Malayalam Morphosyntax: Inflectional Features and their Acquisition Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Gayathri G Roll No. 134083003 Supervisor: Prof. Vaijayanthi M Sarma Department of Humanities & Social Sciences INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY BOMBAY 2019 For Priya … Thesis Approval This thesis entitled “Malayalam Morphosyntax: Inflectional Features and their Acquisition” by Gayathri G is approved for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Examiners Supervisor Chairman Date: 14­11­2019 Place: Mumbai iii Declaration I declare that this written submission represents my ideas in my own words and where others’ ideas or words have been included, I have adequately cited and referenced the original sources. I also declare that I have adhered to all principles of academic honesty and integrity and have not misrepresented or fabricated or falsified any idea/data/fact/source in my submission. I un­ derstand that any violation of the above will be cause for disciplinary action by the Institute and can also evoke penal action from the sources which have thus not been properly cited or from whom proper permission has not been taken when needed. Gayathri G Date: 14­11­2019 Roll No. 134083003 v Abstract Malayalam, which belongs to the South­Dravidian language family, is an agglutinative language with rich inflectional morphology. The aim of the thesis is to analyse the grammar and acqui­ sition of Malayalam verbal inflections (tense, aspect and mood) and nominal inflections (case, number, and gender). Within the larger discussion of inflectional morphology and its acqui­ sition, particular attention is paid to two complex morphological processes, a) the past tense formation of verbs and b) case assignment of subjects and objects. In particular, the thesis will show the following: a) that the past tense marker selection is determined by different grammatical principles in underived and derived stems; specifically, phonotactics in the former and the lexical feature of transitivity in the latter; b) that the da­ tive nominals of a class of predicates (variously labelled experiencer or dative subject or psych predicates) are in fact subjects using an array of empirical tests involving binding, control, ac­ cusative marking, and predicate alternation; and c) that inflections for number and object case rest on lexical features of the noun (stem) and the allomorphy is governed by these featural requirements. In looking at the developing grammar in the two subjects, the thesis will show that Malayalam inflectional grammar has quite direct consequences for the acquisition of inflec­ tional morphology. Specifically, acquisition proceeds unobstructed when the mode of selection is phonological and offers more challenges when the mode of selection is morphological, i.e., when the selection depends on the learning of the lexical or grammatical features of the noun and verb stems. Thus, using the interplay between acquisition and the grammatical description, we es­ tablish that in addition to the established factors that guide acquisition, mode of selection of an inflection plays a key role in determining the relative ease/difficulty in the acquisition of in­ flectional morphology. This follows quite neatly from the fact that children are phonologically competent even before much language is produced and that this module­competence could fa­ cilitate the acquisition of morphology. The thesis will argue that this is indeed the case. vii Contents Abstract vii Contents ix List of Figures xiii List of Tables xv List of Abbreviations xix 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Children and Language .............................. 1 1.2 Inflections in Universal Grammar ........................ 4 1.3 Dravidian Languages ............................... 7 1.3.1 Grammatical Features of Dravidian Languages ............. 9 1.4 Malayalam and its Linguistic Features ...................... 12 1.5 Organisation of the Thesis ............................ 16 1.6 Contributions of the Thesis ............................ 22 2 Contextualising Inflectional Development 23 2.1 Acquiring Inflections ............................... 23 2.2 Major Theoretical Models on Inflectional Acquisition .............. 25 2.2.1 Phonological Theories on Inflectional Development .......... 25 2.2.2 Morphological Models on Inflectional Acquisition: Rule vs Analogy or Dual­Route vs. Single­Route Models .................. 28 2.2.3 Syntactic Theories on Inflectional Development ............. 29 2.3 Affix­Learning vs Parameter Setting ....................... 40 ix x Contents 2.3.1 Factors that Influence the Acquisition of Inflectional Morphemes ... 40 2.3.2 Parameter Setting and the Acquisition of Inflections .......... 42 2.4 Different Approaches to the Development of Inflections ............. 43 3 Subjects and Method 47 3.1 Longitudinal Data ................................. 47 3.1.1 Error Analysis .............................. 48 3.1.2 Morphological Development ....................... 51 3.1.3 Productivity ................................ 56 3.2 Cross­Sectional Data ............................... 57 4 Characteristics of Inflectional Selection in Malayalam 59 4.1 Introduction .................................... 59 4.2 Malayalam Inflections and Agglutination .................... 60 4.3 Phonotactic Constraints on Inflectional Affixes ................. 60 4.4 Phonological vs Morphological Selection .................... 67 4.5 Acquisition and Mode of Affix Selection ..................... 68 5 The Grammar and Acquisition of Malayalam Verbal Inflections 69 5.1 Verbal Inflections in Malayalam ......................... 69 5.2 Acquisition of Verbal Inflections ......................... 74 5.3 Acquisition of Malayalam TAM inflections ................... 77 5.3.1 Tense ................................... 78 5.3.2 Aspect .................................. 83 5.3.3 Mood ................................... 85 5.3.4 Errors in TAM marking ......................... 91 5.4 Verbal Inflections: Summary ........................... 92 6 Past Tense Morphology and Acquisition 93 6.1 Introduction .................................... 93 6.2 Past Tense of Underived Verbs .......................... 96 6.3 Past Tense of Derived Verbs ........................... 97 6.4 Intermediate Summary .............................. 107 6.5 Interface Patterns in Affixed Verbs and Phonological Levelling ......... 108 Contents xi 6.6 Acquisition of Past Tense ............................. 110 6.6.1 Production of the past tense affix ­i ................... 112 6.6.2 Production of the Past Tense suffixes ­t̪ u and ­n̪ t̪ u ............ 113 6.6.3 Errors and Error Analysis ........................ 117 6.7 Conclusion .................................... 122 7 The Grammar and Acquisition of Malayalam Nominal Inflections 123 7.1 Malayalam Nominal Inflections ......................... 123 7.2 Cross­Linguistic Patterns in the Acquisition of Nominal Inflections ....... 132 7.3 Acquisition of Malayalam Nominal Inflections ................. 135 7.3.1 Case .................................... 136 7.3.2 Gender .................................. 145 7.3.3 Number .................................. 148 7.4 Nominal Inflection: Errors in the Data ...................... 153 7.5 Summary ..................................... 160 8 Dative Subject Marking in Malayalam 163 8.1 Introduction .................................... 163 8.2 Structure of Dative Subject Constructions .................... 185 8.3 Acquisition of Dative Subjects .......................... 195 8.3.1 Dative Marking in the Data ........................ 199 8.4 Errors in the Production of Datives ........................ 208 8.5 Conclusion .................................... 214 9 Conclusions and Further Research 215 A Linguistic Profiles of the Subjects’ Parents 225 B Examples of Discarded Items from the Transcripts 227 C Inflectional Paradigms in the Transcripts 229 D Past Tense Forms in the Transcripts 231 E Dative Subject Predicates in the Transcripts 237 xii Contents F Dative­Assigning Modal Predicates in the Transcripts 239 References 241 Acknowledgements 251 List of Figures 1.1 Family tree of Dravidian languages. (Krishnamurti, 2003, p. 21) ........ 8 2.1 Major inflectional acquisition models. ...................... 24 2.2 Different approaches to the development of inflections. ............. 44 3.1 Sample picture of the ELAN file with data organised at different levels. .... 48 3.2 MLUs of subjects. ................................. 53 3.3 A’s vocabulary count. ............................... 55 3.4 H’s vocabulary count. ............................... 55 3.5 A’s inflectional production. ............................ 56 3.6 H’s inflectional production. ............................ 56 5.1 TAM inflections ­ Present ­un̪ n̪ u. ......................... 80 5.2 TAM inflections ­ Future ­um. .......................... 81 5.3 TAM inflections ­ Perfective ­iʈʈɨ. ......................... 84 5.4 TAM inflections ­ Imperfective ­uka + aaɳɨ. ................... 85 5.5 TAM inflections ­ Imperative ­oo. ........................ 86 5.6 TAM inflections ­ Imperative ­ee. ........................ 87 5.7 TAM inflections ­ Imperative ­aan. ........................ 88 5.8 Production of bare imperatives. .......................... 89 5.9 TAM inflections ­ Optative ­aʈʈe. ......................... 90 6.1 Malayalam verb stems. .............................. 111 6.2 TAM inflections ­ Past ­i. ............................. 113 6.3 TAM inflections ­ Past ­t̪ u. ...........................