Abstract
Abstract It is well-known that children whose native language is Japanese first begin vocalizing potential verbs at about the age of 2 years and continue to utter ungrammatical forms which are not used in adults’ speech as well as correct ones until approximately at the age of 5 years when their acquisition of potential verbs completes, with virtually no erroneous uses observed. Interestingly enough, the process of the acquisition of potential verbs proceeds in a manner parallel with that of causative/inchoative alternation. In this study, based on children’s natural speech data reported in previous research, we argue that the approach put forth in Fuji, Hashimoto, and Murasugi (2008a. “A VP-shell analysis for the undergeneration and the overgeneration in the acquisition of Japanese causatives and potentials.” Nanzan Linguistics 4: 21–41; 2008b. “VP-shell analysis for the acquisition of Japanese potentials.” Nanzan Linguistics: Special Issue 3(2): 65–102) is not empirically valid in that it cannot correctly predict changes in morphological patterns of potential verbs uttered by children along the period of language acquisition. Moreover, in the course of our discussion, it is shown that the acquisition process of the potential morpheme e by children can be identified as that of (in)transitive morpheme e which forms the class of mono-grade vowel-ending verbs.
Highlights
It is well-known that children whose native language is Japanese first begin vocalizing potential verbs at about the age of 2 years and continue to utter ungrammatical forms which are not used in adults’ speech as well as correct ones until approximately at the age of 5 years when their acquisition of potential verbs completes, with virtually no erroneous uses observed
The highlight of the analysis proposed in Fuji et al (2008a,b), a brief summary of which is given in (16) and (17), is that the temporal parallel seen in the acquisition of potential verbs and causative/inchoative alternation is unified from the perspective of a child’s knowledge regarding the overt realization of the feature [±potential] and [±cause] at the functional category v
We critically overviewed the analysis by Fuji et al (2008a,b) on the process of the acquisition of potential forms with reference to the corpus of natural speech by children reported in previous research, showing that their analysis is problematic in empirical respects
Summary
It is well-known that children whose native language is Japanese first begin vocalizing potential verbs at about the age of 2 years and continue to utter ungrammatical forms which are not used in adults’ speech as well as correct ones until approximately at the age of 5 years when their acquisition of potential verbs completes, with virtually no erroneous uses observed. It has sometimes been identified in some previous studies that the acquisition of potential verbs occurs almost simultaneously with the acquisition of the causative/inchoative alternation. We will give one possible account of the relevant data based on the layered structure of VP in child grammar
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