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Splitting the Notion of 'Agent': Case-Marking in Early Child Hindi
- Source :
-
Journal of Child Language . Nov 2005 32(4):787-803. - Publication Year :
- 2005
-
Abstract
- Two construals of agency are evaluated as possible innate biases guiding case-marking in children. A BROAD construal treats agentive arguments of multi-participant and single-participant events as being similar. A NARROWER construal is restricted to agents of multi-participant events. In Hindi, ergative case-marking is associated with agentive participants of multi-participant, perfective actions. Children relying on a broad or narrow construal of agent are predicted to overextend ergative case-marking to agentive participants of transitive imperfective actions and/or intransitive actions. Longitudinal data from three children acquiring Hindi (1;7 to 3;9) reveal no overextension errors, suggesting early sensitivity to distributional patterns in the input.
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 0305-0009
- Volume :
- 32
- Issue :
- 4
- Database :
- ERIC
- Journal :
- Journal of Child Language
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- EJ777506
- Document Type :
- Journal Articles<br />Reports - Research
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000905007117