Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T17:03:22.587Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Acquisition of passives: the role of patient animacy, salience, and lexical accessibility*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Henrietta Lempert
Henrietta Lempert*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
*
Psychology Department, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, CanadaM5S 1A1
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In full passive sentences such as The cat was kicked by the dog, the patient (cat) is promoted to subject and the agent is demoted to the by-phrase. Children 2;10 to 4;7 years (mean 3;6) who were taught the form with animate patients and animate agents (The baby is being picked up by the girl) were better able to produce and comprehend passives than children taught with inanimate patients and animate agents (The flower is being picked up by the girl). The finding of comparable post-teaching performance in children taught with perceptually salient (coloured) VS. nonsalient patients argues against a salience explanation for the patient animacy effect. Moreover, equal access to word forms for animate and inanimate nouns did not reduce the effect. The animacy effect is consistent with claims that ‘perspective’ is the cognitive counterpart to the formal category of subject; and, conversely, inconsistent with attempts to understand language acquisition in terms of a language system that operates in isolation from other facets of human cognition.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , October 1990 , pp. 677 - 696
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant No. 410–85–0068. Parts of this paper were presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development, October 1988 and the Society for Research in Child Development Conference, April 1989. I am indebted to the staff of the following childhood education centers for their assistance: Ryerson Polytechnical Institute Early Learning Center, George Brown College Early Learning Center, Seneca College Early Learning Center, Shaughnessy Children's Center, and Campus Co-op Day Care Center. Thanks go to the children and their parents, and to Rosa Villani and Rochelle Muller for their help with data collection.

References

REFERENCES

Baldie, B. J. (1976). The acquisition of the passive voice. Journal of Child Language 2. 231–48.Google Scholar
Berwick, R. & Weinberg, A. (1985). The grammatical basis of linguistic performance, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bock, J. K. (1982). Toward a cognitive psychology of syntax: information processing contributions to sentence formulation. Psychological Review 89. 1–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bock, J. K. (1986). Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive Psychology 18. 355–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borer, H. & Wexler, K. (1987). The maturation of syntax. In Roeper, T. & Williams, E. (eds), Parameter-setting and language acquisition. Dordrecht: ReidelGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: ForisGoogle Scholar
Comrie, B. (1981). Language universals and language typology: syntax and morphology. Chicago: University of Chicago PressGoogle Scholar
Crain, S., Thornton, R. & Murasugi, K. (1987). Capturing the evasive passive. Paper presented at the Boston University Language Conference, Boston MA.Google Scholar
Dewart, M. H. (1979). Role of animate and inanimate nouns in determining sentence voice. British Journal of Psychology 70. 135–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, M. (1978). Noun animacy and the passive: a developmental approach. Journal of Experimental Psychology 39. 495–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayhurst, H. (1967). Some errors of young children in producing passive sentences. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 6. 534–639.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horgan, D. M. (1975). Language development: a cross-methodological study. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Horgan, D. M. (1978). The development of the full passive. Journal of Child Language 5. 65–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lempert, H. (1984). Topic as starting point for syntax. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 49. No. 209, (5).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lempert, H. (1989). Animacy constraints on preschool children's acquisition of syntax, Child Development 60. 237–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (1977). Starting points. Language 53. 152–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maratsos, M. P. & Abramovitch, R. (1975). How children understand full, truncated, and anomalous passives. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 14. 145–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maratsos, M. P., Fox, D. E. C., Becker, J. A. & Chalkey, M. A. (1985). Some restrictions on children's passives. Cognition 19. 167–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pinker, S., Lebeaux, D. S. & Frost, L. A. (1987). Productivity and constraints in the acquisition of the passive. Cognition 26. 196–267.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosch, E. (1973). On the internal structure of perceptual and semantic categories. In Moore, T. E. (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic PressGoogle Scholar
Turner, E. A. & Rommetveit, R. (1967). Experimental manipulation of the production of the active and passive voice in children. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 7. 246–50.Google Scholar
Wasow, T. (1977). Transformations and the lexicon. In Culicover, P. W., Wasow, T. & Akmajian, A. (eds), Formal syntax. New York: Academic PressGoogle Scholar
Weinberg, A. (1987). Commentary on Borer & Wexler. In Roeper, T. & Williams, E. (eds), Parameter-setting and language acquisition. Dordrecht: ReidelGoogle Scholar