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Child Acquisition Of Quechua Causatives And Change-Of-State Verbs, Ellen H. Courtney

Ellen H Courtney

This paper uses data concerning the acquisition of Quechua causatives to explore the development of morphological features that reflect variation in argument structure: (1) case-marking on the causees of morphological causatives and (2) transitivity permutations for change-of-state verbs. Quechua speakers assign to the causee varying degrees of volitional control through use of different case inflections. As to Quechua change-of-state verbs, those corresponding to verbs that participate in the causative alternation in other languages, such as English break and boil, pose a particular challenge. According to Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1994, 1995), these verbs tend to be basically transitive across languages, …