TY  - JOUR
A1  - Szagun, Gisela
A1  - Schramm, Satyam Antonio
T1  - Lexically driven or early structure building?
BT  - Constructing an early grammar in German child language
JF  - First language
N2  - This study examines the role of the lexicon and grammatical structure building in early grammar. Parent-report data in CDI format from a sample of 1151 German-speaking children between 1;6 and 2;6 and longitudinal spontaneous speech data from 22 children between 1;8 and 2;5 were used. Regression analysis of the parent-report data indicates that grammatical words have a stronger influence on concurrent syntactic complexity than lexical words. Time-lagged correlations using the spontaneous speech data showed that lexical words at 1;8 predict subsequent MLU at 2;1 significantly; grammatical words do not. MLU at 2;5 is significantly predicted by grammatical words and no longer by lexical words. The influence of different grammatical subcategories on subsequent MLU varies. Use of articles and the copula at 2;1 most strongly predicts MLU at 2;5. Children use both types of articles and multiple determiners before a noun to the same extent as adults. The present results are suggestive of early grammatical structure building.
KW  - CDI
KW  - determiners
KW  - early syntax
KW  - German
KW  - grammatical words
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/0142723718761414
SN  - 0142-7237
SN  - 1740-2344
VL  - 39
IS  - 1
SP  - 61
EP  - 79
PB  - Sage Publ.
CY  - London
ER  -