First verbs : On the way to mini-paradigms

This 18th issue of ZAS-Papers in Linguistics consists of papers on the development of verb acquisition in 9 languages from the very early stages up to the onset of paradigm construction. Each of the 10 papers deals with first-Ianguage developmental processes in one or two children studied via longitudinal data. The languages involved are French, Spanish, Russian, Croatian, Lithuanien, Finnish, English and German. For German two different varieties are examined, one from Berlin and one from Vienna. All papers are based on presentations at the workshop 'Early verbs: On the way to mini-paradigms' held at the ZAS (Berlin) on the 30./31. of September 2000. This workshop brought to a close the first phase of cooperation between two projects on language acquisition which has started in October 1999: a) the project on "Syntaktische Konsequenzen des Morphologieerwerbs" at the ZAS (Berlin) headed by Juergen Weissenborn and Ewald Lang, and financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and b) the international "Crosslinguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition" coordinated by Wolfgang U. Dressler in behalf of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

Razvoj morfonotaktičkih i fonotaktičkih zatvorničkih skupina u usvajanju hrvatskoga kao materinskoga jezika

We study first language acquisition of Croatian morphonotactic vs. phonotactic word–initial consonant clusters. Morphonotactic clusters cross a morpheme boundary, such as /sl/ in s+ložiti ‘ to arrange’, whereas phonotactic clusters occur within a morpheme, as in slad+o+led ‘ice–cream’. With a new method we show that, similarly to equally morphology–rich Polish and Lithuanian, the three investigated Croatian children acquire morphonotactic clusters earlier than homophonous phonotactic clusters. We also study preferences of double and triple word–initial consonant clusters via the concept of Net Auditory Distance (NAD), never before used for Croatian, with partially unexpected results. When dealing for the first time in studies of (mor)phonotactic development with the rise of cluster complexity, we will show that morphonotactics creates new complexity. Since children do not learn directly the target language, as represented in grammars, dictionaries and electronic corpora of written or oral adult language, we compare the development of child speech (CS) systematically with the children’s language input, i.e. child–directed speech (CDS) of their caretakers. In this way, we can achieve a higher degree of ecological validity than with formal transversal tests. The three longitudinal corpora of spontaneous interaction between a child and a caretaker (Croatian Corpus of Child Language, Kovačević 2002) have been recorded, transcribed and coded according to the methodologies of the international project CHILDES and the Crosslinguistic Project on Pre– and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition headed by the second author. The results are compared with those of the acquisition of morphonotactic vs. phonotactic clusters by Polish children. Diverging results are due to structural differences between these two Slavic languages.Ovaj se rad bavi usvajanjem početnih morfonotaktičkih i fonotaktičkih zatvorničkih skupina u hrvatskome. Morfonotaktičke se zatvorničke skupine protežu preko granice morfema, npr. /sl/ u s+ložiti, dok se fonotaktičke zatvorničke skupine nalaze unutar morfema, npr. sladoled. Analiziran je Hrvatski korpus dječjeg jezika (Kovačević 2002), longitudinalni korpus koji je prikupljen prema smjernicama međunarodnog projekta CHILDES te međujezičnog projekta Pre– i Protomorfologija u jezičnom usvajanju pod vodstvom drugog autora. Dosadašnja su istraživanja u području usvajanja morfonotaktike pokazala prednost u usvajanju morfonotaktičkih zatvorničkih skupina u morfološki bogatim jezicima, poljskom i litavskom. Ovaj rad proširuje dosadašnji pristup usmjeravajući se na proces ovladavanja proizvodnjom suglasničke skupine, a ne samo na vrijeme pojavljivanja u dječjem jeziku. Analiza Hrvatskog korpusa dječjeg jezika pokazala je da se u hrvatskome, usporedivo s podatcima dobivenim iz drugih morfološki bogatih jezika, morfonotaktičke zatvorničke skupine usvajaju ranije nego istozvučne fonotaktičke zatvorničke skupine. Istražena je i obilježenost dvočlanih i tročlanih početnih zatvorničkih skupina promatrajući ih u svjetlu koncepta Net Auditory Distance (NAD) koji do sada za hrvatski nije korišten. Dosadašnje su spoznaje u području usvajanja morfonotaktike proširene i istraživanjem razvoja složenosti zatvorničkih skupina te se pokazalo da morfonotaktika vodi k većoj složenosti, no složenije zatvorničke skupine nisu nužno i više obilježene. Dječji je jezik uspoređen s ulaznim jezikom te je na taj način postignuta veća ekološka valjanost. Dobiveni su rezultati uspoređeni s dosadašnjim istraživanjima usvajanja morfonotaktičkih i fonotaktičkih zatvorničkih skupina u poljskome te su pronađene određene razlike u tijeku usvajanju koje su rezultat strukturalnih razlika između ovih dvaju slavenskih jezika

Filler + Infinitive and Pre- and Protomorphology Demarcation in a French Acquisition Corpus

This paper presents a case study on the acquisition of grammatical morphemes via fillers, i.e., underspecified place holders, with particular focus on early structures made up of a filler followed by an infinitive. The path leading from fillers to French semi-auxiliaries and subject clitics is analyzed within the framework of Natural Morphology and constructivism which assumes that grammatical modules are not innate but are constructed by children. The evolution of fillers in the corpus studied is described as a grammaticization process of form and meaning through successive linguistic dissociations. Emphasis is put on the functional polyvalence of fillers and on their relation to the main phases in the construction of gramma

On the Typology of Inflection Class Systems

Inflectional classes are a property of the ideal inflecting-fusional language type. Thus strongly inflecting languages have the most complex vertical and horizontal stratification of hierarchical tree structures. Weakly inflecting languages which also approach the ideal isolating type or languages which also approach the agglutinating type have much shallower structures. Such properties follow from principles of Natural Morphology and from the distinction of the descendent hierarchy of macroclasses, classes, subclasses, subsubclasses etc. and homogeneous microclasses. The main languages of illustration are Latin, Lithuanian, Russian, German, French, Finnish, Hungarian and Turkish