Argument Marking and Verbal Agreement in the Speech of Georgian Children

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please see the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We would like to thank this reviewer, whose valuable comments helped us to improve our paper. Here are the detailed notes to the reviewers’ comments:

• Concerning “the introduction of the relevant background for adult Georgian grammar” – We added the information about Georgian grammar at the outset of the paper, as it was requested. We also added tables describing the frame of the Georgian verb, and we hope now the paper looks more reader-friendly. 
• We corrected the mechanical mistake in Table 2.
• Argument marking implies the verbal morphological marking of the arguments as verbal persons and at the same time it also implies the case marking of the argument in morpho-syntax. We included more explanations.
• We numbered and glossed all the examples in the text.
• We add the correct versions for each example as b-version.
• We added more explanations to the tables.
• We explained better the number of children: we have 2 children in each age group and in total we have 4 children.
• We made some justifications concerning the series and added more information about the series and also added the information concerning the using the forms of the series by children and some examples for the 3^rd
• We improved the punctuation and the English language problems in the paper.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper has to be thoroughly edited for exposition and the presentation in English. It is impossible to review the way it is. 

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewer. We improved our paper in order to be more reader-friendly, and to have the content succinctly described and contextualized with respect to previous and present theoretical background and empirical research on the topic. We also improved the language. Punctuation, spelling and style of the paper was improved with the help professional editing services at MDPI https://www.mdpi.com/authors/english.  

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

The paper deals with argument marking and this latter depends on verbal conjugation and nominal argument case system. We added some more information about it in the text.

We also changed the structure of the paper and added a new section (2) with background information concerning the argument marking features in Georgian. We also discuss the series in details. Now we hope that this gap is fully recovered, and the readers can understand the paper without any knowledge of Georgian. 

 

The pronominal system of Georgian is discussed about the third person only, as the first and second person pronouns do not change their forms and we added the information about it in the text.  

 

Table 1. changed the number and it is inserted in the text.

 

We indicate the correct form as “adult form” for version b.

 

We changed “mistake”, using “error”

 

We added statistics about the collected from the data giving more explanations to the charts.

 

We added the requested information about the errors across the series.

Are the agreement and case errors we observe pattern the same across all series? This should be discussed with the reasons why or why not.

---- Done.

Furthermore, what do we learn from the errors children make and do not make? Why are certain patterns are more problematic for the children but not others? How does the overall picture relate to the crosslinguistic literature on acquisition of argument marking? We really need to hear more than listing of the errors. The author should present a more thorough and an in-depth analysis of the data. They can even provide an appendix to list the identical error types observed for the same age groups.

---- Done

 

Line 481 – The last line of example is followed by first line of the following paragraph. This should be corrected. And this paragraph refers to “a sixth sentence”. It is not clear which sentence this is.

-Improved.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We followed the reviewer’s recommendation and rearranged the paper. In the last version all the background information concerning the argument marking features in Georgian is in section 2.

We also added the recommended references, using their explanations for out topic - argument marking features, especially concerning the screeves, a complicated domain of Georgian grammar.

…there is no discussion of the number of tokens per age group/per child or the way in which errors were coded.

• In order to avoid the impression of “cherrypicked errors without covering the overall picture”, we rely on the corpus data for representative statistics.

                 “it appears that Georgian children have the biggest problems with experiencer verbs and more generally, verbs whose subject is in the dative. If this is correct, this needs to be discussed”.

• We do not understand why the reviewer gets such an impression.

Actually, we had b version for the correct form. Now following the recommendation of the first reviewer, we named it as “adult form”.

The section of conclusion is now integrated with materials presented in the sections 1, 2 and 3.  

 

We replaced the term “peculiarities” with “properties or features” and the term “mistakes” with “errors”

Table 1 is attached, but it changed its number.

We would like to thank this reviewer for the detailed notes.

Lines 21-25 (starting with “Language acquisition is a complex process (Chomsky (1986)”): This paragraph is vacuous and does not contribute to the paper raising more questions than pointers; please remove.

• We shortened this paragraph.

Lines 41-42: what is a “cognitive model of speech development”? What other models are there?

• We specified the opinion.

Line 60: “A relatively complete picture of the problem…” What/which problem?

• Changed.

Line 76-78: “The acquisition of third-person markers is a longer process, because the subjective person marker in Georgian depends on the type of verb and the variety of a sequence.” What is the subjective person marker? Do you mean “subject marker”? What is the variety of a sequence? This is completely opaque.

• Changed.

Lines 94-95: “Despite such studies, the characteristics of language acquisition have not been completely studied”—you mean the acquisition of Georgian? Please clarify.

• Yes, we mean the acquisition of Georgian, and we added it.

Line 100: “Georgian verbs are synthetic or incorporated”—what does this mean?

• Changed.

Line 100-101: “and can expose the markers to subject and both objects—direct and indirect” What does this mean? I think you mean expoNe, not expoSe.

• Changed.

Line 107: Table 1 is missing

.- Table 1 is attached, with a changed number

 

Line 111: “Georgian verbs also have a difficult conjugation system.”—Difficult is a subjective notion; do you mean complex?

• Yes, and we changed.

Lines 111-113: screeve is not explained; Table 2 shows series, not screeves.

• This table (with changed number) has changed the explanation.

Lines 117-125: this should be the starting point of the description of Georgian verbs; once you show the verbal template you can talk about affixes, series, or screeves. Also, you need to talk 3 about different tenses and moods (aorist, present, optative, etc.); the verb exponents vary depending on those. The overall description of the verbal markers needs to be revised and expanded. Please keep in mind that the readers are not speakers of Georgian. The description of Georgian verb forms in Aronson (1990) and Cherchi (1997, 1999) could be a good starting point.

• Thank you.

Lines 125-126: this is not double marking for verbal arguments, this is just the marking on the verb qopna. Also, please discuss the use of this auxiliary in non-verbal predicates. The discussion of the verb xar, currently in section 2, should also be here.

• We agree with Shanidze (1980) concerning the double marking of the subject in the verbs with auxiliaries. We do think we need to discuss the auxiliaries in non-verbal predicates in this paper, as this issue is not related with argument marking.

Lines 136-138: “It must be mentioned, that argument marking implies the verbal morphological marking of the arguments as verbal persons and, at the same it implies the case marking of the argument nominal forms in morpho-syntax.”—This sentence is impossible to understand. Please clarify.

• Changed.

Line 138: Table 4 à Table 6

• The numbers for tables are totally changed.

Lines 148-151: When you say “layout in space”, do you mean deixis?

• Yes, we mean space deixis.

Lines 157-162: You talk about the structure of the paper at the end of Section 1, and the entire section 1 is behind the reader. Either move this paragraph to the beginning of section 1, or revise so that it would not mention section 1 at all.

• Changed.

Lines 164-168: you mention a particular model of acquisition, based on lexical islands, but it is not universally accepted. Describing the first stage (of which period?) the way it is presented is controversial.

• Changed.

Line 172: “This study is based on the samples of “ à this study is based on speech samples from

• Thank you. We changed it.

Lines 209-212: this was already presented in section 1, so this paragraph is redundant.

• Removed.

Lines 213-220: this is out of place; this should be merged with the material in Section 1.

• Done.

Lines 223-224: “The first-person subject until 36 months is exposed weekly, and in most cases, there is no marker at all.” This seems contradictory; on the one hand, you say that the subject marker is expoNed (not exposed) weekly, on the other hand, there are no markers.

• Clarified.

Lines 264-268: the discussion of xar should be in the descriptive section (section 1); it is out of place in section 2.

• Moved.

Lines 288-290: “but the third-person indirect object is always zero. It is noteworthy that Georgian has a tendency to lose these markers (e.g., the second subject markers)”—This is unclear. If the marker is always zero, what is lost? And why do you go from third person to second person subject markers?

• Clarified in Section 2.

Lines 308-311: you talk about object markers here, but it seems that the child is trying to use an experiencer verb, with first person experiencer, and that is causing errors. It will be important to compare these verbs with regular transitives (e.g., “she calls me”, or “you bring me”). If the errors are only found with “hurt” and similar verbs the problem lies in the incorrect mapping between thematic roles and grammatical functions, not in the acquisition of object markers as such.

• Clarified.

Line 326: what is a “plural sign”? Do you mean plural morphemes?

• Changed.

Lines 380-381: same comment as in section 1: do not talk about double marking, just discuss agreement on auxiliaries.

• We share Shanidze’s opinion concerning the auxiliaries.

Lines 429-433: this material should be part of section 1, where you outline the properties of Georgian grammar targeted in the current acquisition study.

• Moved.

Lines 487-488: “The ergative and dative are not formed yet when arguments are conveyed by the pronouns”—if I understand correctly, the children sometimes fail to use the ergative and the dative form of a demonstrative. How common is that? What forms are used incorrectly.

• We added more information about this issue.

Line 513: What variable is plotted on the Y-axis in Chart 3?

• This chart has been removed and instead of it we have a narrative for data analysis.

The recommended references are added.

 

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

According to editorial policy, we cannot dedicate more time to corrections, because we are given the limited time (10 days) to revise our paper, and we should keep the given deadline.

We improved the mistake in the numbering of sections, spaces, and typos concerning the word screeve.

MDPI professional editors edited our text, this last version will be also edited by MDPI editors.

We improved the images of the tables. The tables are original – they are not from the others’ works. The tables are made with 300 dpi resolution. For printing if/when requested we can send the editors word/PDF file version.

How the Georgian pattern complies with the observations in the crosslinguistic literature: this information is added in the section 5 conclusions (lines: 616-634; 648-663)

What do we learn from the errors children make and do not make? – This is added in the section 5 conclusions (lines: 605-615; 635-645)

Why certain patterns are more problematic for the children but not the others? – This is added in section 5 conclusions (lines:672-683)

The authors should provide a more thorough and an in-depth analysis of the data. They can even provide an appendix to list the identical error types, observed for the same age groups: We have added statistics for the analyzed data (table 11; table 12; table 13); We have compared errors made or not made by different children of the same age (examples: 1a and 2a; 15a and 13; 26 and 27); We showed how the errors were improved by the age (examples: 3a and 4; 32a and 33; 11 and 16a); We did an analysis of these errors (lines 322-323; 355-361; 377-383; 432-434; 448-454; 462-473; 503-505; 524-530; 578-586).

Minor point - Yes, we mean inflection. It was a typo, and it is improved.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is improved. There are still residual issues which are presented in the attached review line by line. My recommendation is that you take more time to go over the changes in the next version more carefully. 

An overall recommendation: the title of the paper and the corresponding title of one of the sections (currently misnumbered) have to be revised to reflect your data: verbal agreement and argument marking. 

Some minor points of the paper can be taken care of by technical editing by a native speaker of English; for example, the paper has quite a few sentences starting with "interestingly", which is odd in academic prose. Some such instances can be replaced with "it is worth noting" or can be simply removed. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Title: The paper is about argument marking and verbal agreement, and this is not reflected in the title, so please modify the title

-We changed the title.

Lines 21-23: this paragraph is vacuous and should be removed.

- Removed 

Line 97: the revisions requested in the earlier review have not been made. Section 1 is over, so saying at this point what section 1 does is strange. You can keep this text more or less as is if you remove all mention of section 1.

- We changed this paragraph. We think that while talking about the structure of the paper, it would be wrong to completely omit information about Section 1 and to start form the Section 2.

You currently have two sections numbered 2; fix that. All the subsequent sections have to be renumbered, and the outline starting in line 97 will have to be revised. 

-Done

Line 105: Background information ON… This section is about argument marking and verbal agreement, and this is not reflected in the title of the section (same comment as with respect to the paper title).

- Changed.

Lines 122-124: the subject and object marking on the verb should be mentioned earlier, before table 1 (which already has SUBJ and OBJ)

-Done.

Line 133: screever (also misspelled) is mentioned for the first time and not explained; this explanation is only given in line 140. Either explain what screeve is in L. 133 or make a reference to the explanation below.

- Added a reference

CHECK the paper throughout for the correct spelling of screeve.

-Done. 

Tables 5 and 6: if they are cited from someone else’s work please state that next to the title of the paper

- These tables are not cited from someone else’s work.

Lines 176-177: In addition to purely verbal features, argument marking implies the verbal morphological marking of nominal arguments with proper case-marking. –This sentence makes no sense; delete or revise. Case marking IS argument marking; the indexing of arguments on the verb is agreement or cliticization, not argument marking.

- Deleted.

Lines 183-185: Different patterns are shown by the third-person personal pronouns by changing the stems in flexion, while the first- (me) and second-person pronouns (shen) do not change the forms.—This is unclear. Do you mean to say that third person pronouns have two different stems, in the unmarked case and in marked cases, whereas 1 and 2 person pronouns use one stem? If yes, just say so.

- Nominative (for the 3^rd person pronouns) is marked in plural (isin-i), and we would avoid to say ‘unmarked case’.

Line 185: deixis is always spatial, remove the word spatial.

- Removed.

Line 189: Pronouns have declension, not conjugation.

- Of course. Thank you.

Lines 199-203: this paragraph has several very confusing statements and does not add to the paper; it should be removed.

- Removed.

Section 2 is much improved.

- Thank you.

Lines 261-262: subject and object markers in proper combination—what does that mean?

- Changed.

Lines 365-367: The errors are only found with ‘hurt’ and similar verbs. The problem lies in the incorrect mapping between thematic roles and grammatical functions, and this causes the errors in acquisition of object markers.—I appreciate that you took this from the previous review but 2 this is not enough, you need to expand the explanation and state explicitly what was mapped, how, and what is incorrect.

- Done. 

Line 377: First objects -> object

- Done

Lines 385-386: again, explain what the incorrect mapping is.

- Done

Line 427: Example 22b is the adult form, why is it incorrect?

- It is the adult form. It is a correct form.

Line 440: you say that these forms are understood correctly, but so far all the discussion has been about production. How did you measure the perception? If you did not, remove this claim.

-Done.

Line 476: The acquisition of subject markers becomes very dynamic.—what does that mean? Please explain. Also, the term dynamic in line 482 is unclear.

- Changed in Line 464. Now Line 466. In Line 484 we mean the dynamic of the process of acquisition at the age of 24-42 months and the chart shows the dynamics.

Line 477: Who are they?

- Changed. Clarified.

Figure 1: what is plotted on the Y-axis?

- Explained.

 Line 489: what is “inflexion verbs”? Do you mean inflected verbs or verbs that are supposed to be inflected?

  – Changed.

Lines 507-508: “Table 13 shows the numbers of verbs with correct and incorrect argument case markers”. This is confusing. It looks like you mean noun phrases, not verbs. Please clarify.

- Clarified. 

Line 535: EEG à ERG

-Changed. Thank you.

Line 549: You cannot make claims about the understanding of ergative, only about its production. These children were exposed to ergative forms in the caretakers’ speech all along, and we just don’t know how their comprehension is structured.

- Changed.

Lines 582-583: At this stage, children begin to understand this case alternation for the direct object argument. –Again, there is no way to claim what they UNDERSTAND. You can only make claims about production.

- Changed.

Lines 604-608: This paragraph includes some vacuous statements and some statements that are not supported by the data in the paper. It should be removed. As it stands, it hurts, not helps the paper.

- Removed.

Lines 643-648: this paragraph is not helpful, I suggest removing it.

- Deleted.