Acquisition of multi-verb predicates in Nungon

Abstract

Studies of the acquisition of verbs tend to focus on one-verb predicates of the prevalent English type. But in hundreds of languages around the world, multi-verb predicates like serial verb constructions are widely used. It could be reasoned that children should begin producing simple, single-verb predicates before they are able to produce multi-verb predicates. But alternatively, many multi-verb predicates are idiomatic and could, as chunks, lend themselves to holophrastic acquisition by small children. This article examines early productions of multi-verb predicates in the speech of three children (aged 1;1–2;4, 2;1–3;3, and 2;10–3;3) acquiring the Papuan language Nungon, comparing patterns there with productions in the child-directed speech of their parents, and with the children’s productions of simple, one-verb predicates. The study’s youngest child never produces multi-verb predicates in the study period, but the child studied for the widest age range produces them from age 2;4, when she has still not acquired productive use of all verbal inflections, and both older children show proportionally increasing trends in multi-verb predicate use. Semantically, the earliest multi-verb predicates can be analyzed as describing multidimensional unitary events, with this expanding to events that can be divided into multiple distinct components at later ages. Delays in production of certain other multi-verb predicate types that are robustly present in parental input at all ages cannot be linked to a single factor, but likely relate to a combination of increased phonological or morphological complexity and increased conceptual difficulty.