Development of Nominal Inflection in First Language Acquisition: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective (Studies on Language Acquisition [SOLA], 30) - Hardcover

Book 16 of 68: Studies on Language Acquisition [SOLA]
 
9783110188400: Development of Nominal Inflection in First Language Acquisition: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective (Studies on Language Acquisition [SOLA], 30)

Synopsis

This book deals with the emergence of nominal morphology from a cross-linguistic perspective and is closely related to Development of Verb Inflection in First Language Acquisition (ed. by D. Bittner, W. U. Dressler, M. Kilani-Schoch) both methodologically and theoretically. Each of the fourteen contributions studies the early development of the fundamental inflectionally expressed categories of the noun (number, case, gender) in one of the languages belonging to different morphological types (isolating, fusional-inflecting, agglutinating, root inflecting) and families (Germanic, Romance, Slavic/Baltic, Greek, Finnic, Turc, Semitic, Indian American). The analyses are based on parallel longitudinal observations of children in their second and early third year of life as well as their input. The focus lies on the transition from a pre-morphological to a proto-morphological stage in which grammatical oppositions and so-called "mini-paradigms" begin to develop. The point at which children start to discover the morphological structure of their language and the speed with which they develop inflectional distinctions of lexical items has been found to be dependent on the morphological richness of the input language on the paradigmatic as well as the syntagmatic axis of linguistic structure. The findings are interpreted within non-nativist theoretical frameworks (Natural Morphology, Usage-based theories).

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About the Author

Ursula Stephany, University of Cologne, Germany; Maria Voeikova, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia.

From the Back Cover

This book is about the acquisition of the grammar of the noun in children's second and third years of life. The early development of fundamental linguistic distinctions in the universal category of the noun, namely singular vs. plural and nominative vs. accusative as well as other cases, is studied in monolingual children acquiring fourteen languages belonging to eight different language families found within and outside Europe: Germanic, Romance, Slavic/Baltic, Greek, Finnic, Turc, Semitic, and Indian American. One of the main findings of this cross-linguistic study is that children are highly sensitive to the morphological richness of their mother tongue already in the "proto-morphological" stage of development.

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Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9783111731315: Development of Nominal Inflection in First Language Acquisition: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective: 30 (Studies on Language Acquisition [SOLA])

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  3111731316 ISBN 13:  9783111731315
Publisher: Mouton de Gruyter, 2009
Softcover