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

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 inaminate 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 effect is 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.