Tetsuya Sano
Meiji Gakuin University
With Japanese experimental data, two competing accounts of the development of
English passives are reexamined: Borer and Wexler (1987)’s A-chain Maturation,
and Fox and Grodzinsky (1998)’s hypothesis that children cannot transmit
the external theta-role to the by-phrase in passives (i.e., Delay in
theta-transmission). For this purpose, Japanese full unaccusatives, (1a), and
full passives, (1b), are compared. These both involve the A-chain, but they
differ with respect to theta-transmission; full passives involve theta-transmission,
but full unaccusatives do not.
..........(1)
a. Buta-san ga ...zou-san
..ni ..tukamat-ta.
(full unaccusative)
....................pig
......NOM
elephant .by .caught(Unacc.)
.................. ’The pig was caught by
the elephant’
...............b.
Buta-san ga ...zou-san
.ni ..tukamae-rare-ta.
(full passive)
................... pig .......NOM
elephant by. was-caught(Passive)
....................’The pig was caught by
the elephant’
Our experimental data show that Japanese children acquire full unaccusatives significantly earlier than full passives. This observation suggests that the locus of children’s difficulty with full passives lies in theta-transmission via the passive affix, rather than in A-chain formation. Thus, Fox and Grodzinsky (1998)’s hypothesis is supported in this paper.
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