ABSTRACT We investigated the acquisition of Hindi split ergativity (zero or -ne marking) and Hindi differential object marking (DOM; zero or -ko marking) by L1 speakers of Dutch. Both grammatical phenomena are conditioned by multiple syntactic and semantic features. On a descriptive level, the study aims to examine when and how Dutch-speaking learners acquire and apply the conditional features associated with -ne and -ko marking in Hindi as a foreign language (HFL). A specific learner corpus was created based on a picture description task that elicited semi-spontaneous oral production data from 15 Dutch-speaking learners of Hindi, from four cross-sectional stages of the Hindi course trajectory. We annotated the corpus data for multiple features associated with -ne and -ko marking. Using a mixed-effects logistic regression analysis, we found an increase in the use and accuracy of each case marker over the different years of study, but individual learner profile analyses revealed considerable intersubject differences in learner behavior. We argue that the developmental stages for the emergence of -ne and -ko marking are in line with predictions based on Processability Theory. We additionally include mastery level analysis to account for a combined perspective on language development. Our findings reveal that HFL learners reach higher mastery levels for split ergativity than for DOM, even though DOM (-ko marking) emerges before split ergativity (-ne marking). We conclude that developmental stages and between-learner variation are not mutually exclusive.

ABSTRACT The present study examines the mechanisms of lexical case acquisition in Russian by two-to-five-year-old Russian monolingual (n = 54) and Russian-English bilingual children (n = 38). Participants performed a picture-based sentence completion task. Sentences were constructed to elicit production of real Russian words (n = 24) and nonce words (n = 24) in different non-nominative cases (e.g., ‘The boy is holding a … beetle-ACC/meetle-ACC’). We wanted to know if there are qualitative and/or quantitative differences in case assignment on complements of prepositions between monolingual and bilingual children, whether they can generalize case assignment rules to novel input, and whether monolingual and bilingual children show different developmental trajectories in terms of case acquisition at different ages. The results indicate that bilingual children make more errors with case forms than their monolingual peers in all tested age groups and inflectional paradigms, in both real word and nonce word productions. However, despite robust quantitative differences, bilinguals and monolinguals show strikingly similar patterns of case acquisition in that they make similar types of errors and struggle with the same case forms. Furthermore, we did not find significant differences in the accuracy of produced case forms for real versus nonce words, suggesting that both monolingual and bilingual children learn to generalize morphological rules to novel input early in language development. Finally, chronological age was a significant predictor of case form accuracy but did not interact with other variables. This means that both monolingual and bilingual children improved their case performance gradually over time with similar learning gains for real and nonce words.

ABSTRACT Languages differ regarding the depth, structure, and syntactic domains of recursive structures. Even within a single language, some structures allow infinite self-embedding while others are more restricted. For example, when expressing ownership relation, English allows infinite embedding of the prenominal genitive -s, whereas the postnominal genitive of is much more restricted. How do speakers learn which specific structures allow infinite embedding and which do not? The distributional learning proposal suggests that the recursion of a structure (e.g., X1’s-X2 ) is licensed if the X1 position and the X2 position are productively substitutable in non-recursive input. The present study tests this proposal with an artificial language learning experiment. We exposed adult participants to X1-ka-X2 strings. In the productive condition, almost all words attested in X1 position were also attested in X2 position; in the unproductive condition, only some were. We found that, as predicted, participants from the productive condition were more likely to accept unattested strings at both one- and two-embedding levels than participants from the unproductive condition. Our results suggest that speakers can use distributional information at one-embedding level to learn whether or not a structure is recursive.

ABSTRACT We provide an account of the developmental trajectory of Emirati Arabic negation particles. We treat the non-verbal predicate negator (NVPN) mub as a negative copula, in contrast to the verbal predicate negator (VPN) maa, which encodes sentential negation in verbal and existential contexts. The analysis is supported by evidence from a longitudinal corpus of six Emirati children. Given the high frequency of occurrence of maa in the ambient language, we show that an input-frequency account predicts maa-mub substitutions in early stages of acquisition. However, confirming previous findings by Becker we show that when mub emerges in later stages, its distribution exhibits an asymmetry: mub is used frequently with individual-level nominal/adjectival predicates but it almost never appears with stage level adjectival/prepositional/ adverbial predicates, mirroring the distribution of copular elements in child English (and other languages).

ABSTRACT The English Resultative Construction (ERC) is a satellite-framed structure with no identical equivalent in Spanish. In a series of studies, we analyzed and compared recognition (acceptability judgment task) and comprehension (sentence comprehension task) of three ERC subtypes with the English Depictive Construction (EDC) (which has a Spanish counterpart) by Spanish speaker learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Results showed that: 1) EDCs were better recognized than ERCs by L2 learners, but highly proficient participants were closer to English native speakers’ performance, 2) Less proficient EFLs comprehended EDCs better than those ERC subtypes that were further from Spanish (ERC Property and Fake Reflexive). We interpret our findings in terms of an interlinguistic distance gradient, where those constructions present (EDC) or closer (ERC-Path) to L1 are more readily acquired. This effect seems more prominent at lower EFL proficiencies, and fades as proficiency increases, evolving towards a more native-like pattern.

ABSTRACT The most recent studies on the acquisition of evidentiality, be it morphologically or syntactically encoded, have argued that the comprehension lag detected is due to factors having to do with others’ authority or mental perspective, where “others” stands for other individuals involved in the experiment in various manners (e.g., the experimenter or someone in the props). However, these studies have yet to detect the age at which children eventually align with adults in comprehending the grammatical structure encoding the evidential interpretation when it is syntactically encoded. The comprehension study reported in this article has taken the aforementioned factors into consideration and has involved a large number of Greek-speaking children between second and fifth grades, along with an adult control group, to investigate syntactically encoded evidentiality. The results suggest that children align with adults in mapping source of evidence to sentence type during fourth grade, when they are 9 years old or older, suggesting that there should be additional factors behind the delayed comprehension of evidentiality. It is argued that these factors are mainly grammatical, and, most importantly, they arise to a larger extent in languages that encode evidentiality in the syntax

ABSTRACT Language is subject to a variety of pressures. Recent work has documented that many aspects of language structure have properties that appear to be shaped by biases for the efficient communication of semantic meaning. Other work has investigated the role of social pressures, whereby linguistic variants can acquire positive or negative evaluation based on who is perceived to be using them. While the influence of these two sets of biases on language change has been well documented, they have typically been treated separately, in distinct lines of research. We used a miniature language paradigm to test how these biases interact in language change. Specifically, we asked whether pressures to mark social meaning can lead linguistic systems to become less efficient at communicating semantic meaning. We exposed participants to a miniature language with uninformative constituent order and two dialects, one that employed case and one that did not. In the instructions, we socially biased participants toward users of the case dialect, users of the no-case dialect, or neither. Learners biased toward the no-case dialect dropped informative case, thus creating a linguistic system with high message uncertainty. They failed to compensate for this increased message uncertainty even after additional exposure to the novel language. Case was retained in all other conditions. These findings suggest that social biases not only interact with biases for efficient communication in language change but also can lead to linguistic systems that are less efficient at communicating semantic meaning.

ABSTRACT Early identification of language delay is important as it has a serious impact on a child’s life in terms of educational, social, and emotional development. Among the early language screening tools, there are some parent-administered tools; however, they are not culturally appropriate or freely available. This article documents the development and preliminary validation of a quick and easy-to-administer language screening tool for babies from 6 to 18 months of age. Parents of 100 babies ranging in age from 6 to 21 months were included in the study. The babies were classified into five screening levels according to their age. The items of a Screening Test of Early Language Development-Test version (STELD-T) were created and validated through expert opinion. The STELD-T was administered along with the Receptive Expressive Emergent Language Scale (REELS). Internal consistency using the Kuder-Richardson Formula-20 ranged from 0.457 to 0.853 across the five levels, acceptable owing to short tool length and item heterogeneity. Kappa coefficients indicated 0.459 to 0.875 agreement between the STELD-T and the REELS indicated satisfactory criterion validity. After calculating the percentage of babies with a “refer” result as well as Kappa statistics with three different pass-refer criteria, a pass-refer criterion of 75% seemed to be appropriate for screening. The STELD seems to be a reliable and valid tool to screen language development in babies from 6 months to 18 months of age in urban areas of Maharashtra. Items representing a range of language skills including pragmatics make it a unique tool.

ABSTRACT Children seem to be relatively delayed in their comprehension of the verbal be-passive in English, compared to their acquisition of other constructions of object-movement such as wh-questions and unaccusatives. Prior work has found that children’s performance on these passives can be affected by the verb’s lexical semantics. Through a meta-analysis of experimental studies assessing English-speaking children’s age of acquisition for the verbal be- passive, we identify a developmental trajectory composed of five classes, where each class has a distinct lexical semantic profile. A Truth-Value Judgment (TVJ) Task assessing English-speaking children’s comprehension of verbal be-passives supports this developmental trajectory. Together, the meta-analysis and TVJ study underscore the importance of lexical semantics for understanding the development of the English verbal be-passive.

ABSTRACT We investigate concrete acquisition theories for a derived approach to linking theory development and explore to what extent two prominent linking theories in the syntactic literature—UTAH and rUTAH—can be derived from the data that English-learning children encounter. We leverage a conceptual acquisition framework that specifies key aspects of the child’s acquisition task, including realistic child-directed input and a cognitively motivated mechanism for inference (the sufficiency threshold, derived from the Tolerance and Sufficiency Principles). We find that rUTAH can be derived but UTAH can’t, if children derive their linking theories from their input as specified here. We discuss the implications of these results for both syntactic theory and acquisition theory.