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Acquiring Polish noun inflection: Two children's productivity and error patterns in relation to parental input.

Authors :
Price-Williams, David
Davies, Matt
Source :
First Language; Feb2023, Vol. 43 Issue 1, p112-134, 23p
Publication Year :
2023

Abstract

Complex systems of inflectional morphology provide a useful testing ground for input-based language acquisition theories. Two analyses were performed on a high-density (12%) naturalistic sample of two Polish-English children's (2;0 and 3;11) and their parents' use of Polish noun inflection: first, each child's use of inflectional affixes and their lexical restrictedness was compared with their father's equalised sample. Second, the children's spontaneous case-marking errors were analysed in context and measured against type and token frequencies in both parents' data and the child-directed speech (CDS) corpus. Findings in both analyses accord with constructivist theory: near adult-like knowledge of Polish inflections hiding a range of use that is more lexically restricted than in their caregivers' speech; low error rates hiding much higher 'pockets of ignorance' for specific inflectional contexts; and patterns of error that correspond closely to token/type frequencies in the CDS, though with the older sibling making some errors that were not frequency-based. Potential effects of syncretism, case ambiguity and semantics are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
01427237
Volume :
43
Issue :
1
Database :
Complementary Index
Journal :
First Language
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
161308950
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237221123695