Regular/irregular is not the whole story: the role of frequency and generalization in the acquisition of German past participle inflection

Abstract

The acquisition of German participle inflection was investigated using spontaneous speech samples from six children between 1;4 and 3;8 and ten children between 1;4 and 2;10 recorded longitudinally at regular intervals. Child-directed speech was also analyzed. In adult and child speech weak participles were significantly more frequent than strong participles. Children's errors involved all elements of participle marking. All error types, including over-regularization, occurred from the beginning alongside correct forms. Errors decreased significantly over age. Over-regularization in the sense of -t affixation on strong verbs was significantly more frequent than erroneous -en suffixation on weak verbs but not than prefix and suffix omission. On participles with stem vowel change erroneous stem vowel was significantly more frequent than correct stem vowel with suffix error alone. Error patterns are explained in terms of frequencies, and participle inflection being learned as part of general verb inflection.

Morphological encoding in German children's language production: evidence from event-related brain potentials

“…* geschlaft instead of geschlafen ‘slept’, were more common than - n overapplications to weak verbs, with more - t over-regularizations in the younger than the older group of children. This pattern of overapplication errors is in line with previous reports from spontaneous speech and from elicited production data of German children (Weyerts & Clahsen, 1994; Elsen, 1998; Lindner, 1998; Clahsen et al , 2004; Szagun, 2011; Fleischhauer & Clahsen, 2012).…”

Past participle formation in specific language impairment

“…, Wiese ). Since –t suffixation is considered to be rule‐based and forms the most predictable and regular pattern of participle formation, the suffix –t is regarded as the default marker for past participles (Szagun , Wittek and Tomasello , Wiese ). Apart from the restricted application of the suffix –en , past participles of strong verbs are irregular in that they may undergo phonologically unpredictable stem modifications (Clahsen et al .…”

“…The suffix -t is applied to weak verbs (e.g., gelach-t 'laughed'), while strong verbs always take -en (e.g., gelauf-en 'run'; Clahsen et al 2004, Wiese 1996. Since -t suffixation is considered to be rule-based and forms the most predictable and regular pattern of participle formation, the suffix -t is regarded as the default marker for past participles (Szagun 2011, Wittek and Tomasello 2002, Wiese 1996. Apart from the restricted application of the suffix -en, past participles of strong verbs are irregular in that they may undergo phonologically unpredictable stem modifications (Clahsen et al 2004), e.g., singen 'to sing' -gesungen 'sung'.…”

“…In a longitudinal study on the acquisition of past participle inflection in German, Szagun () showed that in the spontaneous speech of some children, participles occur as early as 1;8 years. From 2;0 onwards, a larger set of children are able to use the participles of weak and strong verbs, with weak verbs occurring considerably more frequently than strong verbs.…”

“…Contrary to this so‐called dual‐mechanism model, other approaches assume that one general learning mechanism guides the acquisition of both irregular and regular inflectional forms (e.g. Bybee , Plunkett and Marchman , Szagun ).…”