LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 15:10 October 2015
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Acquisition of Participial Construction in
Typically Developing Children

Anu Johnson
Satish Kumaraswamy

Abstract

This work presents describes the acquisition of participial construction in typically developing children. Participle clauses are shortened dependent clauses that use a present or past participle. Participles are verbal adjectives. They have some features of verbs and some of adjectives. But they are most basically a type of adjective. As adjectives, participles can modify nouns or pronouns. This study focuses on pariticiple constructions in Malayalam, a a language of the Dravidian family of languages spoken in South India and in many countries around the world. In Malayalam, mainly we use two voices such as ‘karthariprayogam’(Active voice) and ‘karmaniprayogam’(passive voice). Sentence is said to be in active voice, when the subjects does something. Most of the sentences are active (Active subject + Verb + Object). For example, Cat eats fish. Passive voice is used when focus is on action. It is not important that who or what is performing. Eg: Fishes are eaten by cat. Other adjectival participles are perachamand vinayacham. Peracham use with subjects whereas vinayacham use with verbs.

Ten typically developing Malayalam speaking school going children in the age range of 12-14yrs with good academics as per with school records participated in the present study. A list of participle construction tasks in both Malayalam and English were selected on the basis of familiarity of use and from their textbooks. The children were asked to replace the relative clause by a participial construction. The prepared list of participial construction tasks (English and Malayalam) was presented to the children and their responses were recorded for detailed analysis. The result of the present study indicates better performance in English past participial construction compared to present participial construction and actives than passives. In Malayalam, there is a significant difference between active and passive participial constructions indicating that children mostly use active participles rather than passive participles.

While comparing both languages (Malayalam and English), a highly significant difference was noted in the acquisition of active and passive participial constructions. Children are more familiar with active participial construction than with passives. But there is no significant difference found in present and past participial constructions.

Key words: acquisition of participle clauses, Malayalam, English, comparison of acquisition of participle clauses, typically developing children.

Participle Clauses

Participle clauses are shortened dependent clauses that use a present or past participle. Participles are verbal adjectives. They have some features of verbs and some of adjectives. But they are most basically a type of adjective. As adjectives, participles can modify nouns or pronouns. In this way, we can include a lot of information in a sentence without making it too long or complicated. In the present participial construction (ing-form), we show that both actions are taking place the same time and with the passive participle and with past participle, we can shorten a passive clause. We use the perfect participle to indicate that the action in the participle clause took place before the action in the main clause. In English, the perfect participle can express actions in both the active and the passive voice. Other English participles are created periphrastically to imitate the richer array of classical participles, but they often seem formal or even awkward. https://scholar.google.co.in/scholar?hl=en&q=acquisition+of+participles+in+English&btnG=)

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Anu Johnson
Dr. M. V. Shetty College of Speech and Hearing
Malady Court
Kavoor
Mangalore – 575 015
Karnataka
India

Satish Kumaraswamy
Assistant Professor and Research Scholar
Dr. M. V. Shetty College of Speech and Hearing
Malady Court
Kavoor
Mangalore – 575 015
Karnataka
India
sat8378@yahoo.com

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