Download or read book Semantics and Morphology of Early Adjectives in First Language Acquisition written by Sabrina Noccetti and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2015-09-18 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about how toddlers learn their first adjectives, such as, for example, red, big and tasty. Adjectives denote properties and enter child vocabularies later than words for objects (such as apple and tree) and actions (such as eat and run), probably due to lower frequencies in parental speech and greater conceptual complexity. Adjective acquisition has received relatively little attention in child language research. Furthermore, cross-linguistic studies of adjective learning are virtually non-existent. This book represents the first systematic analysis of how children learning typologically different languages acquire adjective form, function and meaning. The cross-linguistic comparisons undertaken in the book provide valuable insights into universal and language-specific aspects of language acquisition. For each of the languages studied in this volume, the development of adjective semantics is studied in tandem with the development of morphology by testing two hypotheses: (a) the acquisition trajectory in the domain of adjectival morphology is determined by the typological properties of the target language; (b) irrespective of the languages being acquired, adjective learning is facilitated by universal conceptual mechanisms such as comparison and contrast.

Download or read book Development of Modality in First Language Acquisition written by Ursula Stephany and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-03-08 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with the development of modality from a crosslinguistic perspective and is closely related to two earlier volumes on the development of verb and nominal inflection in first language acquisition (SOLA 21 and 30) both methodologically and theoretically. Each of the fourteen contributions studies the early development of the form and function of expressions of deontic and dynamic agent-oriented modality or epistemic and evidential propositional modality in one of fourteen languages belonging to different morphological types and language families (seven Indo-European and seven non-Indo-European). The analyses are mainly based on longitudinal observations of children in their 2nd and 3rd years of life in conversational interaction with their caregivers, mostly the mothers. Main issues addressed are the development of directives and modulations of information in terms of certainty and evidentiality, also taking into account children’s developing social-pragmatic and cognitive skills. One of the main findings is that agent-oriented and propositional modality may develop in parallel depending on the typological characteristics of the language acquired. The decisive factor is whether notions of propositional modality are grammaticized and obligatorily expressed in the language. The findings are interpreted within non-nativist theoretical frameworks (Usage-based theories, Natural Morphology).

Download or read book The Acquisition of Derivational Morphology written by Veronika Mattes and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers the first systematic study of the early phases in the acquisition of derivational morphology from a cross-linguistic and typological perspective. It presents ten empirical longitudinal studies in genealogically and typologically diverse languages (Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, Altaic) with different degrees of derivational complexity. Data collection, analysis and systematic comparison between child speech and parental child-directed speech are strictly parallel across the chapters. In order to identify the productivity of a derivational pattern, signalling the crucial developmental stage in its acquisition, the concept of the mini-paradigm criterion was applied. Similar developmental processes can be observed in all children, independent of the language they acquire, but the children’s courses of development also show obvious typological differences. This points towards an important impact of the structural properties of the specific language on emergence, use and the early course of development of derivational patterns.

Download or read book Nominal Compound Acquisition written by Wolfgang U. Dressler and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a systematic study of the emergence and early development of compound nouns in first language acquisition from a cross-linguistic and typological perspective. The language sample is both genealogically and typologically diversified, ranging from languages rich in compounds, such as German, Saami, Estonian and Finnish, to languages poor in compounds, such as French. Some of them differ in compound richness according to genres of adult-directed speech in contrast to child-directed speech and thus also child speech, like Russian, Lithuanian and especially Greek. Differences in the delimitation and transition between compounds and phrases and in the distribution of subtypes of compounds in these languages involve great typological variety and thus different tasks for children acquiring them. The eleven languages investigated in the volume and the common methodology of longitudinal collection of spontaneous speech data concerning the interaction between children and their caretakers or peers, supplemented by lexical typology as a new means of cross-linguistic comparison of language acquisition, allow new generalizations and make the volume a unique contribution.

Download or read book Word Knowledge and Word Usage written by Vito Pirrelli and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-04-20 with total page 621 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Word storage and processing define a multi-factorial domain of scientific inquiry whose thorough investigation goes well beyond the boundaries of traditional disciplinary taxonomies, to require synergic integration of a wide range of methods, techniques and empirical and experimental findings. The present book intends to approach a few central issues concerning the organization, structure and functioning of the Mental Lexicon, by asking domain experts to look at common, central topics from complementary standpoints, and discuss the advantages of developing converging perspectives. The book will explore the connections between computational and algorithmic models of the mental lexicon, word frequency distributions and information theoretical measures of word families, statistical correlations across psycho-linguistic and cognitive evidence, principles of machine learning and integrative brain models of word storage and processing. Main goal of the book will be to map out the landscape of future research in this area, to foster the development of interdisciplinary curricula and help single-domain specialists understand and address issues and questions as they are raised in other disciplines.

Download or read book Development of Nominal Inflection in First Language Acquisition written by Ursula Stephany and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2009-07-14 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with the emergence of nominal morphology from a cross-linguistic perspective and is closely related to Development of Verb Inflection in First Language Acquisition (ed. by D. Bittner, W. U. Dressler, M. Kilani-Schoch) both methodologically and theoretically. Each of the fourteen contributions studies the early development of the fundamental inflectionally expressed categories of the noun (number, case, gender) in one of the languages belonging to different morphological types (isolating, fusional-inflecting, agglutinating, root inflecting) and families (Germanic, Romance, Slavic/Baltic, Greek, Finnic, Turc, Semitic, Indian American). The analyses are based on parallel longitudinal observations of children in their second and early third year of life as well as their input. The focus lies on the transition from a pre-morphological to a proto-morphological stage in which grammatical oppositions and so-called "mini-paradigms" begin to develop. The point at which children start to discover the morphological structure of their language and the speed with which they develop inflectional distinctions of lexical items has been found to be dependent on the morphological richness of the input language on the paradigmatic as well as the syntagmatic axis of linguistic structure. The findings are interpreted within non-nativist theoretical frameworks (Natural Morphology, Usage-based theories).

Download or read book Developing Language and Literacy written by Ronit Levie and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-10-07 with total page 716 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume dedicated to Dorit Ravid, offers 29 new chapters on the multiple facets of spoken and written language learning and usage from a group of illustrious scholars and scientists, focusing on typologically different languages and anchored in a variety of communicative settings. The book encompasses five interrelated yet distinct topics. One set of studies is in the field of developmental psycholinguistics, covering the acquisition of lexical and grammatical categories from toddlerhood to adolescence. A second topic involves a section of studies on the interface of cognition and language, with chapters on processing, production, comprehension, teaching and learning language in usage and in historical perspective. A third topic involves a theoretical and applied perspectives on the acquisition and development of literacy competence, including reading, writing, spelling and text production. A fourth topic brings together an array of studies on social, environmental and clinical diversity in language, highlighting novel issues in multilingualism, immigration, language and literacy disorders. Finally, a section of the volume examines in depth questions in Modern Hebrew linguistics, as the home language and launching base of Dorit Ravid’s research work.

Download or read book A Linguistic Approach to the Study of Dyslexia written by Gloria Cappelli and published by Channel View Publications. This book was released on 2022-08-19 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contributes to the growing body of research on developmental dyslexia, focusing on the disorder’s behavioural manifestations at different levels of the language system. It is organised into three sections that cover the three main vantage points from which the effects of dyslexia on communication can be observed: neuropsychology, linguistics and the perspective of educators. Together, the chapters provide an insightful overview of the ways in which dyslexia impacts different components of language, including lexical and pragmatic abilities, and present data from experimental and applied research, with suggestions for the application of research-based data in both innovative and traditional language teaching, ways to rehabilitate reading dysfunctions, as well as teacher training. The book will be essential reading for researchers and students investigating dyslexia, as well as foreign language teachers and professionals who work on the rehabilitation of linguistic performance dysfunctions in people with dyslexia.

Download or read book A First Language written by Roger Brown and published by Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1973 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many years, Roger Brown and his colleagues have studied the developing language of pre-school children--the language that ultimately will permit them to understand themselves and the world around them. This longitudinal research project records the conversational performances of three children, studying both semantic and grammatical aspects of their language development. These core findings are related to recent work in psychology and linguistics--and especially to studies of the acquisition of languages other than English, including Finnish, German, Korean, and Samoan. Roger Brown has written the most exhaustive and searching analysis yet undertaken of the early stages of grammatical constructions and the meanings they convey. The five stages of linguistic development Brown establishes are measured not by chronological age-since children vary greatly in the speed at which their speech develops--but by mean length of utterance. This volume treats the first two stages. Stage I is the threshold of syntax, when children begin to combine words to make sentences. These sentences, Brown shows, are always limited to the same small set of semantic relations: nomination, recurrence, disappearance, attribution, possession, agency, and a few others. Stage II is concerned with the modulations of basic structural meanings--modulations for number, time, aspect, specificity--through the gradual acquisition of grammatical morphemes such as inflections, prepositions, articles, and case markers. Fourteen morphemes are studied in depth and it is shown that the order of their acquisition is almost identical across children and is predicted by their relative semantic and grammatical complexity. It is, ultimately, the intent of this work to focus on the nature and development of knowledge: knowledge concerning grammar and the meanings coded by grammar; knowledge inferred from performance, from sentences and the settings in which they are spoken, and from signs of comprehension or incomprehension of sentences.

Download or read book Perspectives on Abstract Concepts written by Marianna Bolognesi and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2019-06-15 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human language is the most powerful communication system that evolution has produced. Within this system, we can talk about things we can physically see, such as cats and tables, but also about more abstract entities, such as theories and feelings. But how are these abstract concepts grounded in human cognition and represented in the mind? How are they constructed in language? And how are they used in natural communication settings? This book addresses these questions through a collection of studies that relate to various theoretical frameworks, ranging from Conceptual Metaphor Theory to Words as Social Tools. Contributors investigate how abstract concepts are grounded in the mind, represented in language, and used in verbal discourse. This richness is matched by a range of methods used throughout the volume, from neuroimaging to computational modeling, and from behavioral experiments to corpus analyses.

Download or read book Acquisition of morphological categories and vocabulary in early ontogenesis of Czech child written by Pavla Chejnová and published by Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The presented monograph introduces the processes of vocabulary and grammar (primarily morphology) acquisition in one Czech child over a long time span. The research is based solely on the analysis of authentic material (the corpus of transcriptions of audio recordings and the parental diary), and it covers the period from the onset of speech until three and half years of age in the target child’s development. The longitudinal study is oriented toward the acquisition of a lexicon and the acquisition of grammatical categories of inflectional parts of speech, namely, nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs. The analysis is largely building on the concepts of premorphology, protomorphology and modularised morphology. The results support the assertion that both grammatical and pragmatic competences are interrelated and that one limits the other.

Download or read book Development of Verb Inflection in First Language Acquisition written by Dagmar Bittner and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-06-24 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume deals with the emergence of verb morphology in children during their second and early third year of life from a cross-linguistic perspective. It covers 15 contributions - each analyzing one single language - based on parallel longitudinal investigations of children with parallel methodology and macrostructure in representation. The main question addressed is: How do children detect morphology and construct first subsystems of verbal inflection? The focus lies on the transition from a premorphological phase to a protomorphological phase. The main proposal consists in the concept of miniparadigms and of their relation to morpho-syntactic developments in early first language acquisition.

Download or read book From First Words to Grammar written by Elizabeth Bates and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1991-09-27 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a comprehensive study of the passage from first words to grammar in a sample of children large enough to permit systematic analysis of individual differences in style and rate of development. The authors provide a large body of information about first words and early grammatical development in qualitative and quantitative patterns that are useful not only for researchers in the field, but for speech/language pathologists and early childhood educators interested in the assessment of early language. The results support a unified functionalist approach to language development, and have implications for the way we think about the structure and breakdown of language under normal and abnormal conditions.

Download or read book Acquisition of Morphology and Syntax in Children written by Debbie Barry and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2014-07-04 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and when children acquire the basic and essential rules of English morphology and syntax are questions that have been explored for decades. While there are no final conclusions about precisely how and when this happens, many researchers have worked to describe the process in terms that apply to most children most of the time. This paper examines the acquisition of morphological rules for English nouns, verbs, and adjectives, focusing on native speakers of English who are exposed to English during what is known as the critical period of language acquisition. This paper will create a dialogue among several extant articles on the subject, synthesizing prior research to create a description of the patterns of morphological rules acquisition in English language children. It is expected that the literature will reveal that children are able to extend rules of English morphology to novel nouns and verbs, but are unable to extend rules of English morphology to novel adjectives, and have greater facility with regular forms of words than with irregular forms of words in the given groups.

Download or read book Semantics in Language Acquisition written by Kristen Syrett and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018-08-02 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents the state of the art of recent research on the acquisition of semantics. Covering topics ranging from infants' initial acquisition of word meaning to the more sophisticated mapping between structure and meaning in the syntax-semantics interface, and the relation between logical content and inferences on language meaning (semantics and pragmatics), the papers in this volume introduce the reader to the variety of ways in which children come to realize that semantic content is encoded in word meaning (for example, in the event semantics of the verbal domain or the scope of logical operators), and at the level of the sentence, which requires the composition of semantic meaning. The authors represent some of the most established and promising researchers in this domain, demonstrating collective expertise in a range of methodologies and topics relevant to the acquisition of semantics. This volume will serve as a valuable resource for students and faculty, and junior and seasoned researchers alike.

Download or read book The Acquisition of Diminutives written by Ineta Savickien? and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This cross-linguistic volume innovates research of the acquisition of diminutives in the inflecting-fusional languages Lithuanian, Russian, Croatian, Greek, Italian, Spanish, German and Dutch, the agglutinating languages Turkish, Hungarian and Finnish and in the introflecting Hebrew. These languages differ in various aspects relevant for the acquisition of diminutives and the development of pragmatics in early child language. Diminutive formation often tends to be the first pattern of word formation to emerge. The main reason for this seems to lie in the pragmatic functions of endearment, empathy, and sympathy, which make diminutives particularly appropriate for child-centred communication. A main topic of this book is the relation of emergence and early development between diminutives and other categories of word formation and inflection. The greater degree of morphological productivity and transparency, as well as phonological saliency, favors the use of diminutives. In this case diminutives may facilitate the acquisition of inflection.

Download or read book Action Meets Word written by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-04 with total page 605 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Words are the building blocks of language. An understanding of how words are learned is central to any theory of language acquisition. This volume looks at early verb learning, focusing on the foundations for verb learning, and how these foundations intersect with the burgeoning language system.