Semantic Features of Patient and Verb in Development of Passive Structure in Persan Children's Language

Document Type : مقالات علمی پژوهشی

Author
A. Alizade
Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad,Mashhad, Iran
10.48311/LRR.15.2.1
Abstract
The increasing tendency to passive verbs in Persian indicates the importance of paying more attention to it in the study of language acquisition. Considering the age of 24 months and older, as a critical period for the development of syntactic structures in a child’s speech, the current study focused on Persian-speaking children to examine the quality of understanding different patterns of Persian passive and passive-making processes. The data gathered through library studies, field observations, and the quasi-experimental method in some cases, by observing almost 60 children (boys and girls) aged 24-36 months. Data suggest that Semantic features of the verb and the patient thematic role imply significant roles in understanding and producing passive verbs in the early stages of language acquisition. Taking it into account that Farsi has three different patterns for the passive verbs, analyzing the data reveals a hierarchy for different passive structures acquired by children , that is, a passive formed based on “Adjective+ become-” comes first.The passive structure “past participle+ become-” appears next and finally, “Noun+ become-”appears in the child speech. The hierarchy regarded both frequency and priority in a child’s speech. There is also evidence for the significant role of context on the frequency of passive verbs formed by Persian children.



1. Introduction

Passive verb, its structure, frequency, and prevalence, as well as the ways in which it is formed, have always been among the topics of interest in linguistic studies. Since the passive is a less frequent pattern and its semantic interpretation is also more difficult, it has received a lot of attention both in the field of language teaching and in the field of language acquisition. The studies that have been carried out on passive construction show that children produce this form later than their active counterparts. However, no comprehensive study has been carried out on the acquisition and comprehension of passive construction and the factors that influence this process in Persian. Conducting such research is particularly important due to the existence of different patterns for making passive in Persian compared to a language like English.

Research Questions

The main research questions can be formulated as follows:

At what age do passive verbs appear in the speech of Persian-speaking children? What is the priority of the emergence of each passive pattern in Persian-speaking children? And can the emergence and understanding of passive sentences at different ages be explained by the influence of factors such as the type of verb and the semantic features of its complement?



2. Literature Review

There are two main views on the time of the appearance of passive in English-speaking children's speech: the first view estimates the age of acquisition and understanding of the passive in English-speaking children at around age 3, and the second view is related to studies claiming that English-speaking children learn the passive later and express it in their speech from around age 5.

Tomasello et al. (1998) point out that the complete production of passive sentences in the speech of an English-speaking child appears at age 4, while Budwing (1990) claims that the passive is visible in the speech of a three-year-old child. On the other hand, studies such as Maratsos et al. (1985), instead of paying general attention to the learning time of the passive construction, focus on the effect of verb type on the understanding and use of passive sentences and claim that children understand the passive motion verbs earlier while understanding the sensory passive verbs occur later. Crain et al. (1978), on the other hand, emphasize the factor of exposure and context in children's learning age of the passive and believe that by increasing children's exposure to the passive verbs, they will be able to learn this construction at a younger age. Similarly, by conducting several studies on the learning time of the passive form in English-speaking children, Messenger et al. (2011) concluded that the ability to understand and learn the passive construction in children is influenced by the amount of motivation, repetition, and practice in constructing passive sentences regardless of the type of the verb used. Cychosz and Salazar (2016) deal with the emergence of each of two patterns of passive in Spanish-speaking children aged 3 to 6 years.



3. Methodology

Based on the stratified sampling method, 60 children (boys and girls) were selected from 5 different kindergartens in Birjand city regardless of their gender, family status, cultural and social class, etc. After extracting the names of children aged 24 to 36 months, they were divided into three age groups of four months interval: group A (24-28 months ), group B (28-32 months ) and group C ( 32-36 months). Each group consisted of about 20 children, and finally the results for each group were examined and analyzed separately. All the participants in this research were children who have passed the stage of single-word speech and could at least express two-word expressions and some of them were able to make complete sentences.

Based on Messenger et al. (2010), at the first phase, data were extracted using picture association method. Each participant narrated a story according to the selected and controlled images of a story book. At this stage, every participant was put in the position of producing an unknown sentence and his answer was recorded regardless of whether it was correct or incorrect.

In the second step, according to Messenger et al.(2011) and with the aim of investigating the occurrence of passive construction in children's speech, the participants and their teachers formed friendly groups of 10 to 15 people to give instructions by means of the toys they had at their disposal. The duration of this group activity was between 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the age group of the participants.



4. Results

The results suggest that most of the changes and the necessary preparations for the development of passive construction in the speech of Persian-speaking children take place between 24 and 36 months. To answer the first and second questions of the research, the analysis of the results shows that Persian-speaking children at the age of 24 to 28 months, that is, at the end of the two-word speech stage, have only a limited understanding of passive sentences in such a way that only 5% of the total participants in this age group have responded correctly to passive sentences with the reversible verb "to pull". In line with Burr (Bever, 1970), Slobin (1996), Turner and Rommetveit (1967), and Harris (Harris, 1976), the results of the present research, consider the "reversibility" of the verb and the semantic feature "+animate", of the patient of the active verb as effective factors in understanding the passive sentences for children aged 24 to 28 months. After this stage and when children enter the period of 28 to 32 months, the child's performance in producing passive sentences with three types of Farsi passive constructions improves. In response to the second question of the research, the results of the current study show the precedence of the appearance of the passives with the pattern "simple adjective/attributive + becoming" over the other two constructions. However, at the end of this age period, the Persian-speaking child can understand all three types of Persian passive constructions, including "simple adjective/attributive + becoming". Past participle + becoming" and "noun + becoming".In response to the third research question, in line with Messenger et al. (2011), Cychosz & Salazar (2016) and Abbot-Smith et al. Smith et al. (2017) on English-speaking and Spanish-speaking children, data show that children in the age group of 32 to 36 months can increase the number of passive sentences they produce in different contexts while understanding a variety of passive structures in the speech of their teachers or parents. Also, children in this age group are sensitive to the components of the passive verb and can both produce and comprehend the passive form of compound verbs.

Keywords

Subjects

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Language Related Research
Volume 15, Issue 2 - Serial Number 80
May and June 2024
Pages 1-32