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Udmurt as an OV language
(2016)
This is the first study to investigate Hubert Haider's (2000, 2010, 2013, 2014) proposed systematic differences between OV and VO language in a family other than Germanic. Its aim is to gather evidence on whether basic word order is predictive of further properties of a language. The languages under investigation are the Finno-Ugric languages Udmurt (as an OV language) and Finnish (as a VO language). Counter to Kayne (1994), Haider proposes that the structure of a sentence with a head-final VP is fundamentally different from that of a sentence with a head-initial VP, e.g., OV languages do not exhibit a VP-shell structure, and they do not employ a TP layer with a structural subject position. Haider's proposed structural differences are said to result in the following empirically testable differences:
(a) VP: the availability of VP-internal adverbial intervention and scrambling only in OV-VPs;
(b) subjects: the lack of certain subject-object asymmetries in OV languages, i.e., lack of the subject condition and lack of superiority effects;
(c) V-complexes: the availability of partial predicate fronting only in OV languages; different orderings between selecting and selected verbs; the intervention of non-verbal material between verbs only in VO languages;
(d) V-particles: differences in the distribution of resultative phrases and verb particles.
Udmurt and Finnish behave in line with Haider's predictions with regard to the status of the subject, with regard to the order of selecting and selected verbs, and with regard to the availability of partial predicate fronting. Moreover, Udmurt allows for adverbial intervention and scrambling, as predicted, whereas the status of these properties in Finnish could not be reliably determined due to obligatory V-to-T. There is also counterevidence to Haider's predictions: Udmurt allows for non-verbal material between verbs, and the distribution of resultative phrases and verb particles is essentially as free as the distribution of adverbial phrases in both Finno-Ugric languages. As such, Haider's theory is not falsified by the data from Udmurt and Finnish (except for his theory on verb particles), but it is also not fully supported by the data.
A comprehensive theory of child language acquisition requires an evidential base that is representative of the typological diversity present in the world's 7000 or so languages. However, languages are dying at an alarming rate, and the next 50 years represents the last chance we have to document acquisition in many of them. Here, we take stock of the last 45 years of research published in the four main child language acquisition journals: Journal of Child Language, First Language, Language Acquisition and Language Learning and Development. We coded each article for several variables, including (1) participant group (mono vs multilingual), (2) language(s), (3) topic(s) and (4) country of author affiliation, from each journal's inception until the end of 2020. We found that we have at least one article published on around 103 languages, representing approximately 1.5% of the world's languages. The distribution of articles was highly skewed towards English and other well-studied Indo-European languages, with the majority of non-Indo-European languages having just one paper. A majority of the papers focused on studies of monolingual children, although papers did not always explicitly report participant group status. The distribution of topics across language categories was more even. The number of articles published on non-Indo-European languages from countries outside of North America and Europe is increasing; however, this increase is driven by research conducted in relatively wealthy countries. Overall, the vast majority of the research was produced in the Global North. We conclude that, despite a proud history of crosslinguistic research, the goals of the discipline need to be recalibrated before we can lay claim to truly a representative account of child language acquisition.