Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-hgkh8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T10:23:49.228Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The acquisition of passives in Serbian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 August 2012

ALEXANDRA PEROVIC*
Affiliation:
University College London
JASMINA VUKSANOVIĆ
Affiliation:
State University of Novi Pazar
BOBAN PETROVIĆ
Affiliation:
University of Belgrade
IRENA AVRAMOVIĆ-ILIĆ
Affiliation:
University of Belgrade
*
Alexandra Perovic, Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, Research Department of Developmental Science, University College London, Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, London WC1N 1PF, UK. E-mail: a.perovic@ucl.ac.uk

Abstract

This study examined the comprehension of actional and psychological verbs in both their active and passive (short and long) forms by 99 Serbian-speaking children. The children, whose age ranged between 3 years, 6 months (3;6) and 7 years, 6 months (7;6), were divided into three groups: 3;6–5 (M = 4.3), 5;1–6;1 (M = 5.6), and 6;2–7;6 (M = 7.0). All groups reached ceiling performance on actives of both actional and psychological verbs. They showed a good performance on passives of actional verbs, both short and long, but an exceptionally low performance on passives of psychological verbs: only the oldest group, 7-year-olds, reached 80% correct performance on psychological passives. There were no differences in the children's performance on short versus long passives of either type of the verb. These results are in line with studies reporting delayed passive comprehension in children younger than 5 in a number of languages, suggesting a delay in the comprehension of this structure cross-linguistically. The discrepancy observed in the comprehension of psychological passives, as opposed to actional actives, fits neatly into Borer and Wexler's account, which relates children's difficulties in this area to their underlying knowledge of argument chains created by movement of sentential elements.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Agresti, A. (2002). Categorical data analysis (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, S., & Crago, M. (1996). Early passive acquisition in Inuktitut. Journal of Child Language, 23, 129155.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Anđelković, D., Ilić Ševa, N., & Moskovljević, J. (2001). Srpski Elektronski Korpus Ranog Dečjeg Govora [Serbian Electronic Corpus of Early Child Language]. University of Belgrade, Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Philology.Google Scholar
Babyonyshev, M., & Brun, D. (2004) The acquisition of perfective and imperfective passive constructions in Russian. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics, 10, 1631.Google Scholar
Babyonyshev, M., Ganger, J., Pesetsky, D., & Wexler, K. (2001). The maturation of grammatical principles: Evidence from Russian unaccusatives. Linguistic Inquiry, 32, 144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldie, B. (1976). The acquisition of the passive voice. Journal of Child Language, 3, 331348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baltin, M. (2001). A-movements. In Baltin, M. & Collins, C. (Eds.), The handbook of contemporary syntactic theory. Malden, MA: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartke, S. (2004). Passives in German children with Williams syndrome. In Bartke, S. & Siegmuller, J. (Eds.), Language acquisition and language disorders: Vol. 36. Williams syndrome across languages. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Belaj, B. (2002). Kategorija gotovosti i vremenska vrijednost pasivnoga predikata. Jezikoslovlje, 3.1, 116.Google Scholar
Beletti, A., & Rizzi, L. (1988). Psych-verbs and theta-theory. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 6, 291352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, R., & Sagi, Y. (1981). Word-formation and lexical innovations of young children. Hebrew Linguistics, 18, 3136.Google Scholar
Bloom, L. (1973). One word at a time. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Borer, H., & Wexler, K. (1987). The maturation of syntax. In Roeper, T. & Williams, E. (Eds.), Parameter setting. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Brooks, P., & Tomasello, M. (1999). Learning the English passive construction. In Fox, B. A., Jurafsky, D., & Michaelis, L. A. (Eds.), Cognition and function in language. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crain, S., Thornton, R., & Murasugi, K. (2009). Capturing the evasive passive. Language Acquisition, 16, 123133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, J. (2004). The acquisition of the Sesotho passive: Reanalyzing a counterexample to maturation. MA Thesis, Boston University.Google Scholar
Demuth, K. (1989). Maturation and the acquisition of the Sesotho passive. Language, 65, 5680.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowty, D. R. (1979). Word meaning and Montague grammar: The semantics of verbs and times in generative semantics and Montague's PTQ. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Djurković, M. (2007). Theoretical status and first language acquisition of the passive and impersonal constructions in Serbian. PhD Thesis, Cambridge University.Google Scholar
Embick, D. (2004). On the structure of resultative participles in English. Linguistic Inquiry, 35, 355392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferreira, F. (1994). Choice of passive voice is affected by verb type and animacy. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 715736.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, D., & Grodzinsky, Y. (1998). Children's passive: A view from the by-phrase. Linguistic Inquiry, 29, 311332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ganger, J., Dunn, S., & Gordon, P. (2005). Genes take over when the input fails: Findings from a twin study of the passive. Paper presented at the 27th Boston University Conference on Language Development.Google Scholar
Gelman, A., & Hill, J. (2007). Data analysis using regression and multilevel/hierarchical models. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gennari, S., & MacDonald, M. C. (2009). Linking production and comprehension processes: The case of relative clauses. Cognition, 111, 123.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gennari, S., & Poeppel, D. (2003). Processing correlates of lexical semantic complexity. Cognition, 89, B2741.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gómez, R. L., & Gerken, L. A. (2000). Infant artificial language learning and language acquisition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 178186.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gordon, P., & Chafetz, J. (1990). Verb-based versus class-based accounts of actionality effects in children's comprehension of passives. Cognition, 36, 227254.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grimshaw, J. (1990). Argument structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Guasti, M. T. (2002). Language acquisition: The growth of grammar. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Haiyun, L., & Chunyan, N. (2009). Phase impenetrability condition and the acquisition of unaccusatives, object-raising ba-constructions and passives in Mandarin-speaking children. In Crawford, J. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Third Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA 2008). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Hirsch, C., & Wexler, K. (2006). Children's passives and their resulting interpretation. University of Connecticut Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 4.Google Scholar
Hirsch, C., & Wexler, K. (2007). The late acquisition of raising: What children seem to think about seem. In Dubinsky, S. & Davies, B. (Eds.), New horizons in the analysis of control and raising. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Horgan, D. (1978). The development of the full passive. Journal of Child Language, 5, 6580.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaeger, T. F. (2008). Categorical data analysis: Away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 434446.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Keenan, E., & Dryer, M. (2007). Passive in the world's languages. In Shopen, T. (Ed.), Clause structure, language typology and syntactic description (pp. 325361). New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klajn, I. (2005). Gramatika srpskog jezika [The grammar of Serbian language]. Beograd: Zavod za udžbenike i nastavna sredstva.Google Scholar
Kostić, Đ. (1999). Frekvencijski rečnik savremenog srpskog jezika (Frequency Dictionary of Contemporary Serbian Language). Belgrade: Institut za eksperimentalnu fonetiku i patologiju govora, i Laboratorija za eksperimentalnu psihologiju Filozofskog fakulteta u Beogradu.Google Scholar
Kostić, Đ. (2001). Kvantitativni opis strukture srpskog jezika—Korpus srpskog jezika. [Quantitative Description of Serbian Language Structure—Corpus of Serbian Language]. Belgrade: Institut za eksperimentalnu fonetiku i patologiju govora, i Laboratorija za eksperimentalnu psihologiju Filozofskog fakulteta u Beogradu.Google Scholar
Legate, J. A., & Yang, C. D. (2002). Empirical reassessment of the poverty stimulus argument. Linguistic Review, 19, 151162.Google Scholar
Legendre, G. (1989). Inversion with certain French experiencer verbs. Language, 65, 752782.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lillo-Martin, D., & Snyder, W. (2009). Commentary on “Capturing the Evasive Passive.” Language Acquisition, 16, 118122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lukić, V. (1982). Dečja leksika [Children's lexicon]. Canyon Country, CA: Prosveta.Google Scholar
Maratsos, M., Fox, D., Becker, J., & Chalkley, M. (1985). Semantic restrictions on children's early passives. Cognition, 19, 167191.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maratsos, M., Kuczaj, S. A., Fox, D. E. C., & Chalkley, M. A. (1979). Some empirical studies in the acquisition of transformational relations: Passives, negatives, and the past tense. In Collins, W. A. (Ed.), Children's language and communication: The Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology (p. 12). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
O'Brien, K., Grolla, E., & Lillo-Martin, D. (2006). Long passives are understood by young children. In Bamman, D., Magnitskaia, T., & Zaller, C. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Okabe, R., & Sano, T. (2002). The acquisition of implicit arguments in Japanese and related matters. Proceedings of the 26th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Pearlmutter, N. J., & MacDonald, M. C. (1995). Individual differences and probabilistic constraints in syntactic ambiguity resolution. Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 521542.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perovic, A., & Wexler, K. (2010). Development of verbal passive in Williams syndrome. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 53, 12941306.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pierce, A. (1992). The acquisition of passives in Spanish and the question of A-chain maturation. Language Acquisition, 2, 5581.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinker, S., Lebeaux, D. S., & Frost, L. A. (1987). Productivity and constraints in the acquisition of the passive. Cognition, 26, 195267.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Progovac, Lj. (2005). A syntax of Serbian: Clausal architecture. Bloomington, IN: Slavica.Google Scholar
Pye, C., & Quixtan Poz, P. (1988). Precocious passives (and antipassives) in Quiché Mayan. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 27, 7180.Google Scholar
Savić, S., & Polovina, V. (1989). Razgovorni srpskohrvatski jezik [Serbian Conversational Speech]. Novid Sad, Serbia: Institut za južnoslovenske jezik, Filozofski fakultet.Google Scholar
Siewierska, A. (1988). The passive in Slavic. In Shibatani, M. (Ed.), Passive and voice (pp. 243286). Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanojčić, Z., & Popović, Lj. (1992). Gramatika srpskoga jezika [The grammar of Serbian language]. Belgrad: Zavod za udžbenike i nastavna sredstva.Google Scholar
Stojanovic, D. (2004). Indefinite reflexive clitics in child Serbian: Explicit alternatives to implicit arguments. Paper presented to the Canadian Linguistic Association, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg.Google Scholar
Sudhalter, V., & Braine, M. D. S. (1985). How does comprehension of passives develop? A comparison of actional and experiential verbs. Journal of Child Language, 12, 455470.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sugisaki, K. (1999). Japanese passives in acquisition. UCONN Working Papers in Linguistics, 10, 145156.Google Scholar
Terzi, A., & Wexler, K. (2002). A-chains and S-homophones in children's grammar: Evidence from Greek passives. Proceedings of the North Eastern Linguistics Society, 32, 519537.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M., Brooks, P. J., & Stern, E. (1998). Learning to produce passive utterances through discourse. First Language, 18, 223237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, E., & Rommetveit, R. (1967). Experimental manipulation of the production of active and passive voice in children. Language and Speech, 10, 169180.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Valian, V. (1999). Input and language acquisition. In Ritchie, W. C. & Bhatia, T. K. (Eds.), Handbook of child language acquisition. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Verrips, M. (1996). Potatoes must peel: The acquisition of the Dutch passive. PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Wellman, H., Hollander, M., & Schult, C. (1996). Young children's understanding of thought bubbles and of thought. Child Development, 67, 768788.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wells, J. B., Christiansen, M. H., Race, D. S., Acheson, D. J., & MacDonald, M. C. (2009). Experience and sentence comprehension: Statistical learning and relative clause comprehension. Cognitive Psychology, 58, 250271.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wexler, K. (2004). Theory of phasal development: Perfection in child grammar. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, 48, 159209.Google Scholar
Zlatić, L. (1997). The structure of the Serbian noun phrase. PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.Google Scholar