Acquisition of the Malagasy voicing system: implications for the adult grammar

Abstract

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 3 children ages 19 to 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, Hung & Travis 1992) 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 2001(Pearson , 2005. Both these 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. Malagasy Acquisition.3

Native and Nonnative Processing of Active and Passive Sentences

“…The pretest results support the claim that the participants aligned the semantic role of agent with the grammatical role of subject and aligned the subject argument with preverbal position (Borer and Wexler, 1987; Hyams et al, 2006; Lee, 2017; Pienneman, 1998; VanPatten, 2007). The improved posttest accuracy scores show that the effects of instruction are to dissolve, disestablish, or destabilize both the alignment of semantic and grammatical roles and the alignment of the subject argument with preverbal position.…”

Grammatical Abilities of Greek-Speaking Children with Autism

“…According to the UPR, children cannot raise the object DP to spec, T in passives because they cannot raise it to spec, v first, since they perceive passive v to be a phase, but without features relevant for the object. A more recent proposal along similar lines is offered by Hyams, Ntelitheos & Manorohanta (2006); according to it: Children cannot form A-chains that derive a misalignment of thematic and grammatical hierarchies; that is, an external argument, if there is one, maps onto the subject (Canonical Alignment Hypothesis-CAH). Therefore, passives are not mastered early because what is mapped onto the subject position of the sentence is not the agent.…”

Adjectival passives and the structure of VP in Tagalog

“…Guilfoyle, Hung, and Travis 1992;Aldridge 2004). The conclusion that promotion of the THEME to subject position in (7b) is not Case-driven forms part of a larger conclusion that Tagalog lacks Case-driven A-movement more generally, and that all instances of movement into subject position actually involve A-bar movement (see, in particular, Richards 2000;Sells 2000;Pearson 2005;Hymes et. al.…”