The Acquisition of the Relativizer “-uraz” in Wapichana
Luiz Amaral (UMass, Amherst)
Wendy Leandro (UFRR)
Together with the debate on the role of recursion in human languages (e.g., Hauser et al.,
2002; Everett, 2005), research on the acquisition of recursive constructions has also received
more attention in the last decade (Roeper and Snyder, 2004; Hollebrandse et al., 2008; Limbach and Adone, 2010; Perez-Leroux et al., 2012). However, despite the fact that the controversy on whether recursion is universal or not was inspired by data from a native Brazilian
language (Pirahã), there is currently a big void in acquisition studies focusing on recursion
within indigenous communities in Brazil.
In this paper we examine the acquisition of the relativizer “-uraz” used in recursive embedded constructions in Wapichana; an Arawak language spoken in Roraima and in the
Southwest region of Guyana. The primary role of “-uraz” is to connect a relative construction with its head noun. It can be attached to verbs (1), adjectives (2), or postpositions (3). In
Wapichana, the relativizer can be used recursively in multiple embedded relative constructions. For example, the sentence in (1) can itself function as a relative clause embedded in
a construction such as in (4).
Limbach and Adone (2010) looked at the acquisition of recursive possessive phrases in English and showed that children as early as 5 years old already show instances of adult like
interpretations, though not with the same consistency in performance as adult speakers.
Amaral and Leandro (in prep.) examined the acquisition of recursive possessive phrases
in Wapichana, and showed that one needs to look beyond the early childhood period to
understand the availability of recursive interpretations for speakers acquiring a language.
Their results showed that while 7 and 8 year-olds can interpret sentences like (5) recursively
(almost 40% of the time), only after the age of 15 speakers achieve adult like performance in
a comprehension experiment.
Using a picture matching test, we ran a pilot study with 66 speakers between the ages of 7
and 62 in May 2012. Our preliminary results indicate a similar pattern in the acquisition of
the recursive interpretations for relative clauses than the ones found for embedded possessive phrases. The results also show that, although the recursive interpretation is available,
relative clauses headed by verbs tend to be less ambiguous than relative clauses headed
by adjectives. We intend to run a full-fledged experiment with speakers in three Wapichana
villages, and compare our findings to the data on the acquisition of possessive phrases from
Amaral and Leandro (in prep.). This comparison will allow us to verify possible parallels be-
tween the acquisition pattern of two different recursive constructions, and to investigate if
recursion is acquired as a general process independently of the target structure.
Examples:
(1) Daunaiur tykapan
zyn kaiwada-pa-uraz kuwam.
Guy
saw-REL girl wear-PROG-REL hat.
‘The guy saw the girl that was wearing a hat.’
(2) Kainha karit miisa pa’uwa barakau-uraz.
EXIST book table on
white-REL.
‘There is a book on the table that is white.’
(3) Daunaiur paradan zynaba at karit tym-a-uraz.
Guy
spoke
girl
to bag with-REL.
‘The guy spoke to the girl that had a book.’
(4) Un-paradan daunaiur at tykapa-uraz zyn kaiwada-pa-uraz
1ps-spoke guy
to saw-REL
girl wear-PROG-REL
‘I spoke to the guy that saw the girl that was wearing a hat.’
kuwam.
hat.
(5) Py-aida
un-ati Mary inhauz manguru-n.
2ps-show 1ps-to Mary sister
mango-GEN.
‘Show me Mary’s syster’s mango.’
Referências
Amaral, L. and Leandro, W. (in prep.). What can recursive possessives in Wapichana show us
about age effects in acquisition?
Everett, D. (2005). Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Pirahã. Current Anthropology, 46(4):621–646.
Hauser, M., Chomsky, N., and Fitch, T. (2002). The faculty of language: What is it, who has it,
and how did it evolve? Science, 298:1569–1579.
Hollebrandse, B., Hobbs, K., de Villiers, J., and Roeper, T. (2008). Second order embedding
and second order false belief. In Proceedings of GALA 2007 - Generative Approach to Language Acquisition, Newcastle upon Tyne: UK. Cambridge Scholar Press.
Limbach, M. and Adone, D. (2010). Language acquisition of recursive possessives in english.
In Boston University Conference on Child Language (BUCLD), volume 34, pages 281–290.
Perez-Leroux, A., Castilla-Earls, A., Bejar, S., and Massam, D. (2012). Elmo’s sister’s ball: The
problem of acquiring nominal recursion. Language Acquisition, 19(4):301–311.
Roeper, T. and Snyder, W. (2004). Recursion as an analytic device in acquisition. In Proceedings of GALA 2003 - Generative Approach to Language Acquisition, The Netherlands. LOT
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