Playing with Word Endings: Morphological Variation in the Learning of Russian Noun Inflections

Autor/inn/en	Kempe, Vera; Brooks, Patricia J.; Mironova, Natalija; Pershukova, Angelina; Fedorova, Olga
Titel	Playing with Word Endings: Morphological Variation in the Learning of Russian Noun Inflections
Quelle	In: British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 25 (2007) 1, S.55-77 (23 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0261-510X
DOI	10.1348/026151006X100675
Schlagwörter	Mothers; Nouns; Vocabulary Development; Russian; Morphology (Languages); Language Variation; Longitudinal Studies; Parent Child Relationship; Children; Grammar; Pragmatics; Language Acquisition; Morphemes + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Mother; Mutter; Wortschatzarbeit; Russisch; Morphology; Morphologie; Sprachenvielfalt; Longitudinal study; Longitudinal method; Longitudinal methods; Längsschnittuntersuchung; Parents-child relationship; Parent-child-relation; Parent-child relationship; Eltern-Kind-Beziehung; Child; Kind; Kinder; Grammatik; Pragmalinguistik; Sprachaneignung; Spracherwerb; Morphem
Abstract	This paper documents the occurrence of form variability through diminutive "wordplay", and examines whether this variability facilitates or hinders morphology acquisition in a richly inflected language. First, in a longitudinal speech corpus of eight Russian mothers conversing with their children (1.6-3.6), and with an adult, the use of diminutive word forms was shown to be pervasive in Russian child-directed, but not adult-directed speech. Importantly, all of the mothers were shown to routinely engage in alternating uses of diminutive and simplex forms of the same nouns within the same conversational episodes. Second, an elicitation experiment was conducted which tested 24 children's (2.7-4.2) productivity in inflecting novel nouns for case. By varying whether children heard the novel nouns in diminutive form, simplex form or both, we show that children benefit from the introduction of words in multiple forms (i.e. showing fewer case-marking errors in this condition). We suggest that pragmatically motivated form variation in child-directed speech (CDS) may have beneficial effects for acquiring richly inflected languages. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10