Acquisition of deverbal compounds by French-speaking preschoolers

Abstract

Children's creation of novel words is thought to be guided by several variables of their language(s), including the simplicity and frequency of required morphology and/or target structure (Clark, 1993). This study documents children's acquisition of French deverbal Verb-Object compounds (e.g., lave-vaisselle 'wash-dishes' meaning dishwasher). Research from previous studies suggests that simple infrequent forms such as these will be acquired later (i.e., around 5 years). 34 monolingual French-speaking children between 3 and 5 years produced and indicated their understanding of novel deverbal compounds. The children's vocabulary size was more strongly positively related to their production and comprehension of novel compounds than age. In comprehension, children often misinterpreted the Object of novel compounds as the subject of the action in the Verb. These results confirm that this simple infrequent form is acquired late.

Clausal order and the acquisition of Dutch deverbal compounds

“…For example, in French, deverbal (VO) compounds follow canonical clausal ordering (SVO), yet children learn these compounds just as late as English-speaking children (Nicoladis 2003a; see also Nicoladis 2007). This finding sheds some doubt on the argument that English-speaking children learn deverbal compounds late because the compounds reverse canonical clausal ordering.…”

“…It is not clear how important morphological simplicity is for children, though, as even simple compounds can be acquired fairly late. For example, French deverbal compounds consisting of a bare verb and a bare noun (e.g., tournevis 'turn screw', meaning a screwdriver) are acquired around 4-5 years of age (Nicoladis 2003a(Nicoladis , 2007.…”

Thinking for speaking and cross-linguistic transfer in preschool bilingual children

“…The French version has not been standardized but the raw scores correlate positively with age in monolingual French-speaking children (Nicoladis 2007).…”

“…Second, the French version of the PPVT is a direct translation from English. Although the French version has been proven to correlate with age in monolingual children (Nicoladis 2007), it may not be on the same scale as the original test. For these reasons, it is important to look at the overall pattern of results of language dominance, without relying too heavily on the relative vocabulary scores.…”

The Definite Determiner in Romanian: A Biolinguistic Perspective

“…For example, new compounds can be coined in any language. Children produce these forms quite early, around age two or three (Clark & Barron 1998;Hiramatsu et al 2000;Nicoladis 2007), sometimes with meanings that they are unlikely to have heard before, and always without any formal instruction. Around age three, children consistently produce compounds of the type V-N instead of N-V-er, they go through an intermediate V-N-er stage, e.g.…”