Animacy and children's language

Abstract

So far we have established the following. (a) There are constructions in natural language in which the surface subject of a declarative sentence is not semantically related to its adjacent predicate, and it is therefore displaced with respect to its logical place in the sentence. These constructions involve raising verbs, tough -adjectives, and unaccusative verbs. I have referred to these constructions as “opaque” constructions, in part because the structural relationship between the main clause subject and main clause predicate is not transparent from their surface adjacency, and in part because these constructions bear a striking resemblance, on the surface, to constructions that have a very different underlying structure (those involving control predicates or unergative verbs). In these opaque constructions, to a much greater degree than canonical sentences, languages permit the displaced/derived subject to be inanimate. (b) The linguistic marking or encoding of animacy is found quite broadly in human language, and animacy is universally linked to argument structure in that animacy and agenthood generally imply subjecthood, while inanimacy generally implies non-subjecthood, and, furthermore, an inanimate subject generally implies a derived subject. Finally, (c) even in languages that lack extensive morphological marking of animacy, such as English and Dutch, there are effects of animacy on the processing of language in adult speakers. Specifically, adults more readily treat inanimate syntactic subjects, as opposed to animate subjects, as themes – either as the head of an object relative clause or as the subject of a raising verb.