Early production of the passive in two Eastern Bantu languages

Abstract

The passive construction is acquired relatively late by children learning to speak many languages, with verbal passives not fully acquired until age 6 in English. In other languages it appears earlier, around age 3 or before. Use of passive construction in young children was examined in two Eastern Bantu languages spoken in Kenya (Kiswahili and Kigiriama), both with frequent use of passive. The passive was used productively very early (2;1) in these languages, regardless of the method used to measure productivity. In addition, non-actional passives, particularly rare in English and some other European languages, were seen at these early ages. The proportion of verbs that were passive varied between individuals, both in children's speech and in the input to children. Pragmatic and grammatical features of the passive in some languages have previously been suggested to drive early passive acquisition, but these features are not found consistently in the two languages studied here. Findings suggest that the relatively high frequency of input found in these languages is the most plausible reason for early productive use of the passive. KeywordsBantu languages; child language; Kenya; Kigiriama; Kiswahili; language acquisition; passive acquisition Children learning many languages find active sentences such as 'Jack ate the ice cream' much easier to understand and produce than passive sentences such as 'The ice cream was eaten by Jack'. This construction seems to be learned very late in English, as well as in many other languages, including most European languages and Hebrew (Berman, 1985;Mills, 1985); in some studies not until aged 9 or 11 for some constructions (Horgan, 1978;Maratsos, Kuczaj, Fox, Becker, & Chalkley, 1979).Even when passives are acquired, they are likely to be truncated (lacking the 'by phrase ';Berman, 1985;Mills, 1985). One traditional explanation for this has been that the cognitive architecture underlying the passive construction matures later than that for other grammatical constructions. For example, Borer and Wexler (1987) suggest that the argument chain underlying verbal passives matures relatively late leading to earlier acquisition of adjectival passives such as 'The chair is broken' than verbal passives such as 'Jack was chased (by the park keeper)'. © The Author(s) 2011Corresponding author: Katherine J Alcock, Department of Psychology, University of Lancaster, Lancaster LA1 4YF, UK. k.j.alcock@lancaster.ac.uk. Children's cognitive development appears in some contexts to be a limiting factor in their language development. For example, Kelly and Dale (1989) found that non-verbal cognitive abilities such as means-end behaviour develop in parallel with language milestones. Trosborg (1982) examined whether children learning Danish needed to have achieved reversibility in cognitive tasks, such as Piagetian conservation tasks, in order to comprehend and use reversible grammatical structures. She concluded that children were able to comprehend non-reversible passives earlier than they were...

Differences in use without deficiencies in competence: passives in the Turkish and German of Turkish heritage speakers in Germany

“…In some languages (crucially including Turkish), children seem to converge quite early (2 years of age), and there seems to be some correlation with language type and morphology. That is, children of Bantu, Turkic and Inuit languages, such as Sesotho, Kiswahili, Turkish, Inuktitut, have been shown to have full knowledge of passives quite early (Alcock, Rimba and Newton 2013;Allen and Crago 1996;AksuKoç and Slobin 1985;Demuth and Kline 2006;Ketrez 1999;Savaşır and Glee 1982;). Moreover, it seems that in these languages passives might be used more as well by adults (Demuth and Kline 2006).…”

A comparative analysis of passive constructions in English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa: Grammar and acquisition

“…Crawford (2012) and Deen (2011); for some of the explanations offered for the comparatively early acquisition of the passive voice in some languages, cf. Alcock et al (2011). An inquiry into the possible factors that may determine the comparatively late or early acquisition of the passive voice in various languages falls outside of the scope of the current paper.…”

“…American Inuit family (Allen and Crago 1996); (ii) various Mayan languages (Pye and Quixtan Poz 1988); (iii) Eastern Bantu languages, e.g. Kiswahili and Kigiriama (Alcock et al 2011); and (iv), importantly, Southern Bantu languages, e.g. isiZulu (Suzman 1985(Suzman , 1987(Suzman , 1990 and Sesotho (Demuth 1989(Demuth , 1990.…”

Neuropsychology of Children in Africa

“…Data from the region, from Sesotho (Demuth 1989a ) and Kiswahili and Kigiriama (Alcock et al 2012 ), suggest that full passives, including those with non-actional verbs, can be acquired much earlier in situations where the passive is heard frequently by children. Demuth ( 1989a ) and Suzman ( 1987 ) have previously suggested that some additional features of passive use in Sesotho and Zulu, respectively, might also increase the likelihood of children using the passive early.…”

“…Within the regions that are well represented, non-Bantu languages are poorly studied; a small amount of data are available from Luo in Kenya, a Nilo-Saharan language, but no data are from the southern African Khoisan languages or the East African Semitic or Cushitic languages, some of which have a few millions of speakers. Another area of research that could be potentially very fruitful, and has to some extent begun in a modest way (Alcock et al 2005(Alcock et al , 2012Suzman 1996 ), is the comparison between related but subtly different languages in the region. Languages of completely different classes have so many differences that comparisons can sometimes not be made in a valid way, but very closely related languages can have subtle differences that affect, or do not, the course of acquisition and can therefore teach us much about what infl uences the rate at which children acquire certain aspects of their native language.…”