Acquisition of Pitjantjatjara Clause Chains

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Language Acquisition

Background:

• Clause chaining constructions are common in world languages for describing action sequences.
• Little is known about how children acquire these constructions, with Turkish converbs being a notable exception.
• Pitjantjatjara, an Indigenous Australian language, utilizes clause chaining extensively.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the acquisition of Pitjantjatjara clause chaining constructions in children.
• To compare the acquisition of Pitjantjatjara clause chaining with Turkish converb acquisition.
• To investigate the developmental stages and semantic function acquisition in clause chaining.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of a naturalistic corpus of Pitjantjatjara utterances from 23 children (10 months–10 years) and 21 adults.
• Longitudinal data collection between 2016 and 2019, including over 4000 child utterances and 1600 adult utterances.
• Identification and categorization of clause chaining constructions and their semantic functions across developmental stages.

Main Results:

• Pitjantjatjara clause chain acquisition follows three stages: verb juxtaposition, use of morphology for modification, and preferred use for sequential actions and modification.
• Children utilize dedicated clause chain morphology from around 2;6, similar to Turkish converb acquisition.
• Pitjantjatjara acquisition shows an reversed order of semantic function acquisition compared to Turkish: modification and simultaneity are acquired before sequential actions.

Conclusions:

• The acquisition pathway for Pitjantjatjara clause chaining shares similarities with Turkish converb acquisition in terms of stages and morphology use.
• The reversed order of semantic function acquisition (modification before sequential actions) in Pitjantjatjara raises questions about universal principles in language acquisition.
• Findings contribute to understanding the diversity in developmental timing of event combination versus modification strategies across languages.