Development of Verb Inflection in First Language Acquisition
Title | Development of Verb Inflection in First Language Acquisition PDF eBook |
Author | Dagmar Bittner |
Publisher | Walter de Gruyter |
Pages | 472 |
Release | 2003 |
Genre | Foreign Language Study |
ISBN | 9783110178234 |
Language acquisition is a human endeavor par excellence. As children, all human beings learn to understand and speak at least one language: their mother tongue. It is a process that seems to take place without any obvious effort. Second language learning, particularly among adults, causes more difficulty. The purpose of this series is to compile a collection of high-quality monographs on language acquisition. The series serves the needs of everyone who wants to know more about the problem of language acquisition in general and/or about language acquisition in specific contexts.
Development of Nominal Inflection in First Language Acquisition
Title | Development of Nominal Inflection in First Language Acquisition PDF eBook |
Author | Ursula Stephany |
Publisher | Walter de Gruyter |
Pages | 461 |
Release | 2009-07-14 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 3110217112 |
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).
Development of Verb Inflection in First Language Acquisition
Title | Development of Verb Inflection in First Language Acquisition PDF eBook |
Author | Dagmar Bittner |
Publisher | Walter de Gruyter |
Pages | 465 |
Release | 2011-06-24 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 3110899833 |
The volume deals with the emergence of verb morphology in children during their second and early third year of life from a cross-linguistic perspective. It covers 15 contributions - each analyzing one single language - based on parallel longitudinal investigations of children with parallel methodology and macrostructure in representation. The main question addressed is: How do children detect morphology and construct first subsystems of verbal inflection? The focus lies on the transition from a premorphological phase to a protomorphological phase. The main proposal consists in the concept of miniparadigms and of their relation to morpho-syntactic developments in early first language acquisition.
Development of Modality in First Language Acquisition
Title | Development of Modality in First Language Acquisition PDF eBook |
Author | Ursula Stephany |
Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG |
Pages | 685 |
Release | 2021-03-08 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 1501504355 |
This book deals with the development of modality from a crosslinguistic perspective and is closely related to two earlier volumes on the development of verb and nominal inflection in first language acquisition (SOLA 21 and 30) both methodologically and theoretically. Each of the fourteen contributions studies the early development of the form and function of expressions of deontic and dynamic agent-oriented modality or epistemic and evidential propositional modality in one of fourteen languages belonging to different morphological types and language families (seven Indo-European and seven non-Indo-European). The analyses are mainly based on longitudinal observations of children in their 2nd and 3rd years of life in conversational interaction with their caregivers, mostly the mothers. Main issues addressed are the development of directives and modulations of information in terms of certainty and evidentiality, also taking into account children’s developing social-pragmatic and cognitive skills. One of the main findings is that agent-oriented and propositional modality may develop in parallel depending on the typological characteristics of the language acquired. The decisive factor is whether notions of propositional modality are grammaticized and obligatorily expressed in the language. The findings are interpreted within non-nativist theoretical frameworks (Usage-based theories, Natural Morphology).
Child Language Acquisition
Title | Child Language Acquisition PDF eBook |
Author | Ben Ambridge |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 465 |
Release | 2011-03-17 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 1139500511 |
Is children's language acquisition based on innate linguistic structures or built from cognitive and communicative skills? This book summarises the major theoretical debates in all of the core domains of child language acquisition research (phonology, word-learning, inflectional morphology, syntax and binding) and includes a complete introduction to the two major contrasting theoretical approaches: generativist and constructivist. For each debate, the predictions of the competing accounts are closely and even-handedly evaluated against the empirical data. The result is an evidence-based review of the central issues in language acquisition research that will constitute a valuable resource for students, teachers, course-builders and researchers alike.
Experience, Variation and Generalization
Title | Experience, Variation and Generalization PDF eBook |
Author | Inbal Arnon |
Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing |
Pages | 312 |
Release | 2011-07-20 |
Genre | Language Arts & Disciplines |
ISBN | 9027285047 |
Are all children exposed to the same linguistic input, and do they follow the same route in acquisition? The answer is no: The language that children hear differs even within a social class or cultural setting, as do the paths individual children take. The linguistic signal itself is also variable, both within and across speakers - the same sound is different across words; the same speech act can be realized with different constructions. The challenge here is to explain, given their diversity of experience, how children arrive at similar generalizations about their first language. This volume brings together studies of phonology, morphology, and syntax in development, to present a new perspective on how experience and variation shape children's linguistic generalizations. The papers deal with variation in forms, learning processes, and speaker features, and assess the impact of variation on the mechanisms and outcomes of language learning.
Development of Nominal Inflection in First Language Acquisition
Title | Development of Nominal Inflection in First Language Acquisition PDF eBook |
Author | Ursula Stephany |
Publisher | Walter de Gruyter |
Pages | 461 |
Release | 2009 |
Genre | Grammar, Comparative and general |
ISBN | 3110188406 |
The crosslinguistic studies of the early developmental stages of number, case, and gender in twelve typologically different languages with eight genetic affiliations follow a functional-constructivist approach. Some issues addressed are mean size of paradigms, percentage of base forms, and productivity. One of the main findings is that the typological characteristics of the language acquired influence the process of inflectional development.