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Article published In: Language, Interaction and Acquisition
Vol. 15:2 (2024) ► pp.189–214

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Voluntary motion events in Uyghur child language

 | University of Cambridge
Published online: 20 March 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lia.23023.tus
Abstract
A key question in child language research is the relative impact of language-universal and language-specific factors during acquisition, and a prolific domain in addressing it has been the expression of motion events. This study examines motion event descriptions by 96 children and 24 adult speakers of Uyghur, an understudied Turkic language. The data were analysed for lexicalisation pattern, semantic density and syntactic packaging. Findings suggest that Uyghur children’s acquisition of motion expressions is shaped by both language-universal (e.g. difficulty with expressing events involving boundary crossing) and language-specific factors (e.g. early sensitivity to adult lexicalisation pattern, use of typologically congruent syntactic packaging strategies). Interestingly, while children reached adult levels for measures of lexicalisation pattern and syntactic packaging, they fell short in terms of semantic density. We propose that these measures may tap into different aspects of linguistic knowledge, which may be on different developmental timelines.
Résumé
Une question clé dans la recherche sur le langage chez l’enfant est l’impact relatif des facteurs universels et spécifiques à chaque langue durant l’acquisition, et un domaine prolifique pour aborder cette question est l’expression des motion events. Cette étude examine les descriptions des motion events par 96 enfants et 24 adultes locuteurs du ouïghour, une langue turcique peu étudiée. Les données ont été analysées selon le modèle de lexicalisation, la densité sémantique et le packaging syntaxique. Les résultats suggèrent que l’acquisition des expressions de motion events par les enfants ouïghours est influencée à la fois par des facteurs universels (par exemple, la difficulté d’exprimer des motion events impliquant un franchissement de frontière) et des facteurs spécifiques à la langue (par exemple, une sensibilité précoce au modèle de lexicalisation des adultes, l’utilisation de stratégies de packaging syntaxique typologiquement congruentes). Bien qu’ils aient atteint les niveaux adultes pour les mesures de lexicalisation et de packaging syntaxique, nous notons avec intérêt que les enfants sont restés en-deçà en termes de densité sémantique. Nous proposons que ces mesures pourraient faire appel à différents aspects de la connaissance linguistique, qui pourraient suivre des trajectoires de développement distinctes.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Motion event expression across languages
  • 3.Motion event expressions in child language
  • 4.Motion event expressions in Uyghur
  • 5.Exploring motion event expressions in Uyghur child language
  • 6.The study
    • 6.1Participants
    • 6.2Materials and procedure
    • 6.3Coding
    • 6.4Analysis
  • 7.Results
    • 7.1Information in the VERB locus
    • 7.2Information in the OTH locus
    • 7.3Semantic density
    • 7.4Syntactic packaging
    • 7.5Summary of results
  • 8.Discussion
  • 9.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations used in this paper are
  • References
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Tusun, Alimujiang
2025. Caused motion events in Uyghur child language. Journal of Child Language ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

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