The volume deals with the emergence of verb morphology in children during their second and early third year of life from a cross-linguistic perspective. It covers 15 contributions - each analyzing one single language - based on parallel longitudinal investigations of children with parallel methodology and macrostructure in representation. The main question addressed is: How do children detect morphology and construct first subsystems of verbal inflection? The focus lies on the transition from a premorphological phase to a protomorphological phase. The main proposal consists in the concept of miniparadigms and of their relation to morpho-syntactic developments in early first language acquisition.

Klappentext

Language acquisition is a human endeavor par excellence. As children, all human beings learn to understand and speak at least one language: their mother tongue. It is a process that seems to take place without any obvious effort. Second language learning, particularly among adults, causes more difficulty. The purpose of this series is to compile a collection of high-quality monographs on language acquisition. The series serves the needs of everyone who wants to know more about the problem of language acquisition in general and/or about language acquisition in specific contexts.

Inhalt

Introduction Dagmar Bittner, Wolfgang U. Dressler, and Marianne Kilani-Schoch

Early verb development in one Spanish-speaking child Carmen Aguirre

Early verbal morphology in Turkish: Emergence of inflections Ayhan Aksu-Koç and F. Nihan Ketrez

The emergence of verb inflection in two German-speaking children Dagmar Bittner

Early phases in the development of Greek verb inflection Anastasia Christofidou and Ursula Stephany

The early verb development and demarcation of stages in three Russian-speaking children Natalia Gargarina

A case study of the early acquisition of verbs in Dutch Steven Gillis

Early development of verbal morphology in an English-speaking child Insa Gülzow

Early verb development in one Croatian-speaking child Antigone Katicic

Early verb inflection in French: An investigation of two corpora Marianne Kilani-Schoch

Emergence of verb paradigms in one Austrian child Sabine Klampfer

Early verb developmentin Finnish: A preliminary approach to miniparadigms Klaus Laalo

Acquisition of verb morphology in Italian: A case study Sabrina Noccetti

Early acquisition of the verbal complex Yucatec Maya Barbara Pfeiler

Early verb inflection in Lithuanian Pawel Wójcik