- Home
- Books
- The Acquisition of Ergativity
- Chapter
The acquisition of ergative marking in Kaluli, Ku Waru and Duna (Trans New Guinea)
- Author(s): Alan Rumsey 1 , Lila San Roque 2 and Bambi B. Schieffelin
-
View Affiliations Hide AffiliationsAffiliations:1 Australian National University2 Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
- Source: The Acquisition of Ergativity , pp 133-182
- Publication Date December 2013
In this chapter we present material on the acquisition of ergative marking on noun phrases in three languages of Papua New Guinea: Kaluli, Ku Waru, and Duna. The expression of ergativity in all the languages is broadly similar, but sensitive to language-specific features, and this pattern of similarity and difference is reflected in the available acquisition data. Children acquire adult-like ergative marking at about the same pace, reaching similar levels of mastery by 3;00 despite considerable differences in morphological complexity of ergative marking among the languages. What may be more important – as a factor in accounting for the relative uniformity of acquisition in this respect – are the similarities in patterns of interactional scaffolding that emerge from a comparison of the three cases.
- Affiliations: 1: Australian National University; 2: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
-
From This Site
/content/books/9789027271235-tilar.9.06rumdcterms_subject,pub_keyword-contentType:Journal105