Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-2dmjx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T08:45:32.096Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Notion of Source in Language Acquisition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Eve V. Clark  and
Kathie L. Carpenter
Eve V. Clark*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Kathie L. Carpenter*
Affiliation:
University of Colorado
*
Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305
Department of Linguistics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

When children describe an event, they do not always make use of the conventional means for marking oblique arguments. In early attempts at passive constructions, for example, children often mark oblique agents with from instead of conventional by, as in He isn't going to get hurt from those bad guys. They also make use of from instead of because, as in From I put it under there. Such uses of from typically appear prior to by and because for agency and cause. We argue that these uses of from stem from children's conceptualization of agents and causes as types of source. If so, children should extend a similar analysis to other types of source as well. There is evidence that they do, both in longitudinal records of single children and in experiments on imitations and repairs.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 1 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 by Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Andersen, Elaine S. 1978. Lexical universals of body-part terminology. Universals of human language, vol. 3: Word structure, ed. by Greenberg, Joseph H., 335–68. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, John M. 1971. The grammar of case: Towards a localistic theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, John M. 1977. On case grammar: Prolegomena to a theory of grammatical relations. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Antinucci, Francesco, and Miller, Ruth. 1976. How children talk about what happened. Journal of Child Language 3. 167–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, David C. 1975. Spatial and temporal uses of English prepositions: An essay in stratificational semantics. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Bever, Thomas G. 1970. The cognitive basis for linguistic structures. Cognition and the development of language, ed. by Hayes, John R., 279–352. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Bower, Thomas G. R. 1982. Development in infancy. 2nd edn. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.Google Scholar
Bowerman, Melissa. 1974. Learning the structure of causative verbs: A study in the relationship of cognitive, semantic, and syntactic development. Papers & Reports on Child Language Development [Department of Linguistics, Stanford University] 8. 142–78.Google Scholar
Bowerman, Melissa. 1977. The acquisition of rules governing “possible lexical items”: Evidence from spontaneous speech errors. Papers & Reports on Child Language Development [Department of Linguistics, Stanford University] 13. 148–56.Google Scholar
Bowerman, Melissa. 1978. Systematizing semantic knowledge: Changes over time in the child's organization of word meaning. Child Development 49. 977–87.10.2307/1128737CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowerman, Melissa. 1982a. Starting to talk worse: Clues to language acquisition from children's late speech errors. U-shaped behavioral growth, ed. by Strauss, Sidney, 101–45. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bowerman, Melissa. 1982b. Reorganizational processes in lexical and syntactic development. Language acquisition: The state of the art, ed. by Wanner, Eric & Gleitman, Lila R., 319–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bowerman, Melissa. 1982c. Evaluating competing linguistic models with language acquisition data: Implications of developmental errors with causative verbs. Quaderni di Semantici 3. 5–66.Google Scholar
Bowerman, Melissa. 1983. Hidden meanings: The role of covert conceptual structures in children's development of language. Acquisition of symbolic skills, ed. by Rogers, Don R. & Sloboda, John A., 445–70. New York & London: Plenum Press.Google Scholar
Bowerman, Melissa. 1985. What shapes children's grammars? The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, vol. 2: Theoretical issues, ed. by Slobin, Dan I., 1257–319. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Braunwald, Susan R., and Brislin, Richard W. 1979. The diary method updated. Developmental pragmatics, ed. by Ochs, Elinor & Schieffelin, Bambi B., 21–42. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Brown, Roger. 1973. A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Budwig, Nancy A. 1986. Agentivity and control in early child language. University of California at Berkeley dissertation.Google Scholar
Clark, Eve V. 1971. On the acquisition of the meaning of before and after. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior 10. 266–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Eve V. 1972. On the child's acquisition of antonyms in two semantic fields. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior 11. 750–58.10.1016/S0022-5371(72)80009-4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Eve V. 1973. How children describe time and order. Studies of child language development, ed. by Ferguson, Charles A. & Slobin, Dan I., 585–606. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Clark, Eve V. 1974. Normal states and evaluative viewpoints. Lg. 50. 316–32.Google Scholar
Clark, Eve V. 1977. Universal categories: On the semantics of classifiers and children's early word meanings. Linguistic studies offered to Joseph H. Greenberg on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, Vol. 1, ed. by Juilland, Alphonse, 449–62. Saratoga, CA: Anma Libri.Google Scholar
Clark, Eve V. 1978a. Discovering what words can do. Papers from the parasession on the lexicon, ed. by Farkas, Donka, Jacobsen, Wesley M., & Todrys, Karol W., 34–57. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Clark, Eve V. 1978b. Locationals: Existential, locative, and possessive constructions. Universals of human language, vol. 4: Syntax, ed. by Greenberg, Joseph H., 85–126. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Eve V. 1987. The Principle of Contrast: A constraint on acquisition. Mechanisms of language acquisition, ed. by MacWhinney, Brian, 1–33. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Clark, Eve V. 1988. On the logic of Contrast. Journal of Child Language 15. 317–35.10.1017/S0305000900012393CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Eve V., and Carpenter, Kathie L. 1989. On children's uses of from, by, and with in oblique noun phrases. Journal of Child Language 16.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H. 1973. Space, time, semantics, and the child. Cognitive development and the acquisition of language, ed. by Moore, Timothy E., 27–63. New York: Academic Press.10.1016/B978-0-12-505850-6.50008-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Herbert H., and Clark, Eve V. 1968. Semantic distinctions and memory for complex sentences. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 20. 129–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, Herbert H., and Clark, Eve V. 1978. Universals, relativity, and language processing. Universals of human language, vol. 1: Method and theory, ed. by Greenberg, Joseph H., 225–77. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Croft, William A. 1986. Categories and relations in syntax: The clause-level organization of information. Stanford University dissertation.Google Scholar
Cruse, David A. 1973. Some thoughts on agentivity. Journal of Linguistics 9. 11–23.10.1017/S0022226700003509CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeLancey, Scott. 1981. An interpretation of split ergativity and related patterns. Lg. 57. 626–57.Google Scholar
DeLancey, Scott. 1984. Notes on agentivity and causation. Studies in Language 8. 181–213.10.1075/sl.8.2.05delCrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeLancey, Scott. 1985. Categories of non-volitional actor in Lhasa Tibetan. Proceedings of the conference on participant roles: South Asia and adjacent areas, ed. by Zide, Arlene R. K., Magier, David, & Schiller, Eric, 58–70. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Deutsch, Werner, and Budwig, Nancy. 1983. Form and function in the development of possessives. Papers & Reports on Child Language Development [Department of Linguistics, Stanford University] 22. 36–42.Google Scholar
de Villiers, Jill G. 1980. The process of rule learning in child speech: A new look. Children's language, Vol. 2, ed. by Nelson, Keith E., 1–44. New York: Gardner Press.Google Scholar
Donaldson, Morag L. 1986. Children's explanations: A psycholinguistic study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dromi, Esther. 1987. Early lexical development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles. 1985. Mental spaces: Aspects of meaning construction in natural language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ferreiro, Emilia. 1971. Les relations temporelles dans le langage de l'enfant. Paris: Librairie Droz.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J. 1971. Lectures on deixis. (University of California Summer Program in Linguistics.) Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Gathercole, Virginia C. M. 1979. Birdies like birdseed the bester than buns: A study of relational comparatives and their acquisition. University of Kansas dissertation.Google Scholar
Green, Alexander. 1914. The analytic agent in Germanic. Journal of English & German Philology 13. 514–52.Google Scholar
Gruber, Jeffrey S. 1976. Lexical structure in syntax and semantics. (North-Holland Linguistic Series 25.) Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
Hjelmslev, Louis. 1935–37. La catégorie des cas: Etude de grammaire générale. Acta Jutlandica 7. 1–184, 9. 1–78.Google Scholar
Hood, Lois H. 1977. A longitudinal study of the development of the expression of causal relations in complex sentences. Columbia University dissertation.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J., and Thompson, Sandra A. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Lg. 56. 251–99.Google Scholar
Horgan, Dianne M. 1978. The development of the full passive. Journal of Child Language 5. 65–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray S. 1972. Semantic interpretation in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray S. 1975. Morphological and semantic regularities in the lexicon. Lg. 51. 639–71.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray S. 1983. Semantics and cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Joly, André. 1967. Negation and the comparative particle in English. (Cahiers de psychomécanique du langage, No. 9.) Quebec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1977. Linguistic Gestalts. Papers from the thirteenth regional meeting, ed. by Beach, Woodford A., Fox, Samuel E., & Philosoph, Shulamith, 236–87. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Levin, Beth, and Rappaport, Malka. 1986. The formation of adjectival passives. Linguistic Inquiry 17. 623–61.Google Scholar
Lyons, John. 1967. A note on possessive, existential, and locative sentences. Foundations of Language 3. 390–96.Google Scholar
Lyons, John. 1968. Existence, location, possession and transitivity. Logic, methodology, and philosophy of science, vol. III, ed. by Rootselaar, Bob van & Staal, Frits, 495–509. Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, Brian, and Snow, Catherine E. 1985. The child language data exchange system (CHILDES). Journal of Child Language 12. 271–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maratsos, Michael P., and Abramovitch, Rona. 1975. How children understand full, truncated, and anomalous passives. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior 14. 145–57.10.1016/S0022-5371(75)80061-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marchand, Hans. 1973. Reversative, ablative, and privative verbs in English, French, and German. Issues in linguistics: Papers in honor of Henry and Renée Kahane, ed. by Kachru, Braj B., Lees, R. B., Malkiel, Y., Pietrangeli, A., & Saporta, S., 636–43. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Mikes, Melanie. 1967. Acquisition des catégories grammaticales dans le langage de l'enfant. Enfance 20. 289–98.10.3406/enfan.1967.2430CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, George A., and Johnson-Laird, Philip N. 1976. Language and perception. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English syntax, vol. 1: Concord, the parts of speech, and the sentence. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Mustanoja, Tauno F. 1960. A Middle English syntax. (Mémoires de la Société Néo-philologique de Helsinki 23.) Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey; and Svartvik, Jan. 1972. A grammar of contemporary English. New York: Seminar Press.Google Scholar
Rice, Sally. 1987. Towards a transitive prototype: Evidence from some atypical English passives. Proceedings of the thirteenth annual meeting, 422–34. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Rosch, Eleanor H. 1973. On the internal structure of perceptual and semantic categories. Cognitive development and the acquisition of language, ed. by Moore, Timothy E., 111–44. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Sachs, Jacqueline S. 1983. Talking about the there and then: The emergence of displaced reference in parent-child discourse. Children's language, Vol. 4, ed. by Nelson, Keith E., 1–28. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, I. M. 1979. Cognitive structures and semantic deep structures: The case of the instrumental. Journal of Linguistics 15. 307–24.10.1017/S0022226700016418CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinha, Anjani K. 1972. On the deictic use of coming and going in Hindi. Papers from the eighth regional meeting, ed. by Peranteau, Paul, Levi, Judith N., & Phares, Gloria C., 351–58. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Slobin, Dan I. 1973. Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar. Studies of child language development, ed. by Ferguson, Charles A. & Slobin, Dan I., 175–208. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Slobin, Dan I. 1979. The role of language in language acquisition. Invited address, Fiftieth Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Slobin, Dan I. 1981. The origins of grammatical encoding of events. The child's construction of language, ed. by Deutsch, Werner, 187–99. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Slobin, Dan I. 1985a. Introduction: Why study acquisition crosslinguistically? The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, vol. 1: The data, ed. by Slobin, Dan I., 3–24. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Slobin, Dan I. 1985b. Crosslinguistic evidence for the language-making capacity. The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, vol. 2: Theoretical issues, ed. by Slobin, Dan I., 1157–256. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Slobin, Dan I., and Bever, Thomas G. 1982. Children use canonical sentence schemas: A cross-linguistic study of word order and inflections. Cognition 12. 229–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stassen, Leon. 1985. Comparison and universal grammar. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Talmy, Leonard. 1983. How language structures space. Spatial orientation: Theory, research, and application, ed. by Pick, Herbert & Acredolo, Linda, 225–82. New York: Plenum Press.Google Scholar
Talmy, Leonard. 1985. Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. Language typology and syntactic description, vol. III: Grammatical categories and the lexicon, ed. by Shopen, Timothy, 57–149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 1978. On the expression of spatio-temporal relations in language. Universals of human language, vol. 3: Word structure, ed. by Greenberg, Joseph H., 369–400. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 1986. On the origins of “and” and “but” connectives in English. Studies in Language 10. 137–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ultan, Russell. 1978. Toward a typology of substantival possession. Universals of human language, vol. 4: Syntax, ed. by Greenberg, Joseph H., 11–49. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Urban, Wilbur M. 1939. Language and reality: The philosophy of language and the principles of symbolism. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Van Dam, Johannes. 1957. The causal clause and causal prepositions in early Old English prose. Groningen & Djakarta: Wolters.Google Scholar
Visser, Fredericus Theodorus. 1963–1973. An historical syntax of the English language, vol. 3. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Wasow, Thomas. 1977. Transformations and the lexicon. Formal syntax, ed. by Culicover, Peter, Wasow, Thomas, & Akmajian, Adrian, 338–53. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Whorf, Benjamin L. 1956. Language, thought, and reality (ed. by John B. Carroll). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Wojcik, Richard H. 1976. Where do instrumental NPs come from? Syntax and semantics, vol. 6: The grammar of causative constructions, ed. by Shi-batani, Masayoshi, 165–80. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar