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The ontology of roots and the emergence of nouns and verbs in Kuikuro

Adult speech and children’s acquisition
  • Bruna Franchetto and Mara Santos
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Lexical Polycategoriality
This chapter is in the book Lexical Polycategoriality

Abstract

Kuikuro, a dialect of the Upper Xingu Carib Language (Southern Amazonia, Brazil), cannot be defined as polycategorial. Instead, we argue that it is a highly agglutinative language in which the postulates of Distributed Morphology are extremely effective for their descriptive and explanatory power: roots are acategorized lexical items from which families of words can be generated in syntax, and not before, through pairing with functional morphemes. Inflection, both nominal and verbal, is the phonological expression of syntactic identities and functions, e.g., Nouns and Verbs as arguments and their heads. A first excursion into the speech production of Kuikuro children aged 14 to 36 months brings new evidence in favor of the hypothesis that Nouns and Verbs emerge step by step in the development of syntactic functional projections, from an early phase of multi-functional and uninflected baby-words – a phenomenon at the heart of the ethnotheory of language acquisition.

Abstract

Kuikuro, a dialect of the Upper Xingu Carib Language (Southern Amazonia, Brazil), cannot be defined as polycategorial. Instead, we argue that it is a highly agglutinative language in which the postulates of Distributed Morphology are extremely effective for their descriptive and explanatory power: roots are acategorized lexical items from which families of words can be generated in syntax, and not before, through pairing with functional morphemes. Inflection, both nominal and verbal, is the phonological expression of syntactic identities and functions, e.g., Nouns and Verbs as arguments and their heads. A first excursion into the speech production of Kuikuro children aged 14 to 36 months brings new evidence in favor of the hypothesis that Nouns and Verbs emerge step by step in the development of syntactic functional projections, from an early phase of multi-functional and uninflected baby-words – a phenomenon at the heart of the ethnotheory of language acquisition.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents vii
  3. Acknowledgments ix
  4. List of contributors xi
  5. Lexical Polycategoriality: Cross-linguistic, cross-theoretical and language acquisition approaches 1
  6. Part I. Polycategoriality
  7. The flexibility of the noun/verb distinction in the lexicon of Mandinka 35
  8. Derivationally based homophony in French 59
  9. Categorial flexibility as an emergent phenomenon 79
  10. Part II. Polycategoriality across Amerindian languages
  11. Polycategoriality and hybridity across Mayan languages 101
  12. Polycategoriality and zero derivation 155
  13. What determines constraints on the relationships between roots and lexical categories? 175
  14. Part III. Polycategoriality across Austronesian and Australian languages
  15. Lexical and syntactic categories in Nêlêmwa (New Caledonia) and some other Austronesian languages 207
  16. Two classes of verbs in Northern Australian languages 243
  17. Part IV. Linguistic analysis in the light of acquisition data
  18. The ontology of roots and the emergence of nouns and verbs in Kuikuro 275
  19. Flexibles and polyvalence in Ku Waru 307
  20. Word class distinctiveness versus polycategoriality in Modern Hebrew 343
  21. Part V. Lexical categories and polycategoriality in acquisition
  22. Noun and Verb categories in acquisition 381
  23. Semantic discrimination of Noun/Verb categories in French children aged 1;6 to 2;11 413
  24. The acquisition of action nouns in Yucatec Maya 443
  25. Author index 467
  26. Language index 473
  27. Subject index 475
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.182.10fra

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents vii
  3. Acknowledgments ix
  4. List of contributors xi
  5. Lexical Polycategoriality: Cross-linguistic, cross-theoretical and language acquisition approaches 1
  6. Part I. Polycategoriality
  7. The flexibility of the noun/verb distinction in the lexicon of Mandinka 35
  8. Derivationally based homophony in French 59
  9. Categorial flexibility as an emergent phenomenon 79
  10. Part II. Polycategoriality across Amerindian languages
  11. Polycategoriality and hybridity across Mayan languages 101
  12. Polycategoriality and zero derivation 155
  13. What determines constraints on the relationships between roots and lexical categories? 175
  14. Part III. Polycategoriality across Austronesian and Australian languages
  15. Lexical and syntactic categories in Nêlêmwa (New Caledonia) and some other Austronesian languages 207
  16. Two classes of verbs in Northern Australian languages 243
  17. Part IV. Linguistic analysis in the light of acquisition data
  18. The ontology of roots and the emergence of nouns and verbs in Kuikuro 275
  19. Flexibles and polyvalence in Ku Waru 307
  20. Word class distinctiveness versus polycategoriality in Modern Hebrew 343
  21. Part V. Lexical categories and polycategoriality in acquisition
  22. Noun and Verb categories in acquisition 381
  23. Semantic discrimination of Noun/Verb categories in French children aged 1;6 to 2;11 413
  24. The acquisition of action nouns in Yucatec Maya 443
  25. Author index 467
  26. Language index 473
  27. Subject index 475
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