Categories within the verb category: learning the causative in Inuktitut

How children learn the category verb as a grammatical construct has been the focus of much research over the past two decades. However, less attention has been paid to acquisition of smaller categories within the verb category. This paper uses data concerning the acquisition of causatives in Inuktitut to address the question of how smaller categories of verbs are learned. Inuktitut has one class of verbs that permits only a morphological causative, and a second class that permits either a morphological or a lexical causative depending on the semantics of the situation. Data from eight Inuktitut-speaking children aged 1;0 through 3;6 indicate that the distinction between these classes is acquired in three stages. During the first stage, the children use only lexical causatives and there is no evidence that they understand that these structures have a causative meaning component. During the second stage, they use the morphological causative indiscriminately across verb categories to issue commands. In addition, they begin to show productivity in their use of lexical causatives in that they alternate between intransitive and lexical-causative uses of the same verb root. By stage three, children have begun to distinguish the two classes of verbs with respect to causative constructions. Across the three stages outlined above, children apparently learn to use linguistic indicators of causation first in a situation-based way (i.e. for issuing commands) and later verb-by-verb, rather than employing a class-based approach to category formation. These results are analyzed in terms of similar studies in English and Hebrew, and in terms of a general phasal approach to cognitive and linguistic development