[PLing] Talk invitation

[Eva Wittenberg]

Dear All,

The Language Comprehension Lab cordially invites you to the following talk by:

Anupama Reddy , University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, USA

Date: Thursday, Oct 12, 2023
Time: 9:30 AM
Venue: Language Comprehension Lab (D513 for CEU people) and Zoom https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/97417354990?pwd=aFpnWXByUkdSd012dWRBUHc1SUJZZz09
The speaker will join online.

Title: "Effect of dependent case marking on frame compliance in Marathi"

Abstract: I investigate whether children acquiring Marathi (a split ergative language spoken in India: ergative-absolutive voice occurs in the perfective ; nominative-accusative in the imperfect) are verb-compliant or frame-compliant, and whether there is a difference between the two voices (Naigles, 1993).

Because of the difficulty in learning verbs (Gleitman, 1990), Naigles (1993) proposes that children use a form of syntactic bootstrapping referred to as frame-compliance. A frame is represented by the number of arguments in the sentence, and this is used as a first-pass mechanism to infer transitivity. Naigles finds that English-speaking children are much more frame-compliant (i.e. they are more likely to interpret an intransitive verb with two NPs as transitive) and they move towards verb-compliance (interpret an intransitive verb as intransitive, accommodating the second noun in some other way such as assuming conjoined arguments) as they become older. Subsequent studies (e.g. Naigles et al. 2006, Goksun et al. 2008, Leischner et al. 2016; Arunachalam et.al., 2013) find that frame-compliance holds cross-linguistically, though the factors influencing the frame can be more language specific (i.e. case, NP ellipsis). Goksun et al. (2008) find that in Turkish (a null argument language) the presence of accusative case increases frame-compliance – a fact that comports with Polinsky’s (2011) argument that accusative case is the marked/dependent case in NOM/ACC languages, allowing for the inference of transitivity. In ergative languages, however, Polinsky argues ergative case is the marked/dependent case.

In this study I ask whether within the same language, different case markers in different voices might impact frame-compliance in children differentially. Forty children were tested in Pune, India with a picture selection task and elicited verbal correction in three conditions (A-C): ergative-case condition (1), accusative-case condition (2) and a (control) bare-case condition (3). Based on previous research, we predicted that Marathi children using language general features would interpret all three conditions as transitive given that they occur in a transitive frame (i.e. two NPs). However, if children use language-specific features to determine frame, conditions A and B should show more causative interpretations than condition C. Comparisons of proportion of causative responses between conditions A and B would illuminate the strength of the two voice systems. The results show that children are sensitive to case marking within particular voice contexts which they use for frame-compliance to help determine verbal properties.

Anupama (Anu) Reddy is a third year PhD student at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa where she focuses on language acquisition and morpho-syntax in Indic languages. Her current projects revolve around use of language-specific features and language processing in native and heritage speakers.

Kind regards,
Eva



Eva Wittenberg
lcl.ceu.edu<http://lcl.ceu.edu/>

Department of Cognitive Science
Central European University
Quellenstr. 51
1100 Vienna
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