Shanley Allen

A discourse-pragmatic explanation for argument representation in child Inuktitut

Abstract This paper assesses discourse pragmatics as a potential explanation for the production and omission of arguments in early child language. It employs a set of features that characterize typical situations of informativeness (Greenfield and Smith 1976; Clancy 1993, 1997) to examine argument status in data from four children aged 2;0 through 3;6 learning Inuktitut as a first language. Results based on logistic regression analyses suggest that a discourse-pragmatics account of argument representation has good explanatory adequacy, and that several of the features characterizing informativeness are good indicators of those arguments that tend to be overtly produced rather than omitted in early child language.

Early passive acquisition in Inuktitut

Passive structures are typically assumed to be one of the later acquired constructions in child language. English-speaking children have been shown to produce and comprehend their first simple passive structures productively by about age four and to master more complex structures by about age nine. Recent crosslinguistic data have shown that this pattern may not hold across languages of varying structures. This paper presents data from four Inuit children aged 2;0 to 3;6 that shows relatively early acquisition of both simple and complex forms of the passive. Within this age range children are productively producing truncated, full, action and experiential passives. Some possible reasons for this precociousness are explored including adult input and language structure.

Relations between syntactic encoding and co-speech gestures: Implications for a model of speech and gesture production

Gestures that accompany speech are known to be tightly coupled with speech production. However little is known about the cognitive processes that underlie this link. Previous cross-linguistic research has provided preliminary evidence for online interaction between the two systems based on the systematic co-variation found between how different languages syntactically package Manner and Path information of a motion event and how gestures represent Manner and Path. Here we elaborate on this finding by testing whether speakers within the same language gesturally express Manner and Path differently according to their online choice of syntactic packaging of Manner and Path, or whether gestural expression is pre-determined by a habitual conceptual schema congruent with the linguistic typology. Typologically congruent and incongruent syntactic structures for expressing Manner and Path (i.e., in a single clause or multiple clauses) were elicited from English speakers. We found that gestural expressions were determined by the online choice of syntactic packaging rather than by a habitual conceptual schema. It is therefore concluded that speech and gesture production processes interface online at the conceptual planning phase. Implications of the findings for models of speech and gesture production are discussed.

Development of Cross-Linguistic Variation in Speech and Gesture: Motion Events in English and Turkish

The way adults express manner and path components of a motion event varies across typologically different languages both in speech and cospeech gestures, showing that language specificity in event encoding influences gesture. The authors tracked when and how this multimodal cross-linguistic variation develops in children learning Turkish and English, 2 typologically distinct languages. They found that children learn to speak in language-specific ways from age 3 onward (i.e., English speakers used 1 clause and Turkish speakers used 2 clauses to express manner and path). In contrast, English- and Turkish-speaking childrens gestures looked similar at ages 3 and 5 (i.e., separate gestures for manner and path), differing from each other only at age 9 and in adulthood (i.e., English speakers used 1 gesture, but Turkish speakers used separate gestures for manner and path). The authors argue that this pattern of the development of cospeech gestures reflects a gradual shift to language-specific representations during speaking and shows that looking at speech alone may not be sufficient to understand the full process of language acquisition.

Aspects of argument structure acquisition in Inuktitut

This book discusses the first language acquisition of three morphosyntactic mechanisms of transitivity alternation in arctic Quebec Inuktitut. Data derive from naturalistic longitudinal spontaneous speech samples collected over a nine-month period from four Inuit children. Both basic and advanced forms of passive structures are shown to be used productively by Inuktitut-speaking children at an early age relative to English-speaking children, but consistent in age with speakers of non-Indo-European languages reported on in the literature; potential explanations of this difference include frequency of caregiver input and details of language structure. Morphological causatives appear slightly later in the acquisition sequence, and their first instances reflect use of unanalyzed routines. Lexical causatives are present from the earliest ages studied. Evidence of a period of overgeneralization of lexical causatives in one subject at the same time as the morphological causative shows signs of being productively acquired suggests that the seeming overgeneralization may reflect nothing more than as yet unstable use of the morphological causative. Noun incorporation structures are shown to be used productively by Inuktitut-speaking children at an early age relative to Mohawk-speaking children; potential explanations of this difference include details of language structure and relative language use in the environments of the learners. Findings are considered in light of current debates in the literature concerning continuity versus maturation of grammatical structure, and concerning the functional categories available to the child at early stages of acquisition. Data presented argue against late maturation, and suggest that all functional categories may be accessed by the Inuktitut-speaking child early in the acquisition process.

Early Finiteness in Inuktitut: The Role of Language Structure and Input

A stage of optional infinitive (OI) production has been identified in typically developing (TD) children learning languages that do not permit null subjects (Wexler (1994; 1998; 1999)), and this stage has been shown to be extended in at least English- and German-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI; Rice, Noll, and Grimm (1997), Rice, Wexler, and Cleave (1995)). Although TD children learning null subject languages do not go through an OI stage (Bar-Shalom and Snyder (1997), Guasti (1993)), reports differ concerning whether children with SLI learning these languages go through this stage (Bortolini, Caselli, and Leonard (1997), Bottari, Cipriani, and Chilosi (1996)). In this article, we present evidence from Inuktitut, a null subject language not yet investigated with respect to OIs. We show that although TD children learning Inuktitut do not go through an OI stage, one child with SLI does go through an OI stage. In addition, the percentage of finite verb forms marked with an overt verbal inflection in Inuktitut child-directed speech (CDS) is strikingly high compared with that in English CDS. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of continuity, the initial stage of child grammar, and the effect of language structure and input on language acquisition.

Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual acquisition: subject omission in learners of Inuktitut and English

This study investigates subject omission in six English-Inuktitut simultaneous bilingual children, aged 1;8-3;9, to examine whether there are cross-language influences in their language development. Previous research with other language pairs has shown that the morphosyntax of one language can influence the development of morphosyntax in the other language. Most of this research has focused on Romance-Germanic language combinations using case studies. In this study, we examined a language pair (English-Inuktitut) with radically different morphosyntactic structures. Analysis of the English-only and Inuktitut-only utterances of the children revealed monolingual-like acquisition patterns and subject omission rates. The data indicate that these bilingual children possessed knowledge of the target languages that was language-specific and that previously identified triggers for crosslinguistic influence do not operate universally.

The future of Inuktitut in the face of majority languages: Bilingualism or language shift?

Inuktitut, the Eskimo language spoken in Eastern Canada, is one of the few Canadian indigenous languages with a strong chance of long-term survival because over 90% of Inuit children still learn Inuktitut from birth. In this paper I review existing literature on bilingual Inuit children to explore the prospects for the survival of Inuktitut given the increase in the use of English in these regions. Studies on code mixing and subject realization among simultaneous bilingual children ages 2–4 years show a strong foundation in Inuktitut, regardless of extensive exposure to English in the home. However, three studies of older Inuit children exposed to English through school reveal some stagnation in childrens Inuktitut and increasing use of English with age, even in nonschool contexts. I conclude that current choices about language use at the personal, school, and societal levels will determine whether Inuit are able to reach and maintain stable bilingualism, or whether Inuktitut will decline significantly in favor of majority languages.

The Effect of Majority Language Exposure on Minority Language Skills: The Case of Inuktitut

Children who are native speakers of minority languages often experience stagnation or decline in that language when exposed to a majority language in a school or community situation. This paper examines such a situation among the Inuit of arctic Quebec. All 18 participants in the study were native speakers of Inuktitut, living in home environments that were functionally monolingual in Inuktitut. Half lived in communities with relatively high exposure to the majority language (English), while the other half lived in communities with low exposure. One third of each group were in Grade 3 (first year of school exposure to majority language), one third in Grade 8/9 (sixth year of school exposure) and one third were adults. Each participant narrated a 24-page wordless picture book (Frog Story) in Inuktitut. Narrations were analysed for story length, lexical diversity, grammatical complexity and narrative structure – all measures that are expected to increase or show improvement with increased language ability. Results are inconclusive; some suggest that higher exposure to English leads to stagnation in Inuktitut, while others do not. Methodological issues are discussed, and suggestions for further research are provided.

Categories within the verb category : learning the causative in Inuktitut

How children learn the category verb as a grammatical construct has been the focus of much research over the past two decades. However, less attention has been paid to acquisition of smaller categories within the verb category. This paper uses data concerning the acquisition of causatives in Inuktitut to address the question of how smaller categories of verbs are learned. Inuktitut has one class of verbs that permits only a morphological causative, and a second class that permits either a morphological or a lexical causative depending on the semantics of the situation. Data from eight Inuktitut-speaking children aged 1;0 through 3;6 indicate that the distinction between these classes is acquired in three stages. During the first stage, the children use only lexical causatives and there is no evidence that they understand that these structures have a causative meaning component. During the second stage, they use the morphological causative indiscriminately across verb categories to issue commands. In addition, they begin to show productivity in their use of lexical causatives in that they alternate between intransitive and lexical-causative uses of the same verb root. By stage three, children have begun to distinguish the two classes of verbs with respect to causative constructions. Across the three stages outlined above, children apparently learn to use linguistic indicators of causation first in a situation-based way (i.e. for issuing commands) and later verb-by-verb, rather than employing a class-based approach to category formation. These results are analyzed in terms of similar studies in English and Hebrew, and in terms of a general phasal approach to cognitive and linguistic development