The Acquisition of Past Participles: One or Two Mechanisms?

Elsen, Hilke

doi:10.1515/9783110919745.134

Cited by 7 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…At the same time, error preferences show a dominance of errors of over-regularization, which confirms previous findings (Mills, 1985 ;Clahsen & Rothweiler, 1993 ;Elsen, 1998;Lindner, 1998). At the same time, error preferences show a dominance of errors of over-regularization, which confirms previous findings (Mills, 1985 ;Clahsen & Rothweiler, 1993 ;Elsen, 1998;Lindner, 1998).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

“…Omission of the prefix ge-on weak and strong verbs is observed to be a highly frequent error in all the available evidence on participle acquisition (Mills, 1985 ;Clahsen & Rothweiler, 1993 ;Elsen, 1998 ;Lindner, 1998) including the present study. While this error may be prosodically determined, as children tend to leave out unstressed elements (Slobin, 1973), it is nevertheless further evidence that participles are segmented into their components.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 45%

“…On the contrary, they are highly relevant for an account of how learning participle inflection may occur. Both authors conclude that strong participles are segmented into components and their regularities applied in erroneous generalizations (Elsen, 1998 ;Lindner, 1998). Furthermore, segmentation processes occur to the same extent for both verb classes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Suffix omission on weak and strong verbs is evidence that participles of both verb classes are analyzed into morphological components. Low-frequency items are more likely to be missed, unless dense data sampling or diary methods are used (Elsen, 1998 ;Tomasello & Stahl, 2004). Evidence for segmentation and generalization processes are the error patterns on ABB/C strong verbs in which children combine either suffix omission or -t suffix with a participle stem, and the -en suffix with a present tense stem vowel (categories 2b, 3b and 4; see ' Coding scheme for erroneous participle forms' and Figures 5 and 6).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most available studies on the acquisition of participles in young children agree that over-regularization with suffix -t is a frequent error, and few -en errors on regular verbs are observed (Mills, 1985 ;Clahsen & Rothweiler, 1993, Lindner, 1998Elsen, 1998). In the most comprehensive account of participle acquisition, Clahsen & Rothweiler (1993) analyzed the spontaneous speech of three typically developing children and nineteen children with SLI.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

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

Szagun

2010

J. Child Lang.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 45%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

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

Szagun

2010

J. Child Lang.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Morphological priming in child German

Clahsen

Fleischhauer

2013

J. Child Lang.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Regular and irregular inflection in children's production has been examined in many previous studies. Yet, little is known about the processes involved in children's recognition of inflected words. To gain insight into how children process inflected words, the current study examines regular -t and irregular -n participles of German using the cross-modal priming technique testing 108 monolingual German-speaking children in two age groups (group I, mean age: 8;4, group II, mean age: 9;9) and a control group of 72 adults. Although both age groups of children had the same full priming effect as adults for -t forms, only children of age group II showed an adult-like (partial) priming effect for -n participles. We argue that children (within the age range tested) employ the same mechanisms for regular inflection as adults but that the lexical retrieval processes required for irregular forms become more efficient when children get older.

show abstract

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

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study reports developmental changes in morphological encoding across late childhood. We examined event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during the silent production of regularly vs. irregularly inflected verb forms (viz. -t vs. -n participles of German) in groups of eight- to ten-year-olds, eleven- to thirteen-year-olds, and adults. The adult data revealed an enhanced (right-frontal) negativity 300-450 ms after cue onset for the (silent) production of -t relative to -n past participle forms (e.g. geplant vs. gehauen 'planned' vs. 'hit'). For the eleven- to thirteen-year-olds, the same enhanced negativity was found, with a more posterior distribution and a longer duration (=300-550 ms). The eight- to ten-year-olds also showed this negativity, again with a posterior distribution, but with a considerably delayed onset (800-1,000 ms). We suggest that this negativity reflects combinatorial processing required for producing -t participles in both children and adults and that the spatial and temporal modulations of this ERP effect across the three participant groups are due to developmental changes of the brain networks involved in processing morphologically complex words.

show abstract

The Acquisition of Past Participles: One or Two Mechanisms?

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

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

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

Morphological priming in child German

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

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About