Case morphology and case system in L1 acquisition

The input ambiguity hypothesis and case blindness: an account of cross-linguistic and intra-linguistic differences in case errors

“…Czepluch's (1996) results, based on his review of a child's data from fourteen transcripts recorded at regular intervals from 2;00.17 to 3;09.10, also conflict with the earlier characterization of case acquisition. Furthermore, children's correct use of all three case forms beginning from MLU 1.89 suggests that children may actually use case contrastively at the two-word stage.…”

“…The child in Czepluch's (1996) study, prior to acquisition of the prenominal genitive, acquired productive use of accusatives clearly inflected with the -n accusative suffix, as evidenced by self-corrections like neues ' new' (neuter accusative) to neuen ' new' (masculine accusative), clearly demonstrating the status of -n as an accusative suffix (p. 99). The child in Czepluch's (1996) study, prior to acquisition of the prenominal genitive, acquired productive use of accusatives clearly inflected with the -n accusative suffix, as evidenced by self-corrections like neues ' new' (neuter accusative) to neuen ' new' (masculine accusative), clearly demonstrating the status of -n as an accusative suffix (p. 99).…”

“…Though several researchers have noted that children tend to use correctly case-marked pronouns earlier than correctly case-marked articles (Mills, 1985 ;Tracy, 1986;Clahsen, Eisenbeiss & Vainikka, 1994 ;Czepluch, 1996), no theory specifically attempts to account for this incongruity. However, several theories have been proposed to account for children's case acquisition and/or errors with articles.…”

“…Tracy (1986), Clahsen et al (1994) and Czepluch (1996) have proposed syntactic theories to account for German children's acquisition of case and their case errors. Tracy (1986), Clahsen et al (1994) and Czepluch (1996) have proposed syntactic theories to account for German children's acquisition of case and their case errors.…”

Learning by ear: on the acquisition of case and gender marking by German-speaking children with normal hearing and with cochlear implants

“…According to diary studies children use nominatives first, followed by accusatives and datives (Stern & Stern, 1928 ;Mills, 1985). More recent data of recorded spontaneous speech appear to confirm this sequence (Clahsen, 1984 ;Tracy, 1986 ;Czepluch, 1996). Data from one child (Czepluch, 1996) indicate that datives are used predominantly after prepositions.…”