The perfective past tense in Greek child language

Abstract

This study examines the perfective past tense of Greek in an elicited production and an acceptability judgment task testing 35 adult native speakers and 154 children in six age groups (age range: 3 ; 5 to 8 ; 5) on both existing and novel verb stimuli. We found a striking contrast between sigmatic and non-sigmatic perfective past tense forms. Sigmatic forms (which have a segmentable perfective affix (-s-) in Greek) were widely generalized to different kinds of novel verbs in both children and adults and were overgeneralized to existing non-sigmatic verbs in children's productions. By contrast, non-sigmatic forms were only extended to novel verbs that were similar to existing non-sigmatic verbs, and overapplications of non-sigmatic forms to existing sigmatic verbs were extremely rare. We argue that these findings are consistent with dual-mechanism accounts of morphology.

Inflection in Williams Syndrome

“…Thus the performance of patient IS in Tsapkini et al 's (2002b) study indicates that sigmatic versus non-sigmatic forms may dissociate in the Greek perfective past-tense system. Contrasts between sigmatic and non-sigmatic past tense forms were also found in Varlokosta et al 's (2008) study of WS in Greek and in a recent acquisition study of the perfective past tense in Greek child language (Stavrakaki & Clahsen, 2009). As the performance of the participants with WS we examined for the present study will be compared to subgroups of typically-developing children from Stavrakaki & Clahsen (2009), we present a brief summary of this study.…”

“…Contrasts between sigmatic and non-sigmatic past tense forms were also found in Varlokosta et al 's (2008) study of WS in Greek and in a recent acquisition study of the perfective past tense in Greek child language (Stavrakaki & Clahsen, 2009). As the performance of the participants with WS we examined for the present study will be compared to subgroups of typically-developing children from Stavrakaki & Clahsen (2009), we present a brief summary of this study. Stavrakaki & Clahsen (2009) employed elicited production and acceptability judgment tasks to examine 35 adult native speakers of Greek and 154 typicallydeveloping Greek children in six age groups (age range: 3;5 to 8;5) on both existing and novel verb stimuli.…”

“…There are many more verbs that require a sigmatic past-tense form than there are that require a non-sigmatic one, with a ratio of 14 to 1 in a large corpus of Greek examined by Stavrakaki & Clahsen (2009). In a number of previous studies, the Greek perfective past tense has been examined in different populations by employing different methods.…”

“…In a number of previous studies, the Greek perfective past tense has been examined in different populations by employing different methods. Kehayia and Jarema (1991), Kehayia (1997) and Tsapkini, Jarema, and Kehayia (2001, 2002a, 2002b tested aphasics, Terzi, Papapetropoulos, and Kouvelas (2005) patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), and Stavrakaki & Clahsen (2009) typically-developing children. With the exception of Kehayia (1997) and Tsapkini et al (2002b), these studies have all used off-line production and comprehension tasks.…”

Contributions of linguistic typology to psycholinguistics

“…Consider mixed errors in Spanish and Greek child language. Three-to-four-year old children have been reported to produce errors such as *pusí [I.put.PST] (correct: pus-e) in Spanish or *eplise instead of epline [washed.3SG] in Greek Stavrakaki & Clahsen 2009). In such errors, marked (irregular) stems of the corresponding verbs (e.g., pus-) are combined with regular inflectional suffixes (instead of irregular ones) indicating that children can manipulate stems and inflectional endings separately.…”