Draft, December 20, 2007

Early Acquisition of Animacy Agreement in Japanese*

Koji Sugisaki
Mie University

1.

Introduction

It is widely believed that Japanese is a language which exhibits virtually noagreement phenomenon at all. Yet, there is a single pair of verbs which alternate
depending on the property of their nominative phrases: The locational verbs aru(inanimate) and iru (animate) agree in animacy with their nominative phrases, as
illustrated in (1).
(1)

a.

b.

Kooen‐nikodomo‐ga /* isi‐gapark‐DAT
child‐NOM
stone‐NOM‘The child/The stone is in the park.’
Kooen‐ni* kodomo‐ga /isi‐gapark‐DAT
child‐NOM
stone‐NOM‘The child/The stone is in the park.’iru.
be‐AN(IMATE)
aru.
be‐IN(ANIMATE)

In this study, I investigate whether young Japanese‐learning children are sensitive tothis pattern of animacy alternation. The results of my transcript analysis demonstratethat children exhibit correct animacy agreement from the earliest observable stages.
This finding suggests that very early acquisition of agreement, observed in a variety
of “rich” agreement languages, holds even for the acquisition of agreement inJapanese, which is a language with extremely poor agreement.
2.

The Syntax of Animacy Agreement in Japanese

2.1. Major Properties of Animacy Agreement in Japanese
In Japanese, the locatinal verbs aru (inanimate) and iru (animate) are the only pair ofverbs which alternate depending on the animacy classification of their nominative
phrases. Both aru and iru express two distinct types of meanings which are* I would like to thank Hiroshi Aoyagi, Tomohiro Fujii, William Snyder, and anonymous
reviewers for this workshop for valuable comments. The usual disclaimers apply. The
research reported here was supported in part by a Grant‐in‐Aid for Scientific Research (B)from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (#17320062, Project Leader: Seiki Ayano).
‐1‐equivalent to those expressed by have and be in English. In the examples in (2), a
locative‐existential meaning is encoded, and in the examples in (3), a possessive
meaning is encoded.
(2)

(3)

Locative‐existential meaning:a. Kooen‐ni
kodomo‐ga
park‐DAT
child‐NOM‘The child is in the park.’b. Kooen‐ni
isi‐gapark‐DAT
stone‐NOM‘The stone is in the park.’
Possessive meaning:a. Taroo‐ni
kodomo‐ga
Taroo‐DAT
child‐NOM‘Taroo has a child.’b. Taroo‐ni
okane‐gamoney‐NOM
Taroo‐DAT‘Taroo has money.’

iru.
be‐AN
aru.
be‐IN

iru.
have‐ANaru.
have‐INA detailed syntactic analysis of this locational verb alternation by Kishimoto(2000) argues that, despite their apparent similarity, the sentences in (2) and those in(3) differ in the transitivity of their verbs: When the verbs aru and iru carrylocative‐existential meanings, they are used as intransitive predicates, and whenthese verbs express possessive meanings, they are used as transitive predicates. Thismeans that while a locative‐existential construction as in (2) has the nominative
phrase as its subject, a possessive construction as in (3) has the dative phrase as its
subject, giving rise to the structures shown in (4).
(4)

a.
b.

Locative‐existential meaning:
Possessive meaning:

DAT (adjunct) – NOM (subject) – V
DAT (subject) – NOM (object) – V

Kishimoto (2000) provides a variety of evidence that lends support to thestructural difference illustrated above. One piece of evidence comes from thereflexive binding of zibun ‘self’. This anaphor can take a subject as its antecedent, but
not an object.
(5)

Taroo1‐ga
Hanako2‐ozibun1/*2‐noTaroo‐NOM
Hanako‐ACC self‐GEN‘Taroo scolded Hanako in his own room.’heya‐deroom‐insikatta.
scoldedIn a locative‐existential sentence like (6), the nominative phrase serves as theantecedent of zibun. On the other hand, in a possessive sentence like (7), the reflexive
zibun can only take the dative phrase as its antecedent.
‐2‐

(6)

(7)

Taroo1‐ga
zibun1‐noheya‐niiru.
Taroo‐NOM
sel‐GENroom‐inbe‐AN‘Taroo is in his own room.’a. Taroo1‐ni
zibun1‐nookane‐gaaru.
Taroo‐NOM
sel‐GEN
money‐NOM have‐IN‘Taroo has his own money.’b. * Zibun1‐no
tomodati‐ni kodomo1‐ga iru.
self‐GENfriend‐DAT
child‐NOM
have‐AN‘A friend of himself has a child.’

This contrast suggests that while the subject of a locative‐existential sentence is thenominative phrase, that of a possessive sentence is the dative phrase, as shown in (4).
Another important difference between locative‐existential and possessive
sentences is that there is a discrepancy in their patterns of agreement: In alocative‐existential construction, animacy agreement is obligatory, while in apossessive construction, the possibility of agreement differs depending on the choiceof verb. With the possessive verb iru, the nominative phrase must be animate as
shown in (9a), while with the possessive verb aru, the nominative can be either
animate or inanimate, as illustrated in (9b).1 This optionality observed with thepossessive aru constitutes a crucial piece of evidence that the alternation between aru
and iru is not semantically‐based: If aru and iru were to semantically select aninanimate and animate nominative phrase respectively, there should be no contrast
between the locative‐existential use of aru and the possessive use of the same verb.
(8)

Locative‐existential meaning:a. Kooen‐ni
kodomo‐ga /* isi‐gapark‐DAT
child‐NOM
stone‐NOM‘The child/The stone is in the park.’b. Kooen‐ni* kodomo‐ga /isi‐gapark‐DAT
child‐NOM
stone‐NOM‘The child/The stone is in the park.’

iru.
be‐AN
aru.
be‐IN

1. An earlier treatment of locational verbs by Kuno (1973) and Shibatani (1978) claims thatthe apparent iru version of a possessive sentence should be construed as a locative‐existential
construction. However, Kishimoto (2000) presents evidence for the existence of the transitive
version of the possessive iru. For example, in (i), zibun can only take the dative phrase as its
antecedent regardless of the choice of the verb, showing that the verb iru is used as atransitive verb.
(i) a.
Taroo1‐ni‐mo
zibun1‐no kodomo‐ga
aru
/
iru.
self‐GEN child‐NOM
have‐IN
have‐AN
Taroo‐DAT‐also‘Taroo also has his own child.’
b. * Zibun1‐no tomodati‐ni‐mo
kodomo1‐ga
aru
/
iru.
child‐NOM
have‐IN
have‐ANself‐GEN friend‐DAT‐also‘His1 own friend also has a child1.’
‐3‐

(9)

Possessive meaning:2
a. Taroo‐ni
kodomo‐ga
Taroo‐DAT
child‐NOM‘Taroo has a child/money.’b. Taroo‐ni
kodomo‐ga
Taroo‐DAT
child‐NOM‘Taroo has a child/money.’/* okane‐ga
money‐NOM

iru.
have‐AN/okane‐gamoney‐NOM

aru.
have‐INTo summarize so far, the target for the animacy agreement in Japanese isdistributed over two types of arguments, namely the subjects of locative‐existential
verbs and the objects of possessive verbs. In addition, there is an asymmetry in thepattern of agreement. The locative‐existential verbs must agree in animacy with theirnominative phrases. In contrast, while the possessive verb iru shows obligatory
agreement, animacy agreement is not forced when aru is selected.
2.2. Kishimoto’s (2000) Object Agreement Analysis
Kishimoto (2000) proposed that the peculiar behavior of animacy agreement inJapanese follows straightforwardly if we assume that this locative verb alternation isa variant of object agreement, sensitive to the gender (i.e. animacy) class of
nominative phrases. According to him, the observation that the targets for theagreement are distributed over subjects and objects can be explained on theassumption that the locational verb alternation is solely triggered by underlying
objects.
Under Kishimoto’s (2000) analysis, the divergence in the behavior of the verbs
aru and iru stems from the difference in the strength of a D‐feature of the light verb v.
More specifically, the light verb v associated with iru has a strong D‐feature that
overtly attract its nominative phrase to its specifier position, which is an underlying
object, while the light verb v associated with aru has a weak D‐feature, which does
not require movement of its underlying object. Kishimoto postulates that animacy
agreement is established through the specifier‐head agreement between the lightverb and the nominative phrase. The relevant derivations are illustrated below.

2. Given that agreement is obligatory for the possessive iru but not for the possessive aru,
both aru and iru can be used to express a possessive meaning when the nominative phrase isan animate noun.
(i) Taroo‐ni‐wa
kodomo‐ga
iru
/
aru.
Taroo‐DAT‐TOP
child‐NOM
have‐ANhave‐IN‘Taroo has a child.’‐4‐

(10) Locative‐existential sentences:
a. iru

b.

TP
ei TP
DP‐Datei T’DP-NomeivP
T [EPP]
ei v’
t
ei
VP
v
ty
ty
t
V
v
iru
|
[strong D]t (iru)

aru

TP
ei TP
DP‐Datei T’DP-NomeivP
T [EPP]
ei v’
t
ei
VP
v
ty
ty
t
V
v
aru
|
[weak D]t (aru)In the case of the locative‐existential construction, the light verb in (10a), where
iru is used, has a strong D‐feature, and hence the nominative object within VP is
overtly attracted to [Spec, v] and checks its agreement features, resulting in animacy
agreement. The nominative phrase is further moved to [Spec, T] to satisfy the EPP
feature on T. On the other hand, in (10b), the light verb associated with aru has aweak D‐feature, which does not induce overt raising of the nominative phrase. Yet, T
has an EPP feature, which requires the nominative object to move overtly to its
specifier position. As a consequence, the nominative phrase undergoes overt
movement to [Spec, v] on its way to [Spec, T] in exactly the same way as in (10a).
(11) Possessive sentences:
a. iru

b.

TP
ei T’
DP-Dat eivP
T [EPP]ei v’
DP‐Nom ei v’
t
ei
VP
v
ty
ty
t
V
v
iru
|
[strong D]t (iru)

aru

TP
ei T’
DP-DateivP
T [EPP]
ei v’
t
ei
VP
v
ty
ty
DP‐NomVv
aru|[weak D]t (aru)In the case of the possessive construction, the light verb associated with thepossessive iru in (11a) has a strong D‐feature and attracts the nominative object to its
specifier, yielding animacy agreement. In contrast, the light verb associated with thepossessive aru in (11b) has a weak D‐feature, which does not require overt raising of‐5‐

the nominative phrase. The formal features on the nominative phrase are checked
after Spell‐Out, and hence animacy agreement is not reflected in its PF representation.
Thus, the possessive verb aru can tolerate both animate and inanimate nominative
objects.
In sum, under Kishimoto’s (2000) analysis, animacy agreement in Japanese is an
instance of object agreement mediated by the light verb v. Overt object shift is
mandatory with iru, but not with aru, and instantiation of agreement is contingent
upon whether or not the nominative phrase is overtly moved to the specifier positionof the light verb.
3.

Agreement in Child Languages

One of the striking findings from the recent cross‐linguistic investigations of childlanguages is that children acquire specific morphosyntactic properties of the target
language at an extremely early age. They immediately converge on the adultgrammar in the domain of verb‐second phenomenon, null arguments, and even in
the domain of agreement. For example, in the acquisition of “rich” agreement
languages, agreement errors are under 5%, as shown in Table 1 (Hyams 2002:231).
This pervasive property of the acquisition process is referred to as Early
Morphosyntactic Convergence (EMC; Hoekstra & Hyams 1998, Hyams 2002).3
Child

Language

SimoneGermanMartina
ItalianDiana
ItalianGuglielmo
ItalianClaudia
ItalianFrancesco
Italian
Marco
ItalianMarti
Cat/Span
Josep
Cat/Span
GiselaCatalan
GuillemCatalanAge# utterances% error

Source1;07‐2;08
1;08‐2;07
1;10‐2;06
2;02‐2;07
1;04‐2;04
1;05‐2;10
1;05‐3;00
1;9‐2;05
1;09‐2;06
1;10‐2;06
1;09‐2;06

1732
478
610
201
1410
1264
415
178
136
81
129

1
1.6
1.5
3.3
3
2
4
0.56
3
1.2
2.3

Clausen & Penke 1992
Guasti 1994
Guasti 1994
Guasti 1994
Pizzuto & Caselli 1992
Pizzuto & Caselli 1992
Pizzuto & Caselli 1992
Torrens 1992
Torrens 1992
Torrens 1992
Torrens 1992

Table 1: Percentage of subject‐verb agreement errors in early language (Hyams 2002)
Yet, as we can see, the evidence for EMC so far comes mainly from theacquisition of “rich” agreement languages such as Italian, Catalan, and Spanish. Then,a question arises as to whether EMC holds even for the acquisition of a languagewith extremely poor agreement. To answer this question, the next section presents
the results of my transcript analysis that aims to determine whether
3. See also Wexler (1998) for a related proposal of Very Early Knowledge of Inflection (VEKI).
‐6‐

Japanese‐learning children exhibit correct animacy agreement from the earliest
observable stages.
4.

Animacy Agreement in Child Japanese: Transcript Analysis

4.1. Subjects and Method
In order to determine whether the acquisition of animacy agreement in Japanese falls
under EMC, I analyzed three longitudinal corpora from the CHILDES database(MacWhinney 2000), which provide a total sample of more than 67,000 lines of childspeech.
Child

Age# of child utterances

Collected by

Aki
Ryo
Tai

1;05 ‐ 3;00
1;04 ‐ 3;00
1;05 ‐ 3;01

22,026
11,40834,440Miyata (2004a)
Miyata (2004b)
Miyata (2004c)

Table 2: Japanese Corpora Analyzed
The CLAN program Combo, together with a file that contains present‐ andpast‐tense forms of aru and iru, was used to identify potentially relevant childutterances, which were then searched by hand and checked against the originaltranscripts to exclude imitations, repetitions, and formulaic routines. When thenominative phrase was a null pronominal in the child utterance, I determined its
animacy status by analyzing its context (more specifically, preceding utterances).
4.2. Results
The results were as follows. The first clear use of aru/iru appeared at the age of2(years);01(month) in Aki corpus, at 1;10 in Ryo corpus, and at 1;05 in Tai corpus.
Virtually all instances of aru and iru in children’s speech were locative‐existential
constructions, which require obligatory agreement as illustrated in (8), repeated hereas (12).
(12) Locative‐existential meaning:a. Kooen‐ni
kodomo‐ga /* isi‐gachild‐NOM
stone‐NOM
park‐DAT‘The child/The stone is in the park.’b. Kooen‐ni* kodomo‐ga /isi‐gapark‐DAT
child‐NOM
stone‐NOM‘The child/The stone is in the park.’

‐7‐

iru.
be‐AN
aru.
be‐IN

Then, if children have adult‐like knowledge of agreement, both aru and iru shouldnecessarily match in animacy with the nominative phrase. As shown in Tables 3‐5,
this expectation is in fact borne out. Across children, agreement errors are around or
under 5% (0.053% for Aki, 0.016% for Ryo, 0.031% for Tai), which precisely coincides
with the results obtained from the acquisition of “rich” agreement languages shownin Table 1. A sample of children’s actual utterances is given in (13)‐(15).
Nominative Phrase
inanimate animate
aru
148
9
Verbs
iru
1
31
(p<.0001 by two‐tailed Fisher Exact Test)
Table 3: The number of aru/iru in Aki corpus
Nominative Phrase
inanimate animate
aru
105
0
Verbs
iru
2
17
(p<.0001 by two‐tailed Fisher Exact Test)
Table 4: The number of aru/iru in Ryo corpus
Nominative Phrase
inanimate animate
aru
258
4
Verbs
iru
6
59
(p<.0001 by two‐tailed Fisher Exact Test)
Table 5: The number of aru/iru in Tai corpus(13) Examples from Aki corpus:
a. *CHI:umi‐ga aru
yo.
sea‐ NOM be‐IN Excl
‘There is a sea.’b. *CHI:minna
doko‐ni iru
everyone where‐at be‐AN‘Where is everyone?’(14) Examples from Ryo corpus:
a. *CHI:densha‐moaru .
train‐also
be‐IN‘There is also a train.’b. *CHI:usagi
ita?
rabbitbe‐AN‘Was there a rabbit?’‐8‐(aki25.cha)no?
Q(aki44.cha)(r20216.cha)(r20223.cha)

(15) Examples from Tai corpus:
a. *TAI:
hambaagu‐ga
atta.
hamburger‐NOM
be‐IN‘A hamburger is there.’b. *TAI:
koko
untenshusan iru
here
driverbe‐AN‘A (train) driver is here.’(t940204.cha)yo (t940407.cha)
Excl

4.3. Discussion
The results of my transcript analysis have convincingly demonstrated thatJapanese‐learning children exhibit correct animacy agreement from the earliest
observable stages. This finding suggests that EMC holds not only for the acquisitionof “rich” agreement languages but also for the acquisition of an extremely poor
agreement language. Furthermore, if Kishimoto’s (2000) analysis of animacy
agreement is on the right track, these results suggest that the functional category of v,
which plays a crucial role in realizing animacy agreement, is already in the grammarof very young children. This finding casts serious doubt on the view that there is a
developmental stage in which functional categories are lacking altogether (e.g.
Radford 1990), and lends further support to the Full Competence view of Poeppel &Wexler (1993), which claims that phrase structure in the grammar of two‐year‐olds isalready equipped with a full array of functional categories.
5.

Conclusion

The results of this study revealed that Japanese‐learning children have adult‐likeknowledge of animacy agreement from the earliest stages. This finding demonstrates
that the acquisition of animacy agreement in Japanese constitutes another instance of
Early Morphosyntactic Convergence, which in turn suggests that this property of theacquisition process holds even for the acquisition of agreement in Japanese, alanguage with extremely poor agreement.

‐9‐References
Clahsen, Harald, and Maria Penke. 1992. The acquisition of agreement morphology
and its syntactic consequences. In The Acquisition of Verb Placement: Functional
Categories and V2 Phenomenon in Language Acquisition, ed. Jürgen Meisel,
181‐223. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Guasti, Maria Teresa. 1994. Verb syntax in Italian child grammar: Finite and nonfinite
verbs. Language Acquisition 3:1‐40.
Hoekstra, Teun, and Nina Hyams. 1998. Aspects of root infinitives. Lingua 106:81‐112.
Hyams, Nina. 2002. Clausal structure in child Greek: A reply to Varlokosta, Vainilla
and Rohbacher and a reanalysis. The Linguistic Review 19:225‐269.
Kishimoto, Hideki. 2000. Locational verbs, agreement, and object shift in Japanese.
The Linguistic Review 17:53‐109.
Kuno, Susumu. 1973. The structure of the Japanese language. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
MIT Press.
Shibatani, Masayoshi. 1978. Nihongo‐no bunseki (An analysis of Japanese). Tokyo:
Taishukan.
MacWhinney, Brian. 2000. The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk. Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum.
Miyata, Susanne. 2004a. Japanese: Aki Corpus. Pittsburgh, PA: TalkBank.
1‐59642‐055‐3.
Miyata, Susanne. 2004b. Japanese: Ryo Corpus. Pittsburgh, PA: TalkBank.
1‐59642‐056‐1.
Miyata, Susanne. 2004c. Japanese: Tai Corpus. Pittsburgh, PA: TalkBank.
1‐59642‐057‐X.
Pizutto, Elena, and Maria Cristina Caselli. 1992. The acquisition of Italianmorphology: Implications for models of language development. Journal ofChild Language 19:491‐558.
Poeppel, David, and Ken Wexler. 1993. The full competence hypothesis of clausestructure in early German. Language 69:1‐33.
Radford, Andrew. 1990. Syntactic theory and the acquisition of English syntax. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Torrens, Vicens. 1992. The acquisition of inflection in Catalan and Spanish. Talk
given at Psycholinguistics Lab, UCLA.
Wexler, Ken. 1998. Very early parameter setting and the unique checking constraint:
A new explanation of the optional infinitive stage. Lingua 106:23‐79.

‐ 10 ‐