2018 Sat Poster 6735

Saturday, November 3, 2018 | Poster Session II, Metcalf Small | 3:15pm

Acquisition of conjunctions in recursive and distributive scenarios: a production study in Yudja
S. Lima

Introduction This study explores the acquisition of conjunctions in Yudja, a Brazilian endangered indigenous language (800 speakers), in two types of contexts: recursive and distributive. The set of conjunctions in Yudja include: a) conjunctions that are semantically unmarked for temporal/causal relations (ĩ ‘and’); b) conjunctions marked for temporal relations (txidjibi ‘after’); c) conjunctions marked for causal relations (duhahe and suduhahe ‘then’). Among the conjunction in the group (c), the distinction between duhahe and suduhahe lies on the presence of an evidential prefix (su-) in the latter. These two conjunctions – duhahe and suduhahe – are marked not only for temporal/causal relations but they can also be used as switch reference markers.

Production task in a production task the participants saw either a recursive video (where a boy put a ball inside a cup, and then the [ball+cup] object was put inside a bowl and finally the [ball+cup+bowl] object was put inside a box) or a distributive video (where a boy put three different balls in three different containers [cup, bowl, box] in different events). The task was to describe what happened in the video. Participants 16 adults and 19 children (5 to 11 years old). Results: adults the main difference between recursive and distributive contexts for adults was the strong preference for the temporal conjunction suduhahe ‘then’ (62%) and duhahe ‘then’ (31%) in recursive scenarios. This preference is not observed in the distributive scenario, where the conjunction ĩ ‘and’ is preferred (37%) over the other two conjunctions (suduhahe, 25% duhahe, 19%). Results: children in recursive scenarios, children present a preference for the causal conjunction duhahe (58%) and for the temporal conjunction txidjibi (25%). The causal conjunction suduhahe (8%) – associated with evidential information – is marginally used in recursive scenarios. In distributive scenarios, children present a different pattern from adults as they strongly disfavor the use of the conjunction ĩ ‘and’ and maintain their preference for the causal conjunctions (duhahe: 44%; suduhahe: 44%). We did not find a significant effect of age across critical items. Other considerations in our data, adults always included a conjunction in their description of multi-level events. Three children (1 6-year old in the distributive scenario and 2 9-year-old in the recursive scenario) juxtaposed VPs without including conjunctions; this developmental stage was also observed in other studies of the acquisition of complex structures in English, German, Turkish and Italian (Clancy et al. 1976). Another consideration was that children, more often than adults, provided a partial description of the event (2-level) (81% of 3-level description of complex events (adults); 53% (children)).

Discussion the results show that children, differently from adults, are more likely to use the same conjunctions to describe recursive and distributive events. Similarly to previous studies on the acquisition of conjunctions (Clark 1971), this study suggest a hierarchical acquisition of the conjunctions duhahe and suduhahe where children show first the mastery of the super-ordinate component (duhahe, less specific, first; then, suduhahe, more specific).

References

Clancy, P., Iacobsen, T., & Silva, M. (1976). The acquisition of conjunction: A cross- linguistic study. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development. ERIC Clearinghouse.

Clark, E. V. (1971). On the acquisition of the meaning of before and after. Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 10(3), 266-275.