Grammatical morpheme acquisition: An approximately invariant order?

James, Sharon L.; Khan, Linda M. L.

doi:10.1007/bf01067588

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…The semantically grounded characteristic of the nominal plural would facilitate its acquisition as opposed to the strictly formal characteristic of the verb plural. This interpretation is consistent with data collected in English, which show that, despite the audibility of the singular/plural written markers, nouns are inflected earlier than verbs (Berko, 1958;Brown, 1973;Cazden, 1968Cazden, , 1972de Villiers & de Villiers, 1973;Derwing & Baker, 1979;James & Khan, 1982;Keeney & Wolfe, 1972).…”

supporting

confidence: 87%

“…However, the development of number marking in English children is compatible with our observations. Indeed, despite being audible, inflections for number are acquired earlier for nouns than for verbs (Berko, 1958;Cazden, 1968Cazden, , 1972Brown, 1973;de Villiers & de Villiers, 1973;Derwing & Baker, 1979;James & Khan, 1982;Keeney & Wolfe, 1972). The reasoning underlying our experiments could thus be extended to oral language, provided that it is possible to find at least one oral language in which adjectives agree with nouns and bear the same marker as nouns which is different to the marker used for verbs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

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Disentangling the impact of semantic and formal factors in the acquisition of number inflections: Noun, adjective and verb agreement in written French

2006

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In written French, the acquisition of the nominal plural (-s) occurs earlier and faster than the acquisition of the verbal plural (-nt) (Totereau, Thevenin & Fayol, 1997, Learning to Spell). The reasons for this difference are not well known. The objective of the present research is to test two alternative hypotheses, which may provide an account of this difference by exploiting a particularity of written French: The agreement of adjectives. According to the first hypothesis, the nominal plural is acquired before the verbal plural because it is semantically grounded, unlike the latter. According to the second, the early emergence of noun agreements is due to the fact that -s occurs more consistently than -nt. These two hypotheses lead to different predictions, that can be tested empirically, with regard to the agreement of adjectives. These predictions were studied in three experiments using sentences recall or completion tasks presented to children from 7 to 10 years old. The results confirm the semantic hypothesis but reveal an impact of consistency on performance.

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supporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Disentangling the impact of semantic and formal factors in the acquisition of number inflections: Noun, adjective and verb agreement in written French

2006

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“…To be consistent with other child language studies (e.g., Cleave & Rice, 1997; de Villiers & de Villiers, 1973; James & Kahn, 1982; Johnston & Schery, 1976), we followed Brown (1973) and coded contexts as contractible if contractibility was possible, regardless of whether the child actually contracted the BE form. Brown's rationale for this decision was based on the difficulty of coding contractibility in a reliable manner across examiners when the data are samples of children's conversational speech.…”

Section: Linguistic Constraint: Contractibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic Constraints on Children's Overt Marking of BE by Dialect and Age

Roy

Oetting

Moland

2013

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose Overt marking of BE in nonmainstream adult dialects of English is influenced by a number of linguistic constraints, including the structure's person, number, tense, contractibility, and grammatical function. In the current study, we examined the effects of these constraints on overt marking of BE in children as a function of their nonmainstream English dialect and age. Methods The data were language samples from 62 children, aged four to six years; 24 spoke African American English (AAE) and 38 spoke Southern White English (SWE). Analyses included analysis of variance and logistic regression. Results Rates of overt marking varied by the children's dialect but not their age. Although the person, number, tense, and grammatical function of BE influenced the children's rates of marking, the nature and magnitude of the influence differed by the children's dialect. For AAE-speaking children, contractibility also influenced their marking of BE. Conclusions Consistent with the adult literature, the AAE- and SWE-speaking children marked BE in ways that differed from each other and from what has been documented for child speakers of Mainstream American English. These findings show stability in the use of BE in AAE and SWE that spans different generations and different dialect communities.

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“…The English acquisition data illustrate this point: the plural morpheme is acquired much earlier than either the third-person singular or the possessive (cf. Brown, 1973;James and Kahn, 1982), despite an identical phonological structure for all three markers. Additionally, the plural morpheme is acquired at a younger age than is seen in English within languages that use a phonologically simpler marking system (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Semantic iconicity in plural acquisition: Extending the argument to include normal children

Camarata

1990

Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics

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Suprasegmental marking of plural has been noted in language-and phonologically-impaired children. Additionally, such marking has been interpreted within the iconicity model of language acquisition. The purpose of this paper is to extend this model of iconic influences on plural acquisition to the normal population. An analysis of the convergence of phonological, morphological and semantic factors within plural acquisition reveals that normal children are confronted with the identical factors that resulted in suprasegmental plural marking in phonologically impaired children. The above arguments are augmented by a case study of a linguistically normal female child (age 2 years 7 months) who used an increase in fundamental frequency (F,,) and duration to signal plural.

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Grammatical morpheme acquisition: An approximately invariant order?

Cited by 13 publications

References 5 publications

Disentangling the impact of semantic and formal factors in the acquisition of number inflections: Noun, adjective and verb agreement in written French

Disentangling the impact of semantic and formal factors in the acquisition of number inflections: Noun, adjective and verb agreement in written French

Linguistic Constraints on Children's Overt Marking of BE by Dialect and Age

Semantic iconicity in plural acquisition: Extending the argument to include normal children

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