languageR (version 1.5.0)

warlpiri: Ergative case marking in Warlpiri

Description

This data set documents the use of ergative case marking in the narratives of native speakers of Lajamanu Warlpiri (8 children, 13 adults) describing events in picture books.

Usage

data(warlpiri)

Format

A data frame with 347 observations on the following 9 variables.

Speaker

a factor with speakers as levels.

Sentence

a factor with sentence as levels.

AgeGroup

a factor with levels adult and child.

CaseMarking

a factor with levels ergative and other.

WordOrder

a factor with levels subInitial (subject initial) and subNotInitial (subject not initial).

AnimacyOfSubject

a factor with levels animate and inanimate.

OvertnessOfObject

a factor with levels notOvert and overt.

AnimacyOfObject

a factor with levels animate and inanimate.

Text

a factor with levels texta, textb and textc.

References

O'Shannessy, C. (2006) Language contact and child bilingual acquisition: Learning a mixed language and Warlpiri in northern Australia, PhD Thesis, University of Sydney, Australia.

Examples

if (FALSE) {
data(warlpiri)
require(lme4)
require(lmerTest)
require(optimx)
warlpiri.lmer = glmer(CaseMarking ~ WordOrder * AgeGroup + 
  AnimacyOfSubject + (1|Text) + (1|Speaker), 
  control=glmerControl(optimizer="optimx",optCtrl=list(method="nlminb")),
  family = "binomial", data = warlpiri)
summary(warlpiri.lmer)
}