The Acquisition of Ergativity in Samoan

Date
2017-09-01
Authors
Muagututia, Grant
Contributor
Advisor
Department
Instructor
Depositor
Speaker
Researcher
Consultant
Interviewer
Annotator
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa Department of Linguistics
Volume
2017
Number/Issue
Starting Page
Ending Page
Alternative Title
Abstract
What little research there is on the acquisition of ergativity focuses on morphological ergativity (Ochs 1982; Bavin and Stoll 2013). This paper investigates the acquisition of ergativity in Samoan, which exhibits both morphological (case) and syntactic (relative clauses) ergativity. The results of two experiments (picture description; children, adolescents and adult controls) show that both morphological and syntactic ergativity is acquired rather late. Experiment 1 (case) revealed that children only produce the ergative case-marker 32% of the time. Remaining responses involved alternative strategies such as using an intransitive/control verb. Experiment 2 (relative clauses) revealed that in producing Object-relatives, children made errors 15% of the time, but produced the target form only 31% of the time. However, with (transitive) subject-relatives, accuracy exceeded 60%. Adolescents were adult-like in all respects. We conclude that morphological and syntactic ergativity is acquired by roughly age 8yrs.
Description
Keywords
linguistics
Citation
Muagututia, Grant. 2017. The Acquisition of Ergativity in Samoan. University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Working Papers in Linguistics 48(5).
Extent
Format
Geographic Location
Time Period
Related To
Table of Contents
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License
Rights Holder
Local Contexts
Email libraryada-l@lists.hawaii.edu if you need this content in ADA-compliant format.