John Benjamins Publishing Company
Chapter 5. Acquisition of relative clauses in Finnish
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Minna Kirjavainen
Abstract
Little research has been conducted to date investigating Finnish children’s relative clause acquisition. We report a study on the emergence of these structures in one Finnish speaking child’s corpus between the ages of 1;7–3;6. The study focuses on (1) the effect of the input language, and (2) the properties of the utterances containing relative clauses, namely the syntactic role of head and relativized item and the transitivity of the relative clause. The results show that the child’s language largely mirrored the input language, but that her utterances were less complex than those of her caregivers. In addition, oblique relative clauses, which are difficult to learn in English and German, were found to be commonplace in early Finnish child language.
Abstract
Little research has been conducted to date investigating Finnish children’s relative clause acquisition. We report a study on the emergence of these structures in one Finnish speaking child’s corpus between the ages of 1;7–3;6. The study focuses on (1) the effect of the input language, and (2) the properties of the utterances containing relative clauses, namely the syntactic role of head and relativized item and the transitivity of the relative clause. The results show that the child’s language largely mirrored the input language, but that her utterances were less complex than those of her caregivers. In addition, oblique relative clauses, which are difficult to learn in English and German, were found to be commonplace in early Finnish child language.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Introduction. The acquisition of relative clauses 1
- Chapter 1. Relative clauses 13
- Chapter 2. A connectionist account of the acquisition and processing of relative clauses 39
- Chapter 3. Learning from social interaction 61
- Chapter 4. Relative clause acquisition in Hebrew and the learning of constructions 81
- Chapter 5. Acquisition of relative clauses in Finnish 107
- Chapter 6. Learning to produce Quechua relative clauses 141
- Chapter 7. The acquisition of relative clauses in Japanese 173
- Chapter 8. The acquisition of relative clauses in Cantonese and Mandarin 197
- Chapter 9. Structural priming in comprehension of relative clause sentences 227
- Index 243
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Introduction. The acquisition of relative clauses 1
- Chapter 1. Relative clauses 13
- Chapter 2. A connectionist account of the acquisition and processing of relative clauses 39
- Chapter 3. Learning from social interaction 61
- Chapter 4. Relative clause acquisition in Hebrew and the learning of constructions 81
- Chapter 5. Acquisition of relative clauses in Finnish 107
- Chapter 6. Learning to produce Quechua relative clauses 141
- Chapter 7. The acquisition of relative clauses in Japanese 173
- Chapter 8. The acquisition of relative clauses in Cantonese and Mandarin 197
- Chapter 9. Structural priming in comprehension of relative clause sentences 227
- Index 243
