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

Abstract

The acquisition of case and gender marking on the definite and indefinite article was studied in a sample of 6 normally-hearing children and 9 children with cochlear implants. Longitudinal spontaneous speech data are used. Children were matched by MLU, with 4 MLU levels: 1·8, 2·8, 3·6, 4·8. Age ranges for normally-hearing children were 1;4 to 3;8 and for children with cochlear implants 1;8 to 7;0. Frequencies of correctly marked article forms increased over MLU but less so in the hearing-impaired group. In both groups error rates were high. However, error patterns were different. In normally-hearing children errors of case predominated, in hearing-impaired children errors of gender and omission. Error patterns suggest that in normally-hearing children syntactic categorization interacts with input frequency and low discriminability of article forms. In the hearing-impaired group the article system is less advanced, despite higher frequencies of definite articles in adult speech. The predominance of article omission is discussed in terms of persisting perceptual problems or a working memory deficit.

From 1‐word to 2‐words with cochlear implant and cued speech: A case study

“…These results closely resemble what other researchers have observed (Le Normand, 2004;Szagun, 2004). Both Szagun and Le Normand found that progress in lexical development was notably quicker than acquisition of grammar rules.…”

“…Several of Blanca's characteristics suggest that CS might have played an important role. As regards the use of protoarticles, Szagun (2004) had found that CI children (non-CS) used them for a longer period than NH children. Blanca, on the other hand, seemed to use few protoarticles.…”

Prosodic constraints on inflected words: An area of difficulty for German-speaking children with specific language impairment?

“…In German, the acquisition of inflectional noun morphology is a particularly difficult task that takes longer than the acquisition of basic syntactic rules. While word order in sentences, that is, the verb-second placement in main clauses, is acquired around the age of 2.6 (Clahsen, 1999), full mastery of plural or case marking takes several years until school age (Kauschke, Kurth, & Domas, 2011;Laaha, Ravid, Korecky-Kröll, Ravid, & Dressler, 2006;Szagun, 2004). The acquisition of the German plural system has been investigated using spontaneous speech as well as elicitation data.…”

Development of vocabulary and grammar in young German-speaking children assessed with a German language development inventory

“…More recently, investigations based on larger samples have been added (Kauschke & Hofmeister, 2002;Szagun, 2001aSzagun, , 2001b) and a single case study based on very extensive speech sampling (Behrens, 2001). These recent analyses have addressed vocabulary growth (Kauschke & Hofmeister, 2002), grammatical growth (Szagun, 2001a), and the acquisition of specific morphological paradigms, such as plural marking (Behrens, 2001;Szagun, 2001b) or case and gender marking (Szagun, 2004). However, normative data on vocabulary and grammatical growth in German-speaking children are still lacking.…”

“…The age span of 1;6-2;6 is a very important period of development when children in different languages typically move from first words to grammar (Bates, Bretherton & Snyder, 1988;Berglund & Eriksson, 2000;Caselli et al, 1999;Fenson et al, 1994;Maital et al, 2000;Zink & Lejaegere, 2002). In German, children start acquiring inflectional markings in nearly all morphological paradigms during this period (Behrens, 1993(Behrens, , 2001Miller, 1976;Mills, 1985;Szagun, 2001aSzagun, , 2001bSzagun, , 2004. This includes noun plural marking, gender and case marking, present tense verb morphology, past participle, as well as auxiliary forms.…”