One potential challenge for children learning Inuktitut comes from the ergative case marking system, because of the contrast between the ergative system in morphology and the accusative system governing syntax. However, no studies have yet been published focusing on how Inuktitut-speaking children acquire ergativity. In this chapter, we investigate this process using naturalistic spontaneous sp...

The frequency of linguistic phenomena is standardly measured relative to some structurally defined unit (e.g. per 1,000 words or per clause). Drawing on a case study on the acquisition of ergativity by children in Chintang, an endangered Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal, we propose that from a psycholinguistic point of view, it is sometimes necessary to measure frequencies relative to the length...

X.1 The introduction The Inuit language is often characterized as an ergative language (Bok-Bennema 1991; Manning 1996; Johns 1992, 2000, 2006, among others). Interestingly, the Inuit language exhibits a case assignment variability which, unlike traditional split ergativity, does not affect argument alignment, but instead concerns what – and how many – arguments trigger φ-feature agreement on f...