An asymmetry in the acquisition of relative clauses: Evidence from Tagalog

Abstract

This article reports on the acquisition of relative clauses in Tagalog, the most widely spoken language in the Philippines. A distinctive feature of Tagalog is a unique system of voice that creates competing patterns, each with different possibilities for relativization. This study of children’s performance on agent and patient relative clauses in a comprehension task revealed an agent relative clause advantage. These findings cannot be explained by the voice preference in declarative clauses, but are compatible with an explanation based upon input frequency factors.

The Predictive Value of Tagalog Voice Morphology in Filler-Gap Dependency Formation

“…We found that agents in Tagalog are somehow privileged in filler-gap dependency processing, as exemplified by the AV-PV asymmetry in ay-inverted sentences-and potentially, relative clauses, as well. A similar asymmetry has been observed by Tanaka et al (2019) in Tagalog-speaking children's acquisition of relative clauses, and by Bondoc et al (2018) in the development of the relativization grammar of aphasics. Sauppe (2016) also observed that agents are privileged when processing canonical declaratives in the language.…”

“…What the present study is interested in is whether voice will be deployed as a cue in contexts where an argument is displaced from its thematic position and has to be held in working memory. Bondoc et al (2018) and Tanaka et al (2019) used a referent-selection task, a modified version of a picture-selection task, to investigate the comprehension of relative clauses in neurotypical and aphasic populations, respectively. While these studies do involve contexts where an argument is displaced from its thematic position, their results are based on interpretations that are the end state of comprehension.…”

“…As one of the reviewers pointed out, the case markers ang and ng, which we have labeled as "nominative" and "genitive, " respectively, do behave differently from nominatives and genitives in more familiar Indo-European languages. Alternatively, ang and ng can be referred to as the "pivot" and "non-pivot, " respectively, to really highlight said differences(Sauppe, 2016;Tanaka et al, 2019). Nothing crucial hinges on our choice of labels.…”

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

“…Experimental studies using picture description tasks and naturalness ratings have shown that the most preferred construction of Tagalog-speaking adults is the patient voice with an agent-initial or subject-last order (Ex. 2;Bondoc, O'Grady, Deen, & Tanaka, 2018;Hsieh, 2016;Sauppe et al, 2013;Tanaka, 2016). The next preferred construction (but far behind the first) is the agent voice patientinitial structure (Ex.…”

“…The next preferred construction (but far behind the first) is the agent voice patientinitial structure (Ex. 1; Sauppe et al, 2013;Tanaka, 2016); or both the agent voice agent-initial (Ex. 3) and patient-initial structures (Hsieh, 2016).…”