Acquisition of nominal morphology in Norwegian L2

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to examine certain trends and tendencies in the acquisition of nominal morphology in the spontaneous speech of three L1 Kurdish-speaking children acquiring Norwegian as an L2. This paper reports on variations in the children’s use of articles and suffixes at three different points along their paths of acquisition, from approximately 2:7 (age:months) to 8:8 years after the age of onset of acquisition (AoOA). The findings suggest that constructions paralleling those of adult L1 speakers are the main pattern in L2 production of the children in the present study. In addition, article omission in modified noun phrases (NPs), gender-agreement discrepancy, omission of the definite suffix in simple nominal phrases and omission of the indefinite article are other tendencies.