The Acquisition of Complex Morphology

The Acquisition of Complex Morphology PDF Author: William Forshaw
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027258376
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
Many theories of language acquisition struggle to account for the morphological complexity and diversity of the world’s languages. This book examines the acquisition of complex morphology of Murrinhpatha, a polysynthetic language of Northern Australia. It considers semi-naturalistic data from five children (1;9-6;1) collected over a two-year period. Analysis of the Murrinhpatha data is focused on the acquisition of polysynthetic verb constructions, large irregular inflectional paradigms, and bipartite stem verbs, which all pose interesting challenges to the learner, as well as to theories of language acquisition. The book argues that morphological complexity, which broadly includes factors such as transparency, predictability/regularity, richness, type/token frequency and productivity, must become central to our understanding of morphological acquisition. It seeks to understand how acquisition is impacted by differences in morphological systems and by the ways in which children and their interlocutors use these systems.

The Acquisition of Complex Morphology

The Acquisition of Complex Morphology PDF Author: William Forshaw
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027258376
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 189

Get Book Here

Book Description
Many theories of language acquisition struggle to account for the morphological complexity and diversity of the world’s languages. This book examines the acquisition of complex morphology of Murrinhpatha, a polysynthetic language of Northern Australia. It considers semi-naturalistic data from five children (1;9-6;1) collected over a two-year period. Analysis of the Murrinhpatha data is focused on the acquisition of polysynthetic verb constructions, large irregular inflectional paradigms, and bipartite stem verbs, which all pose interesting challenges to the learner, as well as to theories of language acquisition. The book argues that morphological complexity, which broadly includes factors such as transparency, predictability/regularity, richness, type/token frequency and productivity, must become central to our understanding of morphological acquisition. It seeks to understand how acquisition is impacted by differences in morphological systems and by the ways in which children and their interlocutors use these systems.

The Acquisition of Complex Sentences

The Acquisition of Complex Sentences PDF Author: Holger Diessel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139454080
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
This book presents a comprehensive study of how children acquire complex sentences. Drawing on observational data from English-speaking children aged 2 to 5, Holger Diessel investigates the acquisition of infinitival and participial complement clauses, finite complement clauses, finite and nonfinite relative clauses, adverbial clauses, and coordinate clauses. His investigation shows that the development of complex sentences originates from simple non-embedded sentences and that two different developmental pathways can be distinguished: complex sentences including complement and relative clauses evolve from simple sentences that are gradually expanded to multiple-clause constructions, and complex sentences including adverbial and coordinate clauses develop from simple sentences that are integrated in a specific biclausal unit. He argues that the acquisition process is determined by a variety of factors: the frequency of the various complex sentences in the ambient language, the semantic and syntactic complexity of the emerging constructions, the communicative functions of complex sentences, and the social-cognitive development of the child.

Morphological Structure and Language Acquisition

Morphological Structure and Language Acquisition PDF Author: Janet H. Randall
Publisher: Dissertations-G
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description


The Cambridge Handbook of Morphology

The Cambridge Handbook of Morphology PDF Author: Andrew Hippisley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316712451
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1442

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Book Description
The Cambridge Handbook of Morphology describes the diversity of morphological phenomena in the world's languages, surveying the methodologies by which these phenomena are investigated and the theoretical interpretations that have been proposed to explain them. The Handbook provides morphologists with a comprehensive account of the interlocking issues and hypotheses that drive research in morphology; for linguists generally, it presents current thought on the interface of morphology with other grammatical components and on the significance of morphology for understanding language change and the psychology of language; for students of linguistics, it is a guide to the present-day landscape of morphological science and to the advances that have brought it to its current state; and for readers in other fields (psychology, philosophy, computer science, and others), it reveals just how much we know about systematic relations of form to content in a language's words - and how much we have yet to learn.

Word Morphology and Written Language Acquisition: Insights from Typical and Atypical Development in Different Orthographies

Word Morphology and Written Language Acquisition: Insights from Typical and Atypical Development in Different Orthographies PDF Author: Lynne G. Duncan
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889458326
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
This Research Topic explores the processing of morphemes, the smallest units of language that bear meaning and that combine to form more complex words. The articles gathered under this Research Topic investigate typical and atypical morphological processing by children and adolescents in ten different languages. These articles provide cross-linguistic and cross-script evidence of the early sensitivity of children to the morphemic structure of words, irrespective of whether they are struggling readers or typically developing. All in all, the collection allows for a better understanding of how morphological processing skills develop, providing valuable clues as to how this competence can be used as a tool to improve literacy acquisition in struggling readers.

The Acquisition of French

The Acquisition of French PDF Author: Philippe Prévost
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027253129
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
This book presents a thorough description of morphosyntactic knowledge developed by learners of French in four different learning situations first language (L1) acquisition, second (L2) language acquisition, bilingualism, and acquisition by children with Specific Language Impairment within the theoretical framework of generative grammar. This approach allows for multiple comparisons across acquisition contexts, which provides the reader with invaluable insights into the nature of the acquisition process. The book is divided into four parts each dealing with a major morphosyntactic domain of acquisition: the verbal domain, the pronominal domain, the nominal domain, and the CP domain. Each part contains four chapters, the first one presenting an overview of the basic facts and analyses of the relevant properties of French, and the next three focusing on the different acquisition contexts. This book will be useful to anyone interested in the acquisition of French and in language development in general. It is also meant to stimulate cross-linguistic research from a theoretical perspective."

Language in Children

Language in Children PDF Author: Eve V. Clark
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134984367
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
Language in Children provides a concise and basic introduction for students studying child language acquisition for the first time. Starting from the first sounds a child produces, this book covers all the stages a child goes through in acquiring a language. This title: Illustrates developmental stages from the recognition of sounds and words to the ability to hold a conversation, also covering bilingual upbringing and language disorders; Features real-life examples of all the phenomena discussed, from languages such as French, Spanish and Portuguese as well as English; Incorporates guidance on sources for further reading and exploration by chapter; Is supported by a companion website that includes exercises with links to real-world data in the CHILDES archive. Written by an experienced author and teacher, Language in Children is essential reading for students studying this topic.

Morphology in Language Comprehension, Production and Acquisition

Morphology in Language Comprehension, Production and Acquisition PDF Author: Raymond Bertram
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781848727441
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This Special Issue on Morphological Processing is based on the 6th MOrphological PROcessing Conference MOPROC (Turku) and contains 13 articles. These articles investigate the role morphemes play in language comprehension, production and acquisition. Specific questions relate to the time course with which morphemes come available, what factors facilitate their use, the role of orthographic and semantic transparency in complex word processing and how morphology should be incorporated in models of word processing. The chapters in this volume provide a wealth of empirical results in several languages obtained with state-of-the-art experimental paradigms and will be an inspiration for further studies in morphological processing.

The Acquisition of Spanish

The Acquisition of Spanish PDF Author: Silvina Montrul
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027252975
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Book Description
This is the first book on the acquisition of Spanish that provides a state-of-the-art comprehensive overview of Spanish morphosyntactic development in monolingual and bilingual situations. Its content is organized around key grammatical themes that form the empirical base of research in generative grammar: nominal and verbal inflectional morphology, subject and object pronouns, complex structures involving movement (topicalizations, questions, relative clauses), and aspects of verb meaning that have consequences for syntax. The book argues that Universal Grammar constrains all instances of language acquisition and that there is a fundamental continuity between monolingual, bilingual, child and adult early grammatical systems. While stressing their similarities with respect to linguistic representations and processes, the book also considers important differences between these three acquisition situations with respect to the outcome of acquisition. It is also shown that many linguistic properties of Spanish are acquired earlier than in English and other languages. This book is a must read for those interested in the acquisition of Spanish from different theoretical perspectives as well as those working on the acquisition of other languages in different contexts.

Complex Predicates

Complex Predicates PDF Author: Leila Lomashvili
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027255571
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Complex predicates present different levels of complexity at the syntactic and morphological levels crosslinguistically. The focus of this book is a subset of these constructions (causative and applicative) in three polysynthetic languages of the South Caucasian language family, in which the functional morphology associated with the argument structure of these constructions is unusually rich. Due to such focus, the syntax-morphology interface in causative and applicative constructions is subject to scrutiny in two main chapters of the book. The analysis includes the argument structure of causatives and applicatives along with the morpho-phonological instantiation of the functional heads involved in these constructions. The book is written very clearly and is accessible for a wide audience including undergraduate students in the introductory syntax and morphology courses as well as graduate students in basic syntax courses and seminars in linguistics. It naturally appeals to a general linguistic audience interested in theoretical linguistics.