Children's acquisition of Warlpiri: comprehension of transitive sentences
- 1 October 1985
- journal article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Journal of Child Language
- Vol. 12 (3) , 597-610
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s030500090000667x
Abstract
Comprehension test results from children acquiring Warlpiri as a first language in the Yuendumu community indicate that the canonical transitive sentence is one with an ergative-absolutive verb. We hypoth- esize that the acquisition process is influenced by a number of properties of the language, properties including the presence of homophonous forms for some of the case endings, the use of three different case frames, the optional ellipsis of core arguments, and the optionality of case markings in certain conditions.Keywords
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