The early acquisition of Spanish verbal morphology: Across-the-board or piecemeal knowledge?

Abstract

This paper examines the earliest uses of verbal morphology in aninflectional language, Spanish . Stringent criteria are applied to data from two children to determine what inflections are used productively. Analyses reveal that there is little productive command of verbal morphology at early ages and that subjects begin with a single form per verb. When elements of the verb paradigm do begin to become productive, they do so in a very gradual, piecemeal fashion. Finally, what governs which aspects of the paradigm are learned early seems to be a complex interaction of the input with cognitive and linguistic complexity.

The role of frequency in the acquisition of English word order

“…Finally, future research would benefit from considering additional factors affecting grammatical development such as complexity of form (Gathercole, Sebastian, & Soto, 1999), iconicity (Cho et al, 2002;Slobin, 2001), salience, relevance, form-function transparency (Slobin, 2001) and cue locality (Kail, 1989;Slobin, 1982). The aim of the current study was not, therefore, to argue that the frequency of exposure to linguistic material is the 'be all and end all' of language acquisition but rather that it plays a central role in structuring language and can shed much light on its developmental trajectory.…”

Emerging temporality: past tense and temporal/aspectual markers in Spanish-speaking children's intra-conversational narratives

“…Thus, in line with Shirai & Miyata's (2006) distinction between the use of contrastive past tense and the use of deictic past, the first contrastive uses of past tense for this girl seem to signal only the beginning of a gradual learning process. In fact, the abundant production of past tense inflections reported in this study is not at odds with a view of a piecemeal acquisition (see Gathercole et al, 1999).…”

“…Spanish-speaking children as young as two years of age start using verb inflections to express temporal contrasts (Fernández, 1994 ;Gathercole, Sebastián & Soto, 1999). A piecemeal -as opposed to ' across-the-board'-acquisition has been documented as ' the Spanish-speaking child moves step by step towards productivity by learning forms verb by verb' (Gathercole et al, 1999 : 30).…”

“…In sum, on the one hand studies on acquisition report an early emergence of past forms offering analyses that take into account the communicative function, the interactional context or verb semantics early in development (Fernández, 1994 ;Gathercole et al, 1999 ;Jackson-Maldonado & Maldonado, 2001, respectively). On the other hand, studies that focus on the subsequent use of past tense from ages two to three highlight the scarcity or even absence of these inflections.…”

Türkçede İlgi Tümceciklerinin Edinimine Kullanım Temelli bir Yaklaşım

“…Usage-based accounts consider the early acquisition of verbs and their morphology to be concrete and item-based. Accordingly, the correct use of morphology at the early stages of language acquisition is argued not to be productive, and morphological rules are believed to emerge gradually morpheme by morpheme (Gathercole, Sebastian &Soto, 1999;Pizzuto & Caselli, 1994;Tomasello, 2003). The frequency and consistency of stem+morpheme constructions influence the productive schemas (Lieven & Tomasello, 2008;Theakston, Lieven & Tomasello, 2003).…”