East Asian Perspectives on the Acquisition of Argument Structure

Dear Colleagues,

Verbs are essential components of sentences in every language. To use a verb grammatically, language learners have to figure out how event participants are realized syntactically, i.e., verb argument structure. Verb argument structure represents an interface between the lexical semantic properties of verbs and the morphosyntactic properties of clauses (e.g., word order, verbal morphology, case marking), modulated by a rich representation of event structure (e.g. Bowerman and Brown, 2008). It occupies a central role in the study of both language structure and language development, particularly in debates about argument structure universals and the innate abstract linguistic knowledge that learners may bring to its acquisition (e.g. Bowerman and Brown, 2008; Gleitman, 1990; Pinker, 1989). Over the past five decades, typological research on argument structure has broadened its focus from lexical and clausal levels to discourse-pragmatic dimensions, with accumulating evidence supporting a cognitive and usage-based discourse functional approach to grammar (including argument structure) (e.g. Chafe, 1976; Du Bois, 1987, 2003; Givón, 1979). Children have been found to be sensitive to discourse-pragmatic factors and parental input in argument realization (e.g. Allen, 2008, 2009; Clancy, 1997, 2009; Garcia and Kidd, 2022; Kayama and Oshima-Takane, 2021; Narasimhan et al. 2005; Tomasello, 2005).

This Special Issue aims to present new crosslinguistic research on the acquisition of verb argument structure in East Asian languages, a linguistically diverse group used predominantly in eastern Asia. These languages span many language families such as Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, Austroasiatic, Hmong-Mien, and Kra-Dai. They exhibit distinctive typological features in verb argument structure, including extensive argument omission, relatively flexible word order, topic-comment structures, and verb compounds (e.g. Pereltsvaig, 2023). The impact of such typological features on acquisition remains underexplored.

We invite contributions on a wide range of topics related to the acquisition of argument structure from lexical, clausal, and discourse perspectives. Submissions are encouraged from diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, focusing on both typical and atypical child or second-language learner populations of East Asian languages and dialects, as well as comparative studies involving East Asian languages and other languages. Our goal is to explore the nature of the acquisition processes, uncover underlying learning mechanisms, and identify both universal and language-specific factors that shape language development.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–500 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editors (jchen@csufresno.edu) or to the Languages editorial office (languages@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring a proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

Abstract Submission Deadline: 1 March 2025
Notification of Abstract Acceptance: 1 April 2025
Full Manuscript Deadline: 30 June 2025

References:

Allen, S. E. (2008). Interacting pragmatic influences on children’s argument realization. In M. Bowerman & P. Brown (Eds), Crosslinguistic perspectives on argument structure: Implications for Learnability (pp. 191-210). Routledge.

Allen, S. E. (2009). Argument structure. In E. L. Bavin (Ed.), Cambridge handbook of child language (pp. 217–236). Cambridge University Press.

Bowerman, M., & Brown, P. (2008). Introduction. In M. Bowerman & P. Brown (Eds.), Crosslinguistic perspectives on argument structure: Implications for learnability (pp. 1–54). Taylor and Francis.

Chafe, W. (1976). Giveness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics and point of view. In C. N. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 27–55). Academic Press.

Clancy, P. M. (1997). Discourse motivations for referential choice in Korean acquisition. In H. Sohn & J. Haig (Eds.), Japanese/Korean linguistics, 6 (pp. 639–659). CSLI.

Clancy, P. M. (2009). The acquisition of argument structure and transitivity in Korean: A discourse-functional approach. In P. Li, C. Lee, G. B. Simpson, & Y. Kim (Eds.), Handbook of East Asian psycholinguistics: Vol. III: Korean psycholinguistics (pp. 34–49). Cambridge University Press.

Du Bois, J. W. (1987). The discourse basis of ergativity. Language, 63(4), 805-855.

Du Bois, J. W. (2003). Argument structure: Grammar in use. In J. W. Du Bois, L. E. Kumpf, & W. J. Ashby (Eds.), Preferred argument structure: Grammar as architecture for function (Vol. 14, pp. 1–60). John Benjamins Publishing.

Garcia, R., & Kidd, E. (2022). Acquiring verb-argument structure in Tagalog: A multivariate corpus analysis of caregiver and child speech. Linguistics, 60(6), 1855–1906. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2021-0107

Gleitman, L. (1990). The structural sources of verb meanings. Language Acquisition, 1(1), 3–55.

Kayama, Y., & Oshima-Takane, Y. (2021). The acquisition of argument structures of intransitive and transitive verbs in Japanese: The role of parental input. First Language. https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237211059970

Narasimhan, B., Budwig, N., & Murty, L. (2005). Argument realization in Hindi caregiver-child discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 37(4), 461–495. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2004.01.005

Pinker, S. (1989). Learnability and cognition: The acquisition of argument structure. MIT Press.

Pereltsvaig, A. (2023). Languages of the World: An introduction (4th ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tomasello, M. (2005). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Harvard university press.

Prof. Dr. Jidong Chen
Prof. Dr. Yasuhiro Shirai
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• argument structure
• east asian languages
• language acquisition
• crosslinguistic
• typology
• universals
• information structure
• transitivity
• event structure
• event representation
• learnability