Events of caused accompanied motion in Qaqet and Dëne Sųłıné child language corpora
This chapter investigates the expression of directed caused accompanied motion (directed CAM) events in child language corpora of Qaqet (a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea) and Dëne Sųłıné (a Dene language of Canada). Both languages employ complex CAM expressions. The chapter briefly introduces the constructions, and then focuses on the expression of directed CAM events in child language and child-directed language. In both languages, the CAM construction appears late in child language: early Qaqet expressions consist predominantly of ground phrase elements, while early Dëne Sųłıné expressions consist predominantly of bare verb stems. The findings are related to a proposal by Slobin et al. (2010) on early expressions of caused motion in satellite-framed languages.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Setting the scene: The directed CAM expressions in Qaqet and Dëne Sųłıné
- 3.Directed CAM events
- 3.1Qaqet
- 3.1.1Intransitive motion verbs and their use in the CAM construction
- 3.1.2The CAM construction in child language (below age 6;4)
- 3.1.3Directed CAM expressions in early child language (below age 2;8)
- 3.1.4Child-directed language: Variation sets
- 3.2Dëne Sųłıné
- 3.2.1Handling verbs and the directed CAM construction
- 3.2.2Directed CAM expressions in child language
- 4.Discussion and conclusion
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Acknowledgements
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Notes
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Abbreviations
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References