Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012 Nov;32(4):459-478.
doi: 10.1177/0142723711419328.

Early production of the passive in two Eastern Bantu languages

Katherine J Alcock  1 , Kenneth Rimba, Charles Rjc Newton
Affiliations

Early production of the passive in two Eastern Bantu languages

Katherine J Alcock et al. First Lang. 2012 Nov.

Abstract

The passive construction is acquired relatively late by children learning to speak many languages, with verbal passives not fully acquired until age 6 in English. In other languages it appears earlier, around age 3 or before. Use of passive construction in young children was examined in two Eastern Bantu languages spoken in Kenya (Kiswahili and Kigiriama), both with frequent use of passive. The passive was used productively very early (2;1) in these languages, regardless of the method used to measure productivity. In addition, non-actional passives, particularly rare in English and some other European languages, were seen at these early ages. The proportion of verbs that were passive varied between individuals, both in children's speech and in the input to children. Pragmatic and grammatical features of the passive in some languages have previously been suggested to drive early passive acquisition, but these features are not found consistently in the two languages studied here. Findings suggest that the relatively high frequency of input found in these languages is the most plausible reason for early productive use of the passive.

Keywords: Bantu languages; Kenya; Kigiriama; Kiswahili; child language; language acquisition; passive acquisition.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Scatter plot of passives in input and output.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Alcock KJ, Rimba K, Abubakar A, Holding PA. Development of Communicative Development Inventories for rural Africa; Paper Presented at the European Society for Developmental Psychology; Jena, Germany. 2007.
    1. Alcock KJ, Rimba K, Tellaie M, Newton CRJC. Learning the passive in natural(istic) settings; Paper Presented at the Boston University Conference on Language Development; Boston, MA. 2005.Nov,
    1. Allen SEM, Crago MB. Early passive acquisition in Inuktitut. Journal of Child Language. 1996;23(1):129–155. - PubMed
    1. Aschermann E, Gülzow I, Wendt D. Differences in the comprehension of passive voice in German- and English-speaking children. Swiss Journal of Psychology. 2004;63(4):235–245.
    1. Baker ND, Nelson KE. Recasting and related conversational techniques for triggering syntactic advances by young children. First Language. 1984;5(13):3–21.

LinkOut - more resources