The development of morpho-syntactic productivity in Italian-speaking children

Abstract

According to usage-based models of language acquisition, young children’s grammatical knowledge is best described in terms of lexically specific templates rather than abstract constructions. In this study, we tested the usage-based account by examining the acquisition of Italian, a language with relatively free word order and rich inflectional morphology. We exposed two groups of Italian-speaking children (aged 3;01 and 4;05) and adult controls to a nonce verb and to a familiar verb in an imperative construction. We then prompted production of those verbs in a different morphological form (past tense) and a different syntactic construction (transitive). While both child groups showed adult-like productivity with morphology, there were significant group differences in syntactic productivity.

Building languages: Estonian–English two-year-old bilingual’s reliance on patterns in code-mixed utterances

“…These have a consistent and fixed word order (bye-bye-X, more-X) and initially they co-exist with less developed strategies of word combination (e.g. chair apple) (Miorelli 2017). Moreover, using the abovementioned cognitive skills, children form patterns and relationships between constructions and their parts.…”