Abstract
Interfaces between grammatical domains have been considered from various perspectives in child language research and in general linguistics. The study aims to provide evidence for interfaces in acquisition of early clause-structure, based on longitudinal data from three Hebrew-acquiring toddlers. Two facets of their early speech output were examined: Usage productivity in verb-inflection, identified by a criterion of contextual appropriateness; and structural transparency/opacity of children’s speech output, with transparent forms being unambiguous in relation to their grammatical targets. These factors yielded two distinct developmental periods for the three children: I – from the onset of verb usage to productive verb inflection, and II – from productive verb inflection to disappearance of structural opacity. Period II displays a puzzling mixture of both transparent and opaque usages, not only in verb inflection, but also in use of prepositions marking objects and adverbs. These puzzles are resolved by the significant correlations that emerged between apparently unrelated linguistic systems: (1) opaque verb-forms occur mainly together with object/adverbs, and (2) transparent prepositions occur mainly in combination with transparent verbs. These unexpected convergences between different linguistic systems are discussed as underlining the role of structural transparency/opacity and as shedding new light on between-domain interfaces in language acquisition.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments and feedback, and Gal Belsitzman for testing coding reliability.
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- The development of iterative verbal periphrases in Romance
- Interfaces between linguistic systems: Evidence from Child Language
- Against Isomorphism and the Maxim of Charity in child language acquisition: Implications for the validity of the TVJT methodology
- The mapping of space onto the domain of benefaction and some unpredicted trends in semantic change
- Investigating language change using Anglo-Norman spoken and written register data
- On the possibility of proper verbs
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- The development of iterative verbal periphrases in Romance
- Interfaces between linguistic systems: Evidence from Child Language
- Against Isomorphism and the Maxim of Charity in child language acquisition: Implications for the validity of the TVJT methodology
- The mapping of space onto the domain of benefaction and some unpredicted trends in semantic change
- Investigating language change using Anglo-Norman spoken and written register data
- On the possibility of proper verbs