WHAT’S ACQUIRED LATER IN AN AGGLUTINATIVE LANGUAGE*
Keiko Murasugi, Chisato Fuji and Tomoko Hashimoto
Nanzan University

1.

Introduction

The intermediate stages of child grammar are a window into linguistic variation. Testingchildren’s knowledge of grammar in the course of language acquisition can bring new
insights to the study on the cross-linguistic syntactic differences.
Japanese is a head-final agglutinative language, whose basic word order is SOV. This
language allows scrambling, and has discourse pro for subjects, objects, and the arguments ingeneral. The central aim of this paper is to describe and analyze the nature of the very earlyverbs that Japanese-speaking children produce, and attempt to clarify the intermediate steps
children go through to acquire the full system of the verbs. We focus on the Root Infinitive
analogues and the erroneous verbal forms that Japanese-speaking children produce, anddiscuss the implications for the syntactic theory. These two types of children's errors which
are typically observed at intermediate stages of language acquisition shed light on hidden
properties and mechanisms that underlie the very early non-finite verbs (Root Infinitives) andthe acquisition of functional categories.
2.

Root Infinitives in Fusional (and Analytic) Languages

Root Infinitives (RIs), exemplified in (1), are the children’s first step to the system of the
verb.

*

This paper is an extended version of an article we presented at GLOW in Asia VI at Chinese
University of Hong Kong in December, 2007. We would like to thank Thomas Lee, Tomomi
Nakatani-Murai, Tetsuya Sano, Naoko Sawada, Koji Sugisaki, Kensuke Takita, Ken Wexler, and theorganizers, participants and the anonymous reviewers of the GLOW VI in Asia, Hong Kong, for
discussions and comments for this paper. Sincere thanks go to Mamoru Saito and the Center for
Linguistics at Nanzan University for providing all the support needed for our research activity. Thanks
also go to the members of the series of the International Symposium (2006-present) of theCambridge-Connecticut-Hyderabad-Nanzan-Siena-Tsinghua Consortium in Linguistics, which are theroots of the present work. We especially thank Junri Shimada at the Center for Linguistics, for his
extensive advice and help to put this paper in Nanzan Linguistics 6. The research reported here was
supported in part by Nanzan University Pache Research Grant I-A 2010 and by JSPS Grant-in-Aid to
Nanzan University (#20520397, Principal Investigator: Keiko Murasugi) for the study of theacquisition of functional categories.
Nanzan Linguistics 6, 47-78©2010 Keiko Murasugi, Chisato Fuji, and Tomoko Hashimoto

Nanzan Linguistics 6: Research Results and Activities 2009 ~ 2010

(1)

a.
b.

Eve sit floor. (1;7) (English)
That truck fall down. (2;0) (English)(Brown 1973)(Sano and Hyams 1994)

As Rizzi (2000) states, RIs exhibit whatever unmarked non-finite form the language
possesses. Many researchers regard RIs as very early non-finite verbs, and argue that they are
due to a deficit in the children’s syntactic knowledge, e.g., the syntactic structure is truncated,or the associated feature values of Tense are underspecified. Conversely, Phillips (1995,
1996) argues that RIs are not due to a deficit in the syntactic structure. According to Phillips(1995), at the RI stage, the verb and the inflectional features are both present, but they are notsyntactically joined, and hence, when morphological items are inserted to realize the syntactic
items, a default verbal form, which is an RI, is used to spell out the verb.
Our central argument is that the two apparently contradictory analyses given above arebasically both correct: Root Infinitive analogues in Japanese are the very early non-finite
verbs, and the verb and the inflectional features at the RI (analogue) stage are notsyntactically joined.
2.1.

Root Infinitives as the Very Early Non-finite Verbs

Root Infinitives (RIs) are non-finite (infinitival) verbal forms which children at around
two years of age use in matrix clauses, where they are not possible in their adult grammar.
There have been several approaches to explain why children acquiring fusional (and analytic)
languages like English (Wexler 1994), Dutch (Haegeman 1995, Blom and Wijnen 2000), andFrench (Krämer 1993, Rasetti 2003), among others, often use non-finite forms as in (1)through (3).1
(2)

Peter
P

bal pakken. (2;1)
ball get-INF(Dutch)‘Peter (wants to) get the ball.’(3)

Dormirpetit bébé.
sleep-INF little baby

(1;11)(Blom and Wijnen 2000)(French)‘A little baby sleeps.’(Guasti 2004)

An orthodox approach to the RI phenomenon is that the verbs children around two yearsof age produce are non-finite across languages. It is well known that there are some salient
morpho-syntactic and semantic properties of RIs, as listed in (4).

1Abbreviations used in the glosses are as follows: Acc=Accusative Case, Asp=Aspect morpheme,
Dat=Dative Case, INF=Infinitive, Mood=Mood marker, Neg=Negation, Nom=Nominative Case,
Pres=Present, Past=Past, Req=Request.

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What’s Acquired Later in an Agglutinative Language (K. Murasugi et al.)

(4)

a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.

RIs are optional: RIs and fully-inflected verbs are used at the same period.
RIs are tenseless verbs in root contexts.
RIs occur predominantly with null subjects.
RIs generally do not occur in wh-questions.
RIs occur in modal contexts (the Modal Reference Effects (MRE)).
RIs are restricted to event-denoting predicates (the Eventivity Constraint).
RIs are very rare in pro-drop languages.
(Deen 2002, Hyams 2005, Salustri and Hyams 2003)

As (4a) states, during the RI stage, children optionally produce matrix non-finite verbs inplace of finite verbs, while adults allow non-finite verbs only in embedded sentences, as
shown in (5).
(5)

a.

Thorstn
T

das
that

haben [−finite]. (2;1) (German)
have-INF‘Thorstn has that.’
b.

Mein
my

Hubsaubehelicopter

hat [+finite]
has

Tiere
animalsdin. (2;1) (German)
in it‘My helicopter has animals in it.’(Wexler 1994)

As we see in (4b), the RI stage is considered to be a stage where some kind of
disturbance of TP, which is the home of both tense and EPP, is found. As shown in (6), thesubject of RIs tends to be null even in some of the non-pro-drop languages, as (4c) states.
(6)a.

Hubsauber putzen. (2;1)
helicopter clean-INF(German)Context: The child is cleaning his toy helicopter with a toothbrush.
(Poeppel & Wexler 1993, Wexler 1994)b.

Roeren. (2;4)
stir-INF(Dutch)Context: The child’s mother is cooking oatmeal.

(Krämer 1993)

As (4d) states, it is also widely reported that RIs occur in declarative sentences, but not
in wh-questions.
(7)

Wie staat
daar? (2;6)
who stands there?

(Dutch)‘Who stands there?’(Haegeman 1995)

The declarative sentences in (6) have the infinitive verbs, while the sentence with a wh-phrasein (7) has the inflected verb, staat (stands).

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Nanzan Linguistics 6: Research Results and Activities 2009 ~ 2010

The Modal Reference effects, described in (4e), means that RIs typically have a modal orirrealis meaning, expressing volition or a request (Hoekstra and Hyams 1998, among others).
Observe the example in (8) from Dutch.
(8)

Vrachtwagen
truck

emmer doen. (2;4) (Dutch)
bucket do-INF

Context: Matthijs (speaker) wants the investigator to put the truck in the bucket.
(Blom and Wijnen 2000)
Besides the Modal Reference Effects, it has been also widely observed that RIs arelargely restricted to eventive predicates as shown in (4f), while finite verbs can either be
eventive or stative. Early eventive verbs tend to receive a modal meaning with overwhelming
frequency, and this is termed the Eventivity Constraint (Hoekstra and Hyams 1998).
Although some researchers claim that RIs are not found in the early grammar of suchpro-drop languages as Italian, Spanish, and Catalan, and of languages where finiteness isexpressed exclusively by number (e.g., Guasti 1994), as (4g) states, other researchers proposethat there is an RI analogue stage in pro-drop languages. For instance, Varlokosta, Vainikka,
and Rohrbacher (1996) and Hyams (2005) argue that the bare perfective is an RI analogue in
Greek; Kim and Phillips (1998) suggest that the RI analogue is the V with the mood marker -efor Korean; Salustri and Hyams (2003, 2006) suggest that the RI analogue in Italian is theimperative, and similar proposals have been made for Kuwaiti (Aljenaie 2000), and Chinese(Chien 2008).
Our own limited exploration of this kind of phenomenon in Japanese suggests that there
is an RI analogue stage in some of the agglutinative languages. Mainly based on an analysis
of natural production data of Japanese-speaking children, Sumihare (0;6-6;0, Noji Corpus
1973-1977) and Akkun (1;7-4;0), we argue in Section 3 that there is an RI analogue stage inJapanese acquisition, and that the very early non-finite verb is not an infinitive form or RootInfinitive, but it is a full form in Japanese. The RI analogue for Sumihare and Akkun is the
past-tensed verbal form ending with -ta, which is initially (1;6-1;7) used 100% of the time.
This form shares most of the central morpho-syntactic and semantic properties of RIs
summarized in (4).
2.2.

Root Infinitives as the Very Early Verbs Missing Verb-Inflection Merge

Root Infinitives are tenseless verbs in matrix clause, and many researchers haveconsidered that the features in Tense are underspecified then (Wexler 1994, among others).
Phillips (1995, 1996), however, argues that RIs are not due to a deficit in the syntactic
structure. Two-year-old children’s Root Infinitive clause contains all of the components ofadults’ finite clause, and what is missing is the derivational step that would combine the verb
with an inflection. The cause of the delay in merging of a verb and inflection is, according toPhillips (1995), difficulty with the process of accessing morphological knowledge, which is
not an automatic process for the child. Based on a comparative study of the syntactic-50-What’s Acquired Later in an Agglutinative Language (K. Murasugi et al.)development of two-year-old children acquiring V-raising languages such as Dutch, Flemishand French, and a non-V-raising language, English, Phillips (1995) suggests that children’s
syntactic structures contain all of the appropriate inflectional features, but they are notsyntactically joined when lexical items are inserted to spell out syntactic features.
Phillips (1995) examines the relation between RIs and wh-questions in English toinvestigate whether or not the head movement is a key to RIs, since subject wh-questions inEnglish do not involve verb movement while those in Dutch do. As we briefly discussed in(4d), Root Infinitives do not occur in wh-question.
(7)

Wie staat
daar? (2;6)
who stands there?

(Dutch)‘Who stands there?’(Haegeman 1995)

According to Haegeman (1995), wh-questions are rarely produced by children at two to three
years of age. When wh-questions are produced by young children, the main verbs used in thewh-questions are finite, as shown in Table 1. This is termed Crisma’s effect.
Table 1: Finiteness in declaratives and questions: Dutch(Haegeman 1995, modified in Phillips 1995, 1996)
Hein 2;4-3;1+finite−finite%-finiteAll clauses
3768
721
16%
wh-questions88
2
2%
Total = 4579, χ2 = 12.71, p < 0.001
Phillips (1995) shows, however, that Crisma’s effect is not observed in subject
wh-questions in English. The percentages of inflected verbs in declaratives and in
wh-questions are almost the same, as summarized in Table 2.
Table 2: Finiteness in declaratives and questions: English (Phillips 1995, 1996)
Adam 2;3-3;1
inflected V
uninflected V %inflected
Declaratives
134
203
40%
wh-questions
69
92
43%
Total = 498, χ2 = 0.43, p = 0.51
The lack of Crisma’s effect in English is due to the absence of head movement in English
subject wh-questions: The requirement for the V-I(T)-C movement in V2 languages’
wh-questions blocks RIs, whereas the V-I(T) movement in English subject wh-questions is
not such a requirement and hence RIs are found in the English child's wh-questions.
In order to test this hypothesis against the null subject fact stated in (4c), Phillips (1995)
investigates the interaction between finiteness and null subjects in Dutch and English.
According to Krämer (1993), the vast majority of infinitive verbs occur in subjectlesssentences (Krämer’s effect). This effect, however, is not observed in English.

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Nanzan Linguistics 6: Research Results and Activities 2009 ~ 2010

Table 3: Finiteness and null subjects: Dutch (Krämer 1993, modified in Phillips 1995, 1996)
Thomas 2;3-2;8+finite−finiteovert subject
431
21null subject
165
246% overt subject
73%
8%Total = 863, χ2 = 307.07, p < 0.0001
Table 4: Finiteness and null subjects: English (Phillips 1995, 1996)
Adam 2;3-3;0+finite−finiteovert subject
79
195
null subject
34
47% overt subject
70%
81%
Total = 355, χ2 = 4.98, p = 0.026
As Table 4 shows, Adam, an English-speaking child, used null subjects both with finite andinfinitive verbs. What is more, he tended to use overt subjects more with infinitive verbs. One
cross-linguistic difference is in Nominative Case licensing: RIs seldom occur with overt
subjects in Dutch because Nominative Case licensing requires V-raising in Dutch, while RIs
often occur with overt subjects in English because Nominative Case licensing has nothing to
do with head movement in English.
Phillips (1995) concludes that RI clauses are “adult clauses minus one step of head
movement” (p.34) and that “difficulty with the process of accessing morphologicalknowledge” (p.2) causes the delay in merging the verb with an inflection. For adults,
accessing inflection paradigms is an automatic process after having been overlearned, andbears minimal or zero cost. For young children, however, the process is not yet automatic, andas a result, the cost of accessing a given form may outweigh the cost of failing to realize it.
It is well known that head movement itself is, in fact, acquired very early. As shown in(5), repeated below, German-speaking children even at two years of age know that theinfinitive verbs stay at the end of a clause, whereas finite verbs move to C, which is thesecond position of a clause.
(5)a.

ThorstnT

dashathaben [−finite]. (2;1) (German)
have-INF‘Thorstn has that.’
b.

Mein
my

Hubsaubehelicopter

hat [+finite]
has

Tiere
animals‘My helicopter has animals in it.’din. (2;1) (German)
in it(Wexler 1994)

The fact that children use finite verbs in the second position as in (5b) indicates that V-I(T)-C
movement has already been acquired by the stage in question. Similarly, in adult French,-52-

What’s Acquired Later in an Agglutinative Language (K. Murasugi et al.)finite verbs are raised from V to I, past the negation pas, while infinitives remain below thenegation in VP (See Déprez and Pierce 1993). French-speaking children, even before twoyears of age, produce the adult-like word order of V-Neg as in (9b).
(9)

a.

Pas
not

mangereat-INF

lathepurpée.
doll(1;9) (French)‘The doll never eats.’b.

Elle roule pas.
itrolls not(Déprez and Pierce 1993)(1;11)(French)‘It never rolls.’(Pierce 1989, Déprez and Pierce 1993)

In addition, as summarized in (4), given the fact that the semantic/syntactic
commonalities such as the MRE and the Eventivity Constraints are observed across languages
at the stage in question, Phillips’ (1995) proposal that RIs are not syntactic deficits but reflect
children’s difficulty in accessing morphological knowledge could be too strong. However, we
argue in this paper that insight can still be maintained for Japanese, an agglutinating language.
There is a delay in merging of the verb with inflection in the course of the acquisition. At the
RI analogue stage, the inflectional features (including T (I)) are not successfully merged withthe verb.
3.
3.1.

Root Infinitive analogues in JapanesePrevious Studies on Japanese Root Infinitives

A collective force of the acquisition data from null-subject languages has put a nail in thecoffin of any hope that an RI analogue stage could be found in Japanese child grammar. Sano
(1995, 1999) has conducted a detailed longitudinal study of three Japanese-speaking children,
Toshi (2;3-2;8), Ken (2;8-2;10) and Masanori (2;4), to see if non-finite forms are produced inmain clauses. The verb forms he has examined are exemplified in (10): Renyookei -i(preverbal) in (10a), Mizenkei -a (irrealis) in (10b), and the Conjunctive -te (participial) in(10c).
(10) a.

Taro-gakore
T -Nom thisni hair-i-ta-i (koto).
to enter-(Preverbal)-want-Pres (fact)‘Taro wants to enter into this.’b.

Taro-gakore
T -Nom thisni hair-a-na-i (koto).
to enter-(Irrealis)-Neg-Pres (fact)‘Taro does not enter into this.’-53-

Nanzan Linguistics 6: Research Results and Activities 2009 ~ 2010c.

Taro-ga
T -Nomkore ni hait-te,
Jiro-gaare ni hair-u.
this to enter-(Conjunctive) J -Nom that to enter-Pres‘(While) Taro enters into this, Jiro enters into that.’
As shown in Table 5, the Preverbal -i, the Irrealis -a and the Conjunctive -te were notproduced as a main verb by these children, though these forms were produced in non-root
contexts, i.e., under finite auxiliary predicates.
Table 5: Inflection of Main Verbs in Affirmative Declarative Root Clause (Sano 1999)
Non-past -(r)u Past-ta Preverbal
Irrealis Conjunctive
Toshi (2;3-2;8)
288
84
0
0
1 (0.2%)Ken (2;8-2;10)111
175
0 1 (0.3%)
0Masanori (2;4)
138
50
0
0
0
Based on data analysis, Sano (1995, 1999) concludes that children at two years of age, who
would be in the RI stage in some other languages, do not produce non-finite verbal forms, andhence, there is no RI stage in child Japanese.
Kato, Sato, Takeda, Miyoshi, Sakai and Koizumi (2003) support Sano’s conclusion.
Pointing out that bare verb stems without tense morphemes are not allowed in adult Japanese,they predict that an RI would have either the present- or the past-tensed form. They analyze
the corpus of two Japanese-speaking children, Ryo (2;0-3;0) and Tai (2;0-2;9), and find thateither of these forms is not overused. Their results are given in Table 6 and Table 7.
Table 6: Number of Past- or Present-tensed Verbal Form in Ryo’s Corpus (Kato et al. 2003)
Past-tensed verb forms Present-tensed verb forms
Correct form
476
761
Erroneous form
7
4
Unclear
2
5
Total
485
770
Table 7: Number of Past- or Present-tensed Verbal Form in Tai’s Corpus (Kato et al. 2003)
Past-tensed verb forms Present-tensed verb forms
Correct form
787
1667
Erroneous form
3
15
Unclear
0
14
Total
790
1696
As shown above, few erroneous verbal forms are found. Both of the two-year-old children
produced present- and past-tensed forms in appropriate contexts. Hence, Kato et al. (2003)
conclude that an RI stage is not found in child Japanese.

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3.2.

Our Proposal: There is an Root Infinitive Analogue in JapaneseContrary to the previous studies of Japanese Root Infinitives cited above, the present
paper proposes that there is an RI analogue stage in Japanese.2 In this subsection, based on an
analysis of naturalistic data of a Japanese-speaking child, Sumihare (Noji Corpus),3 we argue
that (i) there is a Very Early Non-Finite Verb Stage in Japanese, (ii) the form in question is
the past-tensed form V-ta, (iii) the stage occurs much earlier than Root infinitives in theEuropean languages, i.e., even at one year of age, and (iv) the form is initially (around
1;6-1;7) used 100% of the time in the full range of environments. Furthermore, we present a
piece of supporting evidence for Phillips’ (1995) insight that the merge of the verb andinflection is not available at the RI Stage. More specifically, we argue that merger of heads isacquired step by step as summarized in (11).
(11) a.
b.
c.
3.2.1.

Very Early Non-Finite Verb (RI analogue) Stage (1;6-1;11): no merge of the verb
with inflection
Post-Very-Early-Non-finite Verb Stage (1;11-2;1): merge of the verb andinflection
Onset of Finite Verb Stage (2;1- ): two- (or more-) step head merger
The Very Early Non-Finite Verb Stage (The stage with no merger of V-T)

Japanese is an agglutinative language where multiple instances of head movement occur
inside the verbal projection (see Koizumi 1995).4 In adult Japanese, bare verb stems cannot
appear without tense or aspect morphemes, as shown in (12) and (13).
(12) a.

* tabe- ‘to eat’b. * suwar- ‘to sit’(13) a.

tabe-ru/-ta
eat-Pres/Past‘(I) eat/ate.’

This analysis does not contradict the descriptive findings reported in Sano (1995) and Kato et al.
(2003). Rather, our studies are consistent with their results: Erroneous non-finite verb forms areproduced not by two-year-olds, but by much younger children.
2

3

The Noji corpus is chosen for this study because it contains detailed contexts for the child’sutterances, which helps us to detect the intended meanings. Noji’s comments as the observer and as a
linguist are also very helpful for making generalizations proposed in this paper.
4

If we adopt the PF merge analysis (Bošković 2003, among others), our findings will be interpreted
as a limitation on the number of elements that can be merged in the child’s derivation, and RI
analogues arise because of a failure to merge the verb with the inflection.

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Nanzan Linguistics 6: Research Results and Activities 2009 ~ 2010b.

tabe-te-i-ru/-ta
eat-Asp-Pres/Past‘(I) am/was eating.’ / ‘(I) have/had eaten.’c.

tabe-teeat-Imperative (Preverbal form)‘(Please) eat.’d.

tabe-ta-i
eat-want-Pres‘(I) want to eat.’

The verb stem tabe- (to eat) is followed by the present/past tense morpheme in (13a), and by
the aspectual morpheme -te-i in (13b).5 For requests or imperatives, the morpheme -te is
attached to the verb as in (13c), while for volition, -ta-i is attached to the verb as in (13d). The
structures of V with tense and aspectual morphemes are represented in (14). The merger of V
and T is required to derive a tensed sentence as in (14a). For an aspectual sentence, as in(14b), a two-step head merger (V-Asp-T) is required.
(14) a.

TP

b.

TP

T’
VP
NP

T’
T

V

AspP

-ru/-ta

VP
NP

T
Asp
-te-i

-ru/-taV

Complex conjugations, however, are not produced at the very early stage of Japaneseacquisition. Below we argue that there is a stage where a uniform verbal form is employed for
non-adult meanings, and the inflectional features (including T (I)) are not successfully mergedwith the verb. We term this stage a Very Early Non-Finite Verb Stage,
During age one, Sumihare started to use the past tense form, namely, the V-ta form torefer to perfective events in the same way as adults do, as shown in (15).

5The abbreviated V-teru/-teta forms as in (i) are used as colloquial expressions in adult Japanese.

(i)tabe-te -ru/-ta
eat -Asp-Pres/-Past‘(I) am/was eating.’ / ‘(I) have/had eaten.’-56-

What’s Acquired Later in an Agglutinative Language (K. Murasugi et al.)(15) a.

Buu
ki-ta. (1;5)
onomatopoeia come-Past‘A car has come.’b.

Tabe-ta.
eat-Past(1;6)‘(I) ate (up) (an apple).’c.

Oti-ta. (1;7)
fall-Past‘(It) has fallen.’d.

KeityanK

yuu-ta (=it-ta). (1;8)
say-Past‘(She) said Keityan.’
Sumihare, however, from around 1;6 through 1;11, also used the V-ta form in a different way
from adults. At this stage, the Modal Reference Effects were observed. The V-ta form wereused to denote the meaning of volition (desire) or a request.6(16) a.

Atti. Atti. Atti i-ta. (1;6)
there there there go-Past(irrealis/volition)(adult form: ik-u, or ik-e)‘I want to go there / Go there.’b.

Tii
si-ta. (1;7) (irrealis/volition)
onomatopoeia (pee) do-Past(adult form: si-ta-i)‘I want to pee.’
c.

Baba
mud

pai-ta. (1;8) (request)
onomatopeia (throw away)-Past(adult form: pai-si-te )‘Please throw (this) away.’
The context for (16a) is the following: Sumihare’s father (Noji, the observer) went out for awalk with Sumihare on the back. Noji tried to go back home, but Sumihare pointed to adifferent direction and produced “atti (there)” twice. Sumihare got frustrated and said, “attiWe may possibly hypothesize that the V-ta form is not an Root Infinitive analogue but a reduced
form of V-tai (volition). If that were the case, we would expect the V-tai form to be produced soonafter the RI analogue stage, but it is, in fact, not. We have to wait for the adult usage of V-tai to beobserved until around 2;6. Rather, in order to convey the meaning of volition, the tyoodai form wasused productively from 1;8. Hence, we consider here that the V-ta form is not the reduced form ofV-tai.
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Nanzan Linguistics 6: Research Results and Activities 2009 ~ 2010

i-ta (there go-Past)” angrily again. Noji notes on this example: I-ta means ik-u (go-Pres) while
Sumihare uttered i-ta, because Sumihare could not say ik-u (Noji 1973-1977 I: 195). Noji also
writes important comments for (16b), which convinces us of the Modal Reference Effects at
the early stage of Japanese acquisition: Sumihare used tii-si-ta in a volition context when hewanted to pee. As for (16c), Sumihare produced pai-ta, attaching -ta on the onomatopoeia pai(to throw away), in order to ask his mother to remove mud from a potato.
The examples in (17) are cases where -ta is used to express a result state, a progressive
event and an irrealis meaning.
(17) a.

Baba tui-ta. (1;6)
thread stick-Past(result state)(adult form: tui-te-i-ru)‘The thread is on (the finger).’b.

Siisi-ta. (1;7) (progressive)
onomatopoeia (pee) do-Past(adult form: sikko si-te-i-ru)‘(She) is peeing.’c.

Meen-ta. (1;7) (irrealis)“meen”(onomatopoeia)-Past(adult form: meen to i-u)‘(Mommy would say,) “Meen.”’In (17a), Sumihare found a thread on his finger, and intended to inform his mother of this.
Here, the aspectual morpheme -te-i-ru would be used in adult grammar, but Sumihare used
tui-ta. Likewise, in (17b), Sumihare employed the V-ta form instead of the V-te-i-ru form forthe progressive event. In this case, one of his friends was peeing. In (17c), Sumihare’s motherasked him what she would say if he wet his underpants, and he intended to reply to it. Here,the present tense form i-u (to say) or the future tense form -i-u-daroo would be used in adultgrammar, but the V-ta form was used instead.
The percentage of the V-ta form decreases with age. At 1;6-1;7, he predominantly used
the V-ta form almost 100% of the time.

-58-

What’s Acquired Later in an Agglutinative Language (K. Murasugi et al.)Figure 1: The Overall Proportion of Verbal Forms in Sumihare’s Corpus at Each Stage
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The fact that the -ta forms, but not the other verbal forms such as imperatives andpresent-tensed forms, was consistently used to denote different meanings suggests that theverbal conjugation, i.e., the merger of V and inflection, is not yet available then. Namely, thisis a stage where a default form is picked up by the child for the verbal element. If this is thecase, then, the whole V-ta form must be base-generated as an unanalyzed form as illustratedin (18). This stage is characterized as the one where the verbs are not merged with the head of
TP.
(18)

TP
T’
VP

T

NP

V
V-ta

At 1;8, modal meanings began to be frequently realized with tyoodai.7 Instead of adults’
si-te kudasai (V-te please-do/give-me), which requires multiple steps of head movement, an
independent verbal element tyoodai (please-do/give-me), began to be productively used toconvey the meaning of volition or a request.
Tyoodai is a colloquial expression that is equivalent to kudasai (please-do/give-me). It is used as themain verb taking a noun complement as in (i) or as an auxiliary as in (ii).
7(i)

Ringo(-o)
tyoodai.
an apple-Acc give me‘Give me an apple.’(ii)

Hayakuquicklysi-tetyoodai.
do-preverbal please-give/please-do‘Please do (it) quickly.’-59-

Nanzan Linguistics 6: Research Results and Activities 2009 ~ 2010(19) a.

Tii
peetyoodai. (1;9)
give-me‘Please help me to pee.’b.

Nainai tyoodai. (1;10)
no-no give-me‘Please put (this) away.’

In (19a) and (19b), tyoodai follows the onomatopoeia tii (pee) and nainai (no-no). As shownin Figure 1 above, the rate of the non-finite past-tensed form decreases in accordance with theincrease of tyoodai (please-do/give-me).8
The increase of the tyoodai form at the Very Early Non-Finite Verb Stage parallels the
Modal Reference Effects in the Dutch-type languages, where RIs receive a modal meaning
with overwhelming frequency at the later stage of Root Infinitives. As the merger inside theverbal projection is not possible, the child is forced to employ a non-merging strategy and use
an independent verb tyoodai at this Very Early Non-Finite Verb stage in order to verbalize his
volition.
Although volition was expressed by tyoodai at around the age of 1;9, the child was stillin the Very Early Non-Finite Verb Stage. This is confirmed by the fact that erroneous V-ta
forms were still used for perfective and progressive sentences instead of the aspectual form
V-te-i-ru.
(20) a.

Nenne-ta-noo. (1;9) (result state)
sleep-Past-Mood(adult form: si-te-i-ru)‘(I) am in the bed (with Daddy).’
Context: Sumihare (the speaker) is in bed with his father.
b.

Buu
plane

maimai-ta. (1;10)
go around-Past(progressive)(adult form: si-te-i-ru)‘A plane is going around.’
The appropriate form to refer to the result state in (20a) would be si-te-i-ru in adult grammar,
but Sumihare employed the -ta form instead in order to inform his mother of the situation. In(20b), -ta, instead of -te-i-ru, is attached to the onomatopoeia maimai (onomatopoeia,
meaning go around) to describe an ongoing event of an airplane’s going around.
Then, how about the presence of wh-questions at this stage? Interestingly, Crisma’s
Murasugi and Hashimoto (2004) argue that the v-VP structure is acquired very early and v is initiallyrealized as tiyu/tita/tite (do/did/doing). If we apply their analysis to this case, tyoodai produced in thisstage may be the head of vP.
8-60-

What’s Acquired Later in an Agglutinative Language (K. Murasugi et al.)effect is observed in Japanese, even though wh-questions in Japanese may not require main
verbs to move. As in European languages, Tense- or C-related elements (e.g., complementizer
sand wh-phrases) are not found with the non-finite -ta forms, as Figure 2 shows.9
Figure 2: Frequency of C-, T- and D-related Elements in Sumihare’s Corpus
456/,/7686/,/669:;,<='!

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These data indicate that the RIs are not merely due to performance deficits of children.
Rather, as Hyams (2005) discusses, MoodP is active during the Very Early Non-Finite Verb
(RI analogue) Stage, while AspectP and TP are still underspecified and the head movement
inside the verbal projection is still unavailable. Evidence for the underspecification of T isfound in the absence of any other T (or I) elements at the stage in question. The Nominative
Case marker -ga and the finite da/zya (the finite be, the copula) were not observed either thenin Sumihare’s corpus, which confirms the possibility that the stage is not due to deficits in(the realization of the features of) T (or I).
Then, how about Krämer’s effect? As is the case in the acquisition of some otherlanguages, Sumihare initially produced null subjects frequently with many verbs, though therate of null subjects sometimes decreases, and sometimes does not, depending on the verb.10
As shown in Figure 3,11 the percentage of null subjects of such speaker-oriented verbs as pai(to throw away) or suru (to do), where the agent tends to be a speaker (Ego), stays high evenafter inflections (conjugations) properly appear. On the other hand, subjects (a Topic NP)
conveying new information with eventive verbs such as oti-ru (to drop) or ku-ru (to come) do
not tend to be null. This is different from the findings reported in the studies of
non-null-subject languages, though it may not be surprising given that Japanese is a

9

The topic marker -wa was produced at a very early stage, only in the form of NP-wa, without everbeing followed by verbal predicates.
Although verb movement may be involved in the assignment of Nominative Case (Huang 1987,
Otani and Whitman 1991), the Nominative Case -ga does not appear on subjects at the RI analogue
stage. The Nominative Case marker -ga first appears around 1;11.
10

VEN stands for Very Early Non-Finite Verb Stage, which is divided into two sub-stages: VEN-I isthe stage where the V-ta form is used almost 100% of the time and VEN-II is the stage where a modal
meaning is realized with the form tyoodai. P-VEN stands for Post-Very-Early-Non-Finite Verb Stage.
11

-61-

Nanzan Linguistics 6: Research Results and Activities 2009 ~ 2010

discourse-pro language.12
Figure 3: Proportion of Null Subjects of Each Verb in Sumihare’s Corpus&"!

213415./01

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It has been observed that children speaking agglutinative languages, e.g., Tamil (Raghavendra
and Laurence 1989) and Turkish (Aksu-Koç and Slobin 1985), acquire verb inflections at avery early stage. The early emergence of RI analogues in languages such as Japanese, Korean(Kim and Phillips 1998), Italian (Salustri and Hyams 2003, 2006), American and Brazilian
Sign Languages (Lillo-Martin and Quadros 2008), Chinese (Chien 2008), Arabic (Aljenaie
2000), and Greek (Varlokosta et al. 1996, Hyams 2005) can be explained by a morphologicalparameter, the Stem Parameter proposed by Hyams (1986), which is responsible for thewell-formedness of bare verbal stems in a given language (see also Aljenaie 2000, Hyams
2008). According to this hypothesis, English, for example, has the value [+bare stem], since
its verbs can surface as bare stems. On the other hand, in such languages as Japanese, theparameter has the opposite value, namely [−bare stem], since verbs in these languages cannot
surface as bare stems. Children acquiring Japanese learn the verb conjugations earlier thanEnglish-speaking children because, given the Japanese setting of the parameter, there is no
option of omitting the verb conjugations.
3.2.2.

The Post-Very-Early-Non-Finite Verb Stage (Head merger of V-Asp/V-T)

Sumihare started to produce the “correct” non-past form V-ru as in (21) in the proper
contexts. around 1;11.
(21) a.

Ik-u-yoo. (1;11) (present)
go-Pre-Mood‘(I)’ll go to (Tiiko’s house).’Kim and Phillips (1998) argue that the overuse of the default mood-inflection ‘-e’ in the earliest
speech of Korean children parallels the RI in other languages, and report that there is no correlation
between the RI analogue form and the number of null subjects produced at the stage. See Murasugi
and Fuji (2008) for an argument in favour of a parallelism between the RI analogue stages of Japaneseand Korean.
12

-62-

What’s Acquired Later in an Agglutinative Language (K. Murasugi et al.)

b.

Okku
a-ru-yo. (1;11) (present)
medicine be-Pres-Mood‘Here is the medicine.’

Sumihare also started to produce the abbreviated aspectual form -teru at around the ageof 1;11. As shown in (22a) and (22b), the form is used for result states and progressives. The
frequency of each verbal form is illustrated in Figure 4.
(22) a.

Wanwan tyan si-teru. (1;11)
dog
sit
do-Asp(result state)‘A dog is sitting (here).’b.

Buranko ti-teru. (2;0) (progressive)
swing
do-Asp‘(A scarecrow) is swinging.’

Figure 4: Frequency of Verbal Forms in Sumihare’s Corpus$!!

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The -ta form is dominant in 1;6-1;11 (i.e., the Very Early Non-Finite Verb (RI analogue)
Stage) in number; the non-past -ru form, the aspectual -teru and the preverbal -te form started
to appear after 1;11. The other inflections began to be produced around 2;0. These facts
indicate that at least the merge of the verb with inflection is available at around 1;11.
Evidence for the unavailability of two-step head movement at this stage is elicited froman analysis of the negative sentences Sumihare produced. In adult Japanese, the negative
marker -nai (not) is a verbal predicate which itself carries a finite tense (Sano 2000), andtwo-step head movement (V-Neg-T) is involved. To form the adult negative predicates
ki-te-na-i and utawa-na-i, multiple head merger is required.

-63-

Nanzan Linguistics 6: Research Results and Activities 2009 ~ 2010(23) a.

TP
NegP
AspP
VP
NP

Asp
V

b.

TP

T
Neg

NegP

-i

VP

-na(k)

NP

-te-i

T
Neg

V

-i

-na(k)

utaw-aki-/tui
However, at around 1;11-2;2, the child consistently produced erroneous negative
sentences such as (24) and (25). These examples clearly show that the child is not making theadult-like application of head movement (or multiple applications of merge under the PF
merge analysis).
(24) a.

Tinbunnewspaper

ki-ta-nai-yo. (1;11)
come-Past-Neg-Mood(adult form: ki-te(i)-nai)‘The newspaper has not come yet.’b.

MOT:Sekken-ga te-ni
tui-te-i-ru
kara arai nasai.
MOT:soap-Nom hand-Dat stick-Asp-Pres as
wash Imperative‘Wash your hand. Some suds stick on your hand.’
SUM:Tui-ta-nai. (1;11)
stick-Past-Neg(adult form: tui-te(i)-nai)‘No, (they) don’t.’(25) Utaw-(r)u-nai.
sing-Pres-Neg(2;0)(adult form: utaw-a-nai)‘(Mommy) doesn’t sing.’
In the examples shown in (24), the negative marker -nai is not merged with the preverbal
form ki-te-i or tui-te-i. Rather, -nai follows the complete past-tensed verb ki-ta (came) in(24a) and tui-ta (stuck) in (24b). In (25), -nai even attaches to the full present-tensed verb
utaw-(r)u. 13 This fact suggests that the structure of (24) and (25) in child Japanese is

Sumihare produced a few correct negative forms as in (ia-b). We consider these as unanalyzed form
stored as chunks (by rote) in the child’s lexicon. It is around 2;2 that Sumihare began to use the correct
past tense form -na-k-atta productively.
13

-64-

What’s Acquired Later in an Agglutinative Language (K. Murasugi et al.)something like (26), which is different from the ones in adult grammar (23a,b) in that NegP is
located outside of TP.
(26)

NegP
TP

Neg

VP

T

NP

V

-nai

-ta/-(r)u

ki-/tui-/utaw
The consistent errors Sumihare made for negation with different types of verbs indicate that
only one merge of the verb with inflection is available at around 1;11-2;0. Here, the negative
morpheme -nai is base-generated as an unanalyzed form, i.e., Neg (-na) and T (-i) are notseparated in child grammar.
Further support for the unavailability of two-step head movement inside the verbal
projection around 1;11-2;0 is found in the morphology of aspect. Although the V-teru form is“correctly” used to refer to a result state in (22a) and a progressive in (22b), the form in thisstage is always produced as -teru but never as -te-i-ru. As the past-tensed form -te(i)-ta is notproduced either, the -teru form produced then would be a chunk (a rote form) as shown in
(27).
(27)

TP
T’
AspP
VP
NP

T
Asp

V

-teru

At the Post-Very-Early-Non-Finite Verb Stage, other aspectual or mood forms such as(i)a.

Mie-naisee-Negne. (1;11)
Mood‘(We) cannot see (that).’b.

Nakanaka ko-naine. (2;1)
not nearly come-Neg Mood‘(The train) has not come as yet, has it?’-65-

Nanzan Linguistics 6: Research Results and Activities 2009 ~ 2010

V-te-simat-ta (V-Asp (perfective)-Past), V-ta-i (V-v (volition)-Pres), and so forth, which
require two (or more) -step head movement, were not produced either.
3.2.3.

The Onset of Finite Verb Stage (Multiple head merger)

Two-step head movement (or a second application of merger under the PF merger
analysis) seems to be acquired around the age of 2;1, when the verbal conjugations
explosively increased. The V-te-i-ru form (28), the V-te-ta form (29), and the V-toru form(30), which is the equivalent of the V-te-i-ru form in Sumihare’s dialect (the Setouchi
dialect),14 appeared at this stage.
(28) a.

Hasit-te-i-ru
run-Asp-Pres

inu.
dog

(2;2) (progressive)‘A running dog.’b.

Ki-te-i-ru-yo. (2;2) (perfect)come-Asp-Pres-Mood‘(It) has come.’(29) Atti-ni tomat-te-ta. (2;2)
there-at stop -Asp-Past(result state)‘(The bus) had stopped there.’(30) a.

Oki-to-ru-yo. (2;2) (perfect)awake-Asp-Pres-Mood‘(The baby) is awake.’b.

Keetyan-ga
K-Nom

nai-to-ru. (2;3) (progressive)
cry-Asp-Pres‘Keetyan (Ms. Keiko) is crying.’
The emergence of these forms leads us to conjecture that the -teru form is no longer a rote
form. Thus, the derivation containing two-step head movement (or the second application ofmerger under the PF merge analysis) should be acquired.

The Setouchi dialect is a dialect spoken around Ehime in the Western Japan. V-toru in this dialect
corresponds to V-te-i-ru in the Tokyo dialect. They are both ambiguous between a progressiveinterpretation and a perfective interpretation (Aono 2007), as shown in (i).
14

(i)

Happa-galeaf-Nom

oti-to-ru.
fall-Asp-Pres‘A leaf is falling.’ / ‘A leaf has fallen.’-66-

What’s Acquired Later in an Agglutinative Language (K. Murasugi et al.)It is also 2;1 when Sumihare started to produce the past-tensed negative form V-na-katta,
as in (31).
(31) Naka-na-katta.
cry-Neg-Past(2;2)‘(I) did not cry.’The fact that Sumihare came to distinguish the past-tensed form -na-katta from thepresent-tensed form -na-i suggests that the child now differentiated the tense morphemes-i/-katta from the verb stem and the negative marker.
Although it is not clear when children switch from two-step to three-step head movement(or learn multiple applications of merger under the PF merger analysis), it was only aroundthe age of 2;3 when Sumihare used multiply-merged forms.
(32) Kazi-ni nat-te-na-katta. (2;4)
fire-Dat be-Asp-Neg-Past‘(It) has not caused a fire.’
The verbal form nat-te-na-katta is derived via three (or more)-step head merger as representedin (23a). Sumihare, at this stage, had become able to produce the complex, multiply-merged
negative form V-te-na-katta.
Furthermore, complex verbs involving at least three-step head merger began to be
produced around 2;3.15(33) a.
Kumot-teki -ta-ne. (2;4)
cloud-Preverbal come-Past-Mood‘It’s getting cloudy.’

The erroneous use of V-ta instead of V-ru or V-t-ei-ru persisted even after the age of 2;2 until
around 2;6. An example is given in (i).
15(i)

Kaatyan buranko timawa-na (=simawa-na). Ame-ga
hut-ta-yo. (2;4)
Mommy swing clean up-Moodrain-Nom fall-Past-Mood(progressive)‘Mommy, (we) must put the swing back. It’s raining.’(Adult form: hut-te-i-ru)
Context: Since it was raining, Sumihare asked Mommy to clean up the swing.
There are at least two possible accounts for the fact that this type of error continues to be produced
even after head merger inside the verbal projection has been acquired. One is, in line with Phillips(1995), to consider that these errors are due to performance errors. The other is to consider them as the“Optional Infinitives” although they are not many in number. See Murasugi and Watanabe (2008).

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Nanzan Linguistics 6: Research Results and Activities 2009 ~ 2010

b.

Mata
again

ame hut-te
ki-ta-yo. (2;4)
rain fall-Preverbal come-Past-Mood‘It started raining again.’
To summarize, there are at least three stages in acquiring head movement (or merger under
the PF merger analysis): (i) No merger of the verb with inflection (Very Early Non-Finite
Verb Stage or RI analogue stage),16 (ii) the merger of the verb with inflection available(Post-Very-Early Non-Finite Verb Stage), and (iii) two (or more)- step head merger available(Onset of Finite Verb Stage).
3.2.4.

Further Evidence from Japanese-Speaking Child Akkun

In subsections 3.2.1.-3.2.3., based on a corpus analysis of Sumihare (Noji 1973-1977),
we argued that the V-ta form is the RI analogue. In this subsection, based on longitudinal dataof Akkun, a Japanese-speaking child,17 we show the further evidence that there is an RI
analogue stage in child Japanese.
Just like Sumihare, Akkun started to use the past tense form, V-ta in the same way as anadults do at around 1;8, as shown in (34).

Table 8 compares the numbers of the sentences involving V-Neg head movement produced at the
Very Early Non-Finite Verb Stage and at the Post-Very-Early-Non-Finite Verb Stage found in the
corpus of Sumihare.
16

Table 8: The Correlation between RI analogues and Head Movement with V-Neg Sentences
no head movement head movement
Very Early Non-Finite Verb Stage (1;6-1;10)
170Post-VEN Verb Stage (1;11-2;6)0
139
Total=156, χ2 =156.21, p=0.0004 <0.001
We classify the negative forms such as i-nai (be-Neg) or ika-n (go-Neg) into the unanalyzed forms
when they are used in a limited way (in number and variety). On the other hand, as for those V-Neg
forms productively produced with other verbs productively, we classify them into the analyzed(differentiated) forms. The results shown in Table 8 would suggest that no sentence involving head
movement (the merge of the heads) inside the verbal projection is produced during Very
Early-Non-Finite Verb Stage, and the results are consistent with Phillips’ (1995) insight that there is
no head movement in RI clauses.
17

The longitudinal study of Akkun was conducted from 1;7 until 4;0 of age. Tomoko Hashimoto,
Akkun’s mother, recorded/transcribed the naturalistic data 10 hours a week on average. Some crucial
sentences were also elicited by Tomoko Hashimoto and Keiko Murasugi by using the method of
elicited production in the course of the longitudinal study.

-68-What’s Acquired Later in an Agglutinative Language (K. Murasugi et al.)(34) a.

Akkun tat-ta. (1;8)
Astand-Past‘Akkun(/I) stood.’b.

Wanwan at-ta. (1;9)
dogthere is-Past‘There was a dog (SNOOPY).’

Interestingly, just like Sumihare, the past tense form, V-ta form, was used for volition and arequest as shown in (35), and the other verb forms such as the present tense form and theprogressive/perfective -te(i)ru form were not produced until 1;11.
(35) Akkun
A

mama
Mommy

tat-ta. (1;9)
stand-Past(request)(adult form: tat-ase-te)‘Akkun(/I) wants Mommy to stand up.’
In (35), Akkun asked his mother to stand up. In this context, he employed the past tense form,
V-ta. At this stage, or the Very Early Non-Finite Verb Stage, and merger of the verb withinflection is not observed.18
It was around 1;11 that the conjugations of verbs started to appear in Akkun’s natural
production. He started to use another verb form, namely, the request V-te form, as shown in(36).
(36) a.

Akkun doo-te (=doi-te). (1;9)
Astep aside-Req‘Akkun (wants Mommy) to step aside.’

b.

Mama
Mommy

mot-te. (2;2)
hold-Req‘Mommy, please hold (a broom).’
In (36a), Akkun asked his mother to step aside, employing the V-te form. In (36b), Akkun
was watching a video, and wanted to imitate a situation in it. He asked his mother to hold a18Compared to Sumihare, the number of utterances using the V-ta form for volitional expressions
and requests is small. One plausible reason for this is that Akkun, unlike Sumihare, started using theadjective hosii (‘want’) at a very early stage.
(i)

Akkun osii (=hosii) ziizi (1;9)
Awantpen (Lit. letter)‘Akkun(/I) wants to use the pen.’-69-

Nanzan Linguistics 6: Research Results and Activities 2009 ~ 2010

broom.
Although the V-te form was often used correctly in the same way as adults, interestingly
enough, it was also erroneously used sometimes, as exemplified in (37). In (37a), Akkun was
looking at a picture of a train in a picture book, and intended to mean that he wanted his
mother to let him ride on the train. Here, the imperative form of the intransitive verb noru (toride) was employed instead of the imperative form of the transitive nose-ru (to give a ride). In(37b), Akkun was talking about a past progressive event, and the past progressive form -tei-ta
would follow the verb in the adult grammar. However, the past progressive form -tei-ta
dropped here, and the request form, the V-te form, was used instead.
(37) a.

Akkun koe (=kore) not-te. (2;1)
A
thisride-Req(adult form: nose-te)‘Please give Akkun (/me) a ride on this (some day).’b.

Baanii mat-te. (2;2)
Barney wait-Req(past progressive)(adult form: mat-tei-ta)‘Barney was waiting.’
The examples above, then, indicate that it is the imperative V-te form that Akkun probably
started to find that his target language has rich lexical realization of inflection, and Akkun
found that there was another morpheme that could be attached to the verb stem in addition to-ta19, just like Sumihare, who found that the non-past -ru form, the aspectual -teru and thepreverbal -te form could be attached to the verb stem.
Suppose that the V-te form is the first form acquired after the stage of RIA, viz., the Post
Ver-Early-Non-Finite Stage. One piece of evidence for the hypothesis is in fact found in thenegative sentences that Akkun produced at around this stage. Just like Sumihare, Akkun
attached the negative marker -nai to fully-tensed verbs. The crucial examples are given in
(38).

19

(i)

The present tense verb form is also produced after 1;11, although the number is very small.
a.

Akkun
A

mot-(r)u. (1;11)
hold-Pres‘Akkun (/I) will hold (it).’b.

De-yu (=de-ru)
get out-Pres

zyabuzyabu. (2;1)
onomatopoeia (bath)‘(I’ll) get out of the bath tub.’The present tense forms mot-(r)u (hold) and de-ru (get out) in (i) were are correctly used inappropriate situations.

-70-What’s Acquired Later in an Agglutinative Language (K. Murasugi et al.)(38) a.

Owat-tanai. (2;3)
finish-Past Neg(adult form: owat-te(i)-nai)‘(It is) not finished yet.’b.

Nai-teru
nai. (2;4)
cry-Progressive Neg(adult form: nai-te(i)-nai)‘(The bear) is not crying.’
In (38), the negative marker -nai should follow the preverbal form -te. However, it was
attached to a past tense verb in (38a) and the progressive form in (38b).
Thus, the child can produce a verb phrase involving only one-step head merger at thisstage, but two-step head merger is still impossible, as illustrated in (39).
(39) a.

NegP
TP
VP
NP

NegP

Neg
T

V

b.
AspP

-nai

VP

-ta

NP

owat

Neg
Asp

V

-nai

-teru

nai

If this line of argument is on the right track, then the onset of Finite Verb Stage must be
found around 2;5. Akkun actually started to use various conjugated forms with respect toaspect and tense at around 2;5. The number of verbal forms produced by Akkun is shown in
Figure 5.

-71-Nanzan Linguistics 6: Research Results and Activities 2009 ~ 2010

Figure 5: Number of Verbal Forms Produced by Akkun)*+,-.,*-/012%!

)13+34,-.15-/012$!
)136317*8913:53+,-.,3/012;08<,<04-.,*<-/012#!

=+>3?,-.,315@>10A13++9>31/3?,<63B
C3A*,<04-.4*<-@40940,B-

"!

!
"&'

"&"! "&""

#&!

#&"

#&#

#&$

#&%

#&(

D,E31-/012+

As shown in Figure 5, the number of various verbal forms, especially of the present tense
form, increases after 2;5.
Furthermore, negative sentences were correctly produced at 2;5, as shown in (40).
(40) Akkun
A

mama
Mommy

aan
naite
onomatopoeia crynai. (2;5)
Neg‘Akkun (/I) (just said) “Mommy”, but not crying “aan”.’
In (40), the negative marker -nai is correctly attached to the preverbal form -te. Hence, at thisstage, more than two-step head merger inside the verbal projection is acquired.
To summarize, Akkun went through basically the same stages as Sumihare did. At the
Very Early Non-Finite Verb Stage (1;9-1;10), only the past tense verb form was used, and theform had the Modal Reference Effects. Then, the Post-Very-Early-Non-Finite Verb Stage
started around 1;11 and lasted until around 2;5. At this stage, only one-step head merger wasavailable. The Finite Verb Stage started around 2;5, where Akkun used various verb forms inthe same way as adults do.
To conclude this section, we propose that (i) there is an RI analogue stage as anintermediate stage of Japanese acquisition, (ii) our corpus analysis of Sumihare (Noji Corpus)
indicates that the RI analogue is a verb associated with the past-tensed form -ta, (iii) the stage
occurs much earlier than TI stages of the European languages, namely at the age of one, (iv)the form is initially (at around 1;6-1;7) used 100% of the time for past, perfective, imperative,
and irrealis meanings, and (v) the stage basically exhibits nature summarized in (4) (except
for (4a, c, g)). T (or I) and AspectP are underspecified, while the MoodP is active during the
Very Early Non-Finite Verb Stage, as Hyams (2005) argues. Our study here suggests that RI
analogues found in Japanese are not merely due to deficits in child performance, contra
processing approach proposed by Phillips (1995, 1996).
However, Phillips’s analysis gives us a very insightful guide to the understanding of theintermediate stages of verb acquisition of agglutinative languages. During the RI analogue
stage, merger of the verb with inflection is not, in fact, available in Japanese. There is a-72-

What’s Acquired Later in an Agglutinative Language (K. Murasugi et al.)correlation between the RI analogue (Very Early Non-Finite Verb) stage in Japanese and theabsence of head movement (merger). At the Post-RI analogue (Post-Very-Early-Non-FiniteVerb) stage, only one-step head movement in Phillips’ term is available, and a merger of theverb with T(I) is acquired. Then, the abbreviated aspectual or negative forms without recourse
to multiple-step head movement. It is only the Post RI analogue stage when the multiple
heads can be joined.
Our analyses suggest that in the [−bare stem] languages under the Stem Parameter
proposed by Hyams (1986), so-called Root Infinitives are realized as the default complete
verbal forms: the past-tensed -ta form in Japanese, the mood marker -e in Korean (Kim andPhillips 1998), imperatives in some languages like Italian (Salustri and Hyams 2003, 2006),
American and Brazilian Sign Languages (Lillo-Martin and Quadros 2008), Chinese (Chien
2008), and Kuwaiti (Aljenaie 2000), and bare perfectives in Greek (Varlokosta,Vainikka andRohrbacher 1996, Hyams 2005).
RIs (RI analogues) are the children’s first step to the system of the verb. As Rizzi (2000)
states, they exhibit whatever unmarked non-finite form the language possesses. Children,
even at age one or two, pick up a default verb form in the target language, e.g., infinitives,bare forms, or full forms, depending on the language type, and use it. The children’s common“errors” found across languages constitute evidence against the claim that children just imitate
the adult usage.
4.

Null Realization of Functional Category: The Acquisition of Small v in the VP shell

After the Root Infinitive analogue stage, or after having successfully learned to merge
the verb and the inflection, do Japanese-speaking children already produce verbs just like
adults? The answer is negative. There is another type of error that Japanese-speaking children
typically make in the acquisition of verbs. After the Root Infinitive analogue stage, children
start acquiring the conjugation system of verbs, without lexically realizing the small v.
Murasugi and Hashimoto (2004) report that 2-4 year-old Japanese-speaking children,
despite being able to use unaccusative and ditransitive verbs “correctly”, often showinteresting and consistent errors. In the process of acquiring the lexical items that correspondto V-v combinations, Japanese-speaking children often use unaccusative verbs incorrectly astransitive or causative verbs, or vice versa sometimes, as shown in (41c-d).
(41) a.

Dango-ga
uta pakantite, dango-ga
atta. (Akkun, 2;9)dumpling-Nom lid (onomatopoeia) doing dumpling-Nom there-be‘There was a dumpling (when I) opened the lid of the dumpling (box).’b.

Kinnou Akkun akatyan toki,yesterday A
baby
when

papa-ni koe ageta.
Daddy-to this gave

(Akkun, 2;10)‘Akkun gave this to Daddy when he was a baby yesterday (=in the past).’-73-

Nanzan Linguistics 6: Research Results and Activities 2009 ~ 2010c.

d.

Nee, ati-o
hei legs-Acc

hirogat-te. (Akkun, 3;7)
spread (unaccusative)-Request‘Hei, please spread your legs.’(Adult form: hiroge-te)

Todok-ok-ka, ano hito-ni
todok-(y)oo todok-(y)oo.
arrive-let’sthat person-to arrive-let’s arrive-let’s(Akkun, 4;8)‘Let’s send (it). Let’s send (it) to that person.’(Adult form: todoke-yoo)(Murasugi and Hashimoto 2004)

Murasugi and Hashimoto (2004) propose that children initially assume the pronounced verbs
are bare V’s and the [±cause] v is phonetically empty.
In adult English, a single lexical item can often be used both as a transitive and as anunaccusative. Thus, we have alternations as in (42).
(42) a.
b.

John passed the ring to Mary.
The ring passed to Mary.

If the argument structures of these sentences are realized as in (43), then v is a “zeromorpheme” without phonetic content whether it is [+cause] as in the case of (42a) or [−cause]
as in the case of (42b).
(43)

vP

(v [+cause] + PASS = pass, v [−cause] + PASS = pass)

John

v’

v
[±cause]

VP
NP

V’

the ring V
PASS toPP
MaryConsequently, both ‘v [+cause]+PASS’ and ‘v [−cause]+PASS’ are realized as ‘pass’.
In contrast, in adult Japanese, transitivity and unaccusativity are often marked by distinct
suffixes, as illustrated in (44) and (45).
(44) a.
b.

hirog-e-ru (=spread (vt.)) / hirog-a-ru (=spread (vi.))
todok-e-ru (=deliver-present) / todok-(r)u (=be delivered-present)-74-

What’s Acquired Later in an Agglutinative Language (K. Murasugi et al.)(45) a.

vP
agent

b.

vP

v’
VP

Theme
Goal

v’
v [+cause]

VP

V’ -e

Theme

V

Goal

todok-

v [−cause]V’ ∅V
todok-

These examples indicate that the forms of the suffixes are idiosyncratic and probably have tobe learnt one by one by children. The suffixes plausibly occupy the v position in the structureof the VP-shell, e.g., [+cause] v is realized as -e and [−cause] v as -a, in the case of (44a), andaccordingly, to the children making such errors as (41c-d), unaccusatives and their transitive
counterparts are homophonous, as is the case in English. They only later realize that thesurface forms of the verbs are derived by suffixing v to the verbal root. As the actual
realization of the [±cause] v is idiosyncratic and sometimes even null, the acquisition of verbs
requires a complex morphological analysis. Murasugi and Hashimoto (2004) suggest thatJapanese-speaking children are equipped with the v-VP frame from the early stage ofacquisition, but they initially hypothesize the English pass-type verbs, and it requires them totake some time to discover the actual morphological make-up of the verbs, which are formedby combining V and v.20
5.

Conclusion

In this paper, we first showed that there is a very early non-finite stage, or an RootInfinitive analogue stage in child Japanese at the age of one, where the V-ta form is used for20

Murasugi and Hashimoto’s (2004) analysis is supported by a data analysis of anotherJapanese-speaking child Sumihare (Noji 1973-1977) in the CHILDES database (MacWhinney 2000).
Sumihare went through acquisition stages which are exactly parallel with Akkun’s. Erroneousalternations between intransitive verbs and transitive/causative verbs were observed likewise (seeMurasugi, Hashimoto and Fuji 2007).
(i)

a.

Kutyu
ha-ite. (Sumihare, 2;1)
a pair of shoes put on-Request(Adult form: hak-(s)ase-te)‘(Please) put a pair of shoes on me.’b.

Kaatyan ai-te. (Sumihare, 2;1)
mother be open (unaccusative)-Request(Adult form: ake-te)‘(Please) open (the door), mother.’c.

Nui-tapull-Past

koko. (Sumihare, 2;1)
here

(Adult form: nuke-ta)‘(This) comes out from here.’-75-

Nanzan Linguistics 6: Research Results and Activities 2009 ~ 2010

an irrealis meaning, just like Root Infinitives in European languages. Japanese-speaking
children, instead of using the infinitive form or bare form, attach a default morpheme to thenon-finite verb. We showed that at the Root Infinitive analogue stage, the operation of
merging the verb with an inflection is not yet observed. Second, we argued that after having
successfully learned to merge the verb and the inflection, children speaking an agglutinating
language have difficulties in the intransitive-transitive/causative alternation of the verbs, thatis, in learning the lexical realization of small v. Children erroneously use intransitive verbs astransitive/causative verbs, and sometimes vice versa.
This paper showed that children borne into the circumstance of such Japanese grammar,
even at the age of one, know the basic nature of agglutinative languages: The stem of the verb
cannot stand by itself without being associated with a bound morpheme. What’s acquired laterin Japanese, an agglutinative language, is the specification of Tense features, the merger
operation of the verb with an inflection, and the correct lexical realization of small v incomplex predicates.

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