Der Erwerb der Nominalmorphologie bei zwei Wiener Kindern:

Anhand der longitudinalen Spontansprachkorpora zweier Wiener Kinder (des Buben Jan im Alter von 1;3 bis 6;0 und des Mädchens Katharina im Alter von 1;6 bis 3;0) und ihrer Mütter untersucht diese Arbeit den Erwerb der wichtigsten Kategorien der deutschen Nominalmorphologie (Genus, Numerus, Kasus, Diminutivbildung, Komposition, Präfigierung, Suffigierung, Konversion und implizite Ableitung) im Rahmen der Natürlichkeitstheorie. Die Ergebnisse zeigen generelle Präferenzen für möglichst natürliche Kategorien und bestätigen weitgehend die Voraussagen der Natürlichen Morphologie. Interindividuelle Unterschiede zwischen den Kindern bestehen darin, dass Jan, der früh zu sprechen beginnt und eine segmentale Erwerbsstrategie verfolgt, zunächst Plural- und Kasusmarkierungen am Substantiv bevorzugt, während Katharina später zu sprechen anfängt und als prosodisch orientiertes Kind zuerst Artikel als Genus-, Numerus- und Kasusmarker verwendet. Da das Genus eine sehr opake Kategorie mit vielen Synkretismen ist, beginnen beide Kinder mit einem chaotischen Genussystem. Während Katharinas Aufnahmen enden, bevor Genus als weitgehend erworben gelten kann, beherrscht Jan ab dem Alter von 2;6 das Natürliche Geschlechtsprinzip, und fast alle seiner verbleibenden Genusfehler können durch semantische oder phonologische Übergeneralisierungen erklärt werden. Innerhalb der Kategorie des Numerus zeigt sich ein gewisser Einfluss der lokalen Varietät auf die kindlichen Pluralübergeneralisierungen: Aufgrund mehrerer dialektaler Phänomene scheint der Nullplural im Wiener Deutsch einen großen Wirkungsbereich zu haben und wird daher von Kindern oft übergeneralisiert. Man findet keine Evidenz für einen -s-Defaultplural, denn -n- und -e-Übergeneralisierungen sind ebenfalls häufig und weisen auf verschiedene Subregularitäten im deutschen Pluralsystem hin. Doch der Nullplural kann zumindest als Notplural angesehen werden, der von Wiener Kindern und Erwachsenen dann verwendet wird, wenn ihnen der Zugriff auf eine existierende Pluralform nicht möglich ist. Die Kasusmarkierungen im Wiener Deutsch haben auch einige Besonderheiten, die den Kindern den Erwerb erschweren: So werden z. B. Akkusative und Dative auch in der Erwachsenensprache nicht immer klar unterschieden. Innerhalb der Diminutive sind besonders -i-Hypokoristika von Eigennamen relativ häufig. Erste pragmatische Kontraste von Diminutiven und ihren Simplizia treten schon mit 1;9 (bei Jan) und 2;0 (bei Katharina) auf. Als natürlichste Wortbildungskategorie des Deutschen werden Komposita von beiden Kindern bereits früh produktiv gebraucht. Besonders Jan, der die Komposition ab 1;8 anhand von verschiedenen Autobezeichnungen entdeckt, verwendet schon früh viele Neologismen und Ad-hoc-Komposita. Katharinas erste Komposita sind Formen mit Possessivbedeutung (z. B. Opa+auto mit 2;1). Während Substantivpräfigierungen im Deutschen sehr selten sind und bis zum Alter von 6 Jahren nicht produktiv verwendet werden, treten Suffigierungen deutlich früher auf: Besonders das -er-Suffix von Nomina agentis und instrumenti wird ab 1;9 produktiv und taucht auch in einigen Neologismen auf. Seltene Suffixe und Fremdsuffixe bleiben dennoch rote-learned. Morphologische und syntaktische Konversionen sowie implizite Ableitungen werden getrennt, aber innerhalb desselben Kapitels untersucht. Während implizite Ableitungen unproduktiv und immer rote-learned sind, findet man einige seltene Übergeneralisierungen von morphologischen Konversionen, und auch syntaktische Infinitiv- und Adjektivkonversionen werden ab 2;0 produktiv. Ein statistischer Vergleich aller Kategorien ergibt bei mehr als der Hälfte der Kategorien signifikante Zusammenhänge und zeigt, dass Kinder sich stark an den Verteilungen in ihrem mütterlichen Input orientieren, was für einen Spracherwerbsansatz spricht, der „usage-based“ und zugleich mit dem Modell der Prä- und Protomorphologie kompatibel ist.On the basis of large longitudinal spontaneous speech corpora of two Viennese children (the boy Jan, aged 1;3 to 6;0, and the girl Katharina, aged 1;6 to 3;0) and their mothers, this study investigates the acquisition of the most important categories of German noun morphology (gender, number, case, diminutive formation, compounding, prefixation, suffixation, conversion, and implicit derivation) within the framework of Naturalness Theory. Results show general preferences for more natural categories and largely confirm the predictions of Natural Morphology. The following inter-individual differences appear: The early talker Jan, who adopts a segmental acquisition strategy, first prefers plural and case markings on nouns, whereas the late talker Katharina, who has a more prosodic approach, first uses determiners as gender, number and case markers. As gender is an opaque category with many syncretisms, both children start with a chaotic gender system. Whereas Katharina’s recordings end up before gender can said to be acquired, Jan masters the Natural Gender Rule from 2;6 onwards, and almost all of his remaining gender errors can be explained by semantic or phonological overgeneralizations. Within the category of number, the local variety seems to have an impact on the children’s plural overgeneralizations: Due to several dialectal phenomena, the zero plural has a wide scope in Viennese German and is therefore often overgeneralized by children. There is no evidence for a regular default -s plural because -n and -e overgeneralizations also occur frequently and point to several subregularities within the German plural system. But the zero plural can at least be regarded as an emergency plural used by Viennese children and adults when they are not able to retrieve a certain existing plural form. Case marking in Viennese German has also some special characteristics which make it difficult to acquire (e.g. accusatives and datives are not always clearly differentiated even in adult language). Among diminutives, mainly -i hypocoristics of proper names are relatively frequent in both corpora, and first pragmatic contrasts of diminutives and their corresponding simplex nouns emerge as early as 1;9 (in Jan) and 2;0 (in Katharina). As the most natural category of German word formation, compounds are used productively by both children very early. Especially Jan, who discovers compounding about different car names from 1;8 onwards, soon produces many neologisms and ad-hoc compounds. Katharina’s first compounds are forms with possessive meaning (e.g. Opa+auto ‘granddad car’ at 2;1). While noun prefixation is extremely rare in German and is not used productively up to age 6, suffixation is acquired much earlier: In particular, the -er suffix of instrument and agent nouns becomes productive from 1;9 onwards and also appears in neologisms. Rare and foreign suffixes nevertheless remain rote-learned. Morphological and syntactic conversion and implicit derivation are investigated separately, but within the same chapter. While implicit derivations are unproductive and always rote-learned, morphological conversions show some rare overgeneralizations, and syntactic infinitive and adjective conversions also become productive from 2;0 onwards. A statistical comparison of all categories yields significant correlations between more than half of the categories and shows that children are highly sensitive to the distributions in their mothers’ inputs, which favors a usage-based acquisition approach also compatible with the model of Pre- and Protomorphology in language acquisition

Helping a crocodile to learn German plurals: Children’s online judgment of actual, potential and illegal plural forms

A substantial tradition of linguistic inquiry has framed the knowledge of native speakers in terms of their ability to determine the grammatical acceptability of language forms that they encounter for the first time. In the domain of morphology, the productivity framework of Dressler (CLASNET Working papers 7, 1997) has emphasized the importance of this ability in terms of the graded potentiality of non-existing multimorphemic forms. The goal of this study was to investigate what role the notion of potentiality plays in online lexical well-formedness judgment among children who are native speakers of Austrian German. A total of 114 children between the ages of six and ten and a total of 40 adults between the ages of 18 and 30 (as a comparison group) participated in an online well-formedness judgment task which focused on pluralized German nouns. Concrete, picturable, high frequency German nouns were presented in three pluralized forms: (a) actual existing plural form, (b) morphologically illegal plural form, (c) potential (but not existing) plural form. Participants were shown pictures of the nouns (as a set of three identical items) and simultaneously heard one of three pluralized forms for each noun. Response latency and judgment type served as dependent variables. Results indicate that both children and adults are sensitive to the distinction between illegal and potential forms (neither of which they would have encountered). For all participants, plural frequency (rather than frequency of the singular form) affected responses for both existing and non-existing words. Other factors increasing acceptability were the presence of supplementary umlaut in addition to suffixation and homophony with existing words or word forms

Communication with diminutives to young children vs. pets in German, Italian, Lithuanian, Russian, and English

This contribution is dedicated to Steven Gillis with whom we have collaborated since the nineties within the “Crosslinguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition” on both child speech (CS) and child-directed speech (CDS) and also about the development of diminutives (DIMs). We investigate parallels in the use of DIMs and of hypocoristics (HYPs) between CDS and pet-directed speech (PDS), whereas CS is only marginally dealt with. When relevant, also adult-directed speech (ADS), written or oral (especially from electronic corpora, wherever available) will be compared. The presuppositions of this investigation will be stated at the beginning of the Introduction (§ 1). This involves several innovations (beyond descriptions of new data), when compared with existing literature, relevant to theoretical and typological problem areas. We will show that also in DIMs and HYPs used in CDS and PDS semantics only plays a partial or even marginal role when using more DIMs to communicate with young children and young and/or small pets, because it is more relevant that both younger and smaller pets are emotionally closer to us, which is again a pragmatic factor. In regard to language typology, we will apply our concepts of morphological richness and productivity, as argued for and supported in our previous publications, to CDS and PDS and show that richer and more productive patterns of DIM formation of a language also have a typological impact on more frequent and more productive use both in CDS and PDS. We will also apply our concepts of grading morphosemantic transparency/opacity, as argued for and supported in our previous publications, and we start to show, as al- ready shown for CS, that also in CDS towards young children (and similarly in PDS) more morphosemantically transparent DIMs are used than in ADS. This is also connected to their predominantly pragmatic meanings in CDS and PDS (obviously not exclusively pragmatic as in early CS). The languages and authors were selected according to who among the participants in the Crosslinguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition had CDS and PDS available, plus Elisa Mattiello who has collected English and Italian PDS data.Dit artikel gaat over het gebruik van verkleinwoorden en koosnamen (hypocoristics) in twee taalregisters: taal gericht tot kinderen (child-directed speech, CDS) en taal gericht tot huisdieren (pet-directed speech, PDS). De semantiek van verkleinwoorden blijkt een minder grote rol te spelen dan de pragmatiek: de emotionele nabijheid van kinderen en huisdieren. De studie, waarin vijf talen worden vergeleken, verkent ook de typolo- gie: de morfologische rijkdom van verkleinwoorden in een taal beïnvloedt de produc- tie.Daarnaast speelt de semantische transparantie van verkleinwoorden crosslinguïs- tisch een rol. In CDS en PDS worden meer transparante verkleinwoorden gebruikt

The role of explicit contrast in adjective acquisition: a cross-linguistic longitudinal study of adjective production in spontaneous child speech and parental input

Experimental studies demonstrate that contrast helps toddlers to extend the meanings of novel adjectives. This study explores whether antonym co-occurrence in spontaneous speech also has an effect on adjective use by the child. The authors studied adjective production in longitudinal speech samples from 16 children (16–36 months) acquiring eight different languages. Adjectives in child speech and child-directed speech were coded as either unrelated or related to a contrastive term in the preceding context. Results show large differences between children in the growth of adjective production. These differences are strongly related to contrast use. High contrast users not only increase adjective use earlier, but also reach a stable level of adjective production in the investigated period. Average or low contrast users increase their adjective production more slowly and do not reach a plateau in the period covered by this study. Initially there is a strong relation between contrast use in child speech and child-directed speech, but this relation diminishes with age. </jats:p

WS 9: Dissecting Morphological Theory 1: Diminutivization Across Languages and Frameworks

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L’émergence des déterminants en français et en allemand : impact des différences prosodiques et lexico-sémantiques.

International audienc

The acquisition of determiners in French and German : Variation in prosodic and lexical influences.

International audienc