Polish children's productivity with case marking: the role of regularity, type frequency, and phonological diversity
Loading...
Date
2006-08
Authors
Dabrowska, Eva
Szczerbinski, Marcin
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Published Version
Abstract
57 Polish-speaking children aged from 2;4, to 4;8 and 16 adult controls participated in a nonce-word inflection experiment testing their ability to use the genitive, dative and accusative inflections productively. Results show that this ability develops early: the majority of two-year olds were already productive with all inflections apart from dative neuter; and the overall performance of the four-year-olds was very similar to that of adults. All age groups were more productive with inflections that apply to large and/or phonologically diverse classes, although class size and token frequency appeared to be more important for younger children (two- and three-year-olds) and phonological diversity for older children and adults. Regularity, on the other hand, was a very poor predictor of productivity. The results support usage-based models of language acquisition and are problematic for the dual mechanism model.
Description
Keywords
Language development , Morphological productivity , Polish case-making system
Citation
EWA DABROWSKA and MARCIN SZCZERBINSKI (2006). Polish children's productivity with case marking: the role of regularity, type frequency, and phonological diversity. Journal of Child Language, 33, pp 559-597 doi:10.1017/S0305000906007471
Link to publisher’s version
Collections
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press