Clifton Pye

Biographic Data

ID141240
NAMEClifton Pye
GIVEN NAMESClifton
FAMILY NAMEPye
SIGNATUREPYE C
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Kansas
ORCID0000-0001-5973-6352
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS34
TOTAL CITATIONS35
AUTHOR COUNT34
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1979
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX3

  • Balinese Spatial System

    Open AccessI Nyoman Aryawibawa, Clifton Pye et al.ARTICLEJurnal Kajian Bali (Journal of…2026

    The present paper was designed to point out if the practice of Balinese spatial system by its speakers is linguistic or cultural in nature. Several scholars indicated, though not dominantly, that the use of a relative system in Balinese spatial system was observed to be used by their research participants. Other scholars in their studies, employing linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks in the production tasks, nevertheless, found out that an absolut…

  • A Typological Approach to Child Language Research – The Case of Whole-Word Phonology

    Open AccessClifton Pye, Donald N Stengel et al.ARTICLEJournal of Child Language2025

    We present the typological approach to child language research. The typological approach places language diversity at the centre of acquisition research, thereby limiting arbitrary adjustments to theory and practice. We apply the typological approach to Ingram’s (2002) measures of whole-word phonological complexity (PMLU) and proximity (PWP). Our generalised PMLUg measure takes into account crosslinguistic variation in word status, including comp…

  • A prosodic account of complex predicate acquisition in Mam

    Open AccessClifton PyeARTICLEFirst Language2024

    The Mayan language Mam uses complex predicates to express events. Complex predicates map multiple semantic elements onto a single word, and consequently have a blend of lexical and phrasal features. The chameleon-like nature of complex predicates provides a window on children’s ability to express phrasal combinations at the one-word stage of language development. The ubiquity of complex predicates in the adult language insures that children will …

  • Exploring language diversity

    Open AccessClifton PyeARTICLEFirst Language2022

    The commentary amplifies Kidd and Garcia’s call for increased attention to language diversity in research on language acquisition by noting several implications of language diversity for acquisition theory and practice. An examination of the languages discussed in six recent articles on acquisition theory echos Kidd and Garcia’s observations on the inordinate role that better-studied languages play in acquisition research. Documenting the acquisi…

  • La reconstrucción de la adquisición fonológica del proto-maya

    Open AccessBarbara Pfeiler, Clifton Pye et al.ARTICLEPenínsula2021

    Este estudio muestra la reconstrucción de la adquisición de la lengua proto-maya a través del uso del método comparativo. Los lingüistas han usado el método comparativo por más de cien años a fin de reconstruir la historia de lenguas y familias lingüísticas en todo el mundo. El análisis del lenguaje infantil de seis lenguas mayas compara los inventarios fonológicos en cada lengua y produce una fonología compuesta que identifica un núcleo fonológi…

  • Documenting the acquisition of indigenous languages

    Open AccessClifton PyeARTICLEJournal of Child Language2021

    The outstanding property of human language is its diversity, and yet acquisition data is only available for three percent of the world's 6000+ spoken languages. Due to the rapid pace of language loss, it may not be possible to document how children acquire half of the world's indigenous languages in as little as two decades. This loss permanently diminishes the scope of acquisition theory by removing its empirical base. In the face of pervasive l…

  • The acquisition of noun inflection in Northern Pame (Xi'iuy)

    Open AccessClifton Pye, Scott Berthiaume et al.ARTICLEJournal of Child Language2021

    The study used naturalistic data on the production of nominal prefixes in the Otopamean language Northern Pame (autonym: Xi'iuy) to test Whole Word (constructivist) and Minimal Word (prosodic) theories for the acquisition of inflection. Whole Word theories assume that children store words in their entirety; Minimal Word theories assume that children produce words as binary feet. Northern Pame uses obligatory portmanteaux prefixes to inflect nouns…

  • The crosslinguistic acquisition of sentence structure

    Open AccessBen Ambridge, Ramya Maitreyee et al.ARTICLECognition2020

    This preregistered study tested three theoretical proposals for how children form productive yet restricted linguistic generalizations, avoiding errors such as *The clown laughed the man, across three age groups (5-6 years, 9-10 years, adults) and five languages (English, Japanese, Hindi, Hebrew and K'iche'). Participants rated, on a five-point scale, correct and ungrammatical sentences describing events of causation (e.g., *Someone laughed the m…

  • Northern Pame-Spanish language acquisition in the context of incipient language loss

    Open AccessClifton Pye, Scott Berthiaume et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal of…2020

    Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: Northern Pame (autonym: Xi’iuy) is an Otopamean language situated in the Mexican state of San Luís Potosí. Today over 90% of the Pame population speaks Spanish, and two-year-old children only speak Northern Pame in two Northern Pame villages. The paper explores differences in two-year-old Pame children’s production of words in Northern Pame and Spanish in order to assess the possibility that develop…

  • The Acquisition of Directionals in Two Mayan Languages

    Open AccessClifton Pye, Barbara PfeilerARTICLEFrontiers in Psychology2019References: 3

    We use the comparative method of language acquisition research in this article to investigate children's expression of directional clitics in two Eastern Mayan languages - K'iche' and Mam (Pye and Pfeiler, 2014; Pye, 2017). The comparative method in historical linguistics reconstructs the grammatical antecedents of modern languages and traces the evolution of each linguistic feature (Paul, 1889; Campbell, 1998). This history informs research on l…

  • Balinese spatial reference frames

    Open AccessI Nyoman Aryawibawa, Ida Bagus Putra Yadnya et al.ARTICLELingua2018References: 9

  • Mayan Language Acquisition

    Clifton Pye, Barbara Pfeiler et al.CHAPTERMayan Languages2017

    Research on the acquisition of the Mayan languages has a 45-year history, beginning in the late sixties with Brian Stross’s (1969) study of Tseltal child language and continuing into the seventies with Stephen H. Straight’s (1976) study of Yucatec children’s phonology and Pye’s (1979) study of K’iche’ children’s inflectional morphology. In the nineties, Penelope Brown, Lourdes de León, and Barbara Pfeiler began longitudinal studies documenting th…

  • Analysis of variation in Mayan child phonologies

    Open AccessClifton Pye, Pedro Reales Mateo et al.ARTICLELingua2017References: 3

  • La adquisición de la negación en tres idiomas mayas

    Open AccessClifton Pye, Barbara Pfeiler et al.ARTICLEEstudios de Cultura Maya2016Cited by: 1

    Presentamos los datos de las formas tempranas de negación en tres lenguas mayas (k’iche’, yucateco y q’anjob’al). Estas lenguas marcan diferentes contrastes entre los contextos de negación discursiva, oracional y existencial. La negación en estas lenguas también interactúa con el aspecto y la modalidad. Los niños que adquieren la lengua k’iche’ usan una forma interna de la negación a nivel oracional mientras que los niños que adquieren el yucatec…

  • The Comparative Method of language acquisition research

    Open AccessClifton Pye, Barbara PfeilerARTICLEJournal of Child Language2014

    This article demonstrates how the Comparative Method can be applied to cross-linguistic research on language acquisition. The Comparative Method provides a systematic procedure for organizing and interpreting acquisition data from different languages. The Comparative Method controls for cross-linguistic differences at all levels of the grammar and is especially useful in drawing attention to variation in contexts of use across languages. This art…

  • A Tale of Two Mam Children

    Clifton Pye, Clifton L PyeARTICLEInternational Journal of American…2013References: 6

    This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://www.jstor.org/stable/info/10.1086/671775

  • The poverty of the Mayan stimulus

    Open AccessClifton PyeARTICLEJournal of Child Language2012

    Poverty of the stimulus (POS) arguments have instigated considerable debate in the recent linguistics literature. This article uses the comparative method to challenge the logic of POS arguments. Rather than question the premises of POS arguments, the article demonstrates how POS arguments for individual languages lead to a reductio ad absurdum as POS arguments from genetically related languages are compared. Comparison leads to different contrad…

  • The genetic matrix of Mayan applicative acquisition

    Open AccessClifton PyeARTICLELinguistics2007Cited by: 1References: 7

    This article uses data on Mayan applicative constructions to demonstrate the use of a comparative method for language acquisition research. Mayan languages express indirect objects through an applicative suffix on verbs, a prepositional phrase, or the possessor of the direct object. Mayan children must also acquire language specific lexical constraints on the applicative suffix. Learners cannot resolve the setting for these parameters through pos…

  • Knorosov

    Open AccessClifton PyeARTICLEVisual Anthropology Review2002References: 1

    Knorosov: The Decipherment of the Mayan Script. Directed by Tiahoga Ruge and Eduardo Herrera. 2000. 57 minutes, color. Distributed by First Run/Icarus Films, 32 Court Street, 21st floor, Brooklyn, NY. http://www.frif.com

  • The CHILDES Project

    Clifton Pye, Brian MacwhinneyARTICLELanguage1994

  • Language loss among the Chilcotin

    Clifton PyeARTICLEInternational Journal of the…1992Cited by: 7

  • The acquisition of ergative languages

    Open AccessClifton PyeARTICLELinguistics1990Cited by: 10References: 11

    Ergative languages have challenged the ingenuity of linguists for more than a century.This article explores learnability problems associated with the acquisition of ergative languages.Traditionally, an ergative language is one which treats the subjects of intransitive verbs in the same way as the objects of transitive verbs.Languages may have rules which operate on a morphologically or syntactically ergative basis, but all languages are syntactic…

  • Refining transcriptions

    Open AccessClifton Pye, Kim A Wilcox et al.ARTICLEJournal of Child Language1988

    This work describes the importance of the transcription process in studies of speech and language acquisition. Using data collected from a hearing child of deaf parents, the three authors derived independent transcriptions of the same speech sample and systematically compared their transcripts with each other and with the best estimate of the speaker's actual productions. The resultant transcripts were used to produce two descriptions of this chi…

  • Towards an anthropology of language acquisition

    Open AccessClifton PyeARTICLELanguage Sciences1988Cited by: 1References: 24

  • Quiché Mayan speech to children

    Open AccessClifton PyeARTICLEJournal of Child Language1986

    Details of the linguistic modifications in speech to children are provided for the Mayan language Quiché. Quiché input is evaluated with respect to 17 features listed in Ferguson (1978). Eight additional features are noted for Quiché speech to children: whispering, initial-syllable deletion, BT forms for verbs, a verbal suffix that appears exclusively in speech to children, a relatively fixed word order with relatively fewer overt noun phrases, m…