Document Type
Conference Proceeding
Publication Date
2009
Publication Title
Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA 2008)
Abstract
The paper presents an account of number agreement phenomena arguing that the target of agreement may be bleached of number information. This would explain why English-speaking children have difficulty relying on the target alone as a clue to number, despite producing it correctly. Xhosa has a very rich subject-verb agreement system and pro-drop, and there is theoretical dispute over its properties. An experiment with Xhosa-speaking children revealed that they, too, are unable to use the morpheme on the verb as a cue to subject number. It is argued that this may be further evidence that the morpheme is agreement rather than a clitic pronoun, but the claim is in need of further test.
Rights
© 2009 Sandile Gxilishe, Mantoa Rose Smouse, Thabisa Xhalisa, and Jill de Villiers
Recommended Citation
Gxilishe, Sandile; Smouse, Mantoa Rose; Xhalisa, Thabisa; and de Villiers, Jill, "Children’s Insensitivity to Information from the Target of Agreement: The Case of Xhosa" (2009). Philosophy: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/phi_facpubs/48
Comments
Archived as published.