1990). In such languages, the P role is the syntactic subject, 7 passing many traditional tests for subjecthood such as appearing in an oblique phrase in antipassives (in Dyirbal and K'iche') and being controlled by an NP in a matrix clause (in Dyirbal and Yup'ik Eskimo).…”