Acquisition of the Impersonal Voice by an Estonian Child

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeKeywords: language acquisitionimpersonal and passive constructionsEstonian Acknowledgements We would like to thank Renate Pajusalu, Meelis Leesik and two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on our article. We also gratefully acknowledge support from the Estonian Scientific Foundation, grant 7492. Notes 1. The child's age in years, months, and days. 2. CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange System) http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/. 3. In Balto-Finnic, synthetic verb forms are considered to be older than periphrastic verb forms (Laakso 2001 , p. 190). 4. The isomorphism between perfect forms of impersonal and passive constructions has led to disagreement about whether there are two discrete voice constructions (Blevins 2003 Blevins, JP. 2003. Passives and Impersonals. Journal of Linguistics, 39: 473–520. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Pihlak 1993 ; Rajandi 1999 [1968]; Torn 2002 , 2006a; Vihman 2004 ), or a more general construction that subsumes the impersonal and the passive (Erelt 1989 Erelt, M. 1989. Eesti lauseliikmeist (grammatika marginaale). Preprint KKI–61, Tallinn: Eesti NSV Teaduste Akadeemia. [Google Scholar]; Erelt et al. 1993 ; Tauli 1980 Tauli, V. 1980. Eesti grammatika II. Lauseõpetus, Uppsala: Finsk-ugriska Institutionen. [Google Scholar]). The present paper follows the first approach, which regards impersonals and passives as two different constructions. 5. The object in Estonian can occur in the partitive, genitive, or nominative case. 6. Rajandi (1999 Rajandi, H. (1968/1999) Eesti impersonaali ja passiivi süntaks, Eesti Keele Instituudi toimetised, 3 (Tallinn, Eesti Keele Instituut) [Google Scholar] [1968], p. 81) suggests that agentive adverbials may also appear in the elative, but this use is not very frequent. The use of adessive arguments in the impersonal and passive has been studied by Lindström and Tragel (2007 Lindström, L and Tragel, I. 2007. Eesti keele impersonaali ja seisundipassiivi vahekorrast adessiivargumendi kasutamise põhjal. Keel ja Kirjandus, 7: 532–53. [Google Scholar]). 7. The term is used in generative linguistics to refer to a relation between a moved NP and its trace. The trace is coindexed with the moved NP and forms a chain with it. 8. Kunnari et al. (2010 Kunnari, S. Torn-Leesik, R. & Tolonen, A.-K. (2010) ‘The Acquisition of “Short Passive” by Finnish and Estonian 4 and 5-Year-Old Children’, Poster presented at COST A33 final conference ‘Let the Children Speak: Learning of Critical Language Skills Across 25 Languages’, London, England, 23 January [Google Scholar]) also show that Finnish children comprehend similar Finnish voice construction well at the age of four. 9. The postposition poolt ‘by’ which is used in agentive phrases can also be interpreted as ‘from’. 10. The asterisk * or [*] marks forms that are considered ungrammatical in Standard Estonian. 11. Examples are given in the form they are represented in the CHILDES database. 12. [+ I] imitation. 13. We give a free translation of the entire example, but gloss only the clauses containing impersonal verbs. Impersonal verb forms are in bold. 14. [SR] self repetition. 15. The verb tegema ‘do’ is the source for the majority of impersonal forms in both Andreas's and his mother's speech. 16. See Tulviste (2004 Tulviste, T. 2004. ‘Mothers’ Conversational Styles across Cultures. The Case of Estonia Finland, Sweden and the US’, in Proceedings of the IACCP XVIth Congress, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, July 15–19 [Google Scholar]).