Lexically driven or early structure building?
- 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.
Author details: | Gisela Szagun, Satyam Antonio SchrammORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1177/0142723718761414 |
ISSN: | 0142-7237 |
ISSN: | 1740-2344 |
Title of parent work (English): | First language |
Subtitle (English): | Constructing an early grammar in German child language |
Publisher: | Sage Publ. |
Place of publishing: | London |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2018/03/22 |
Publication year: | 2018 |
Release date: | 2021/04/19 |
Tag: | CDI; German; determiners; early syntax; grammatical words |
Volume: | 39 |
Issue: | 1 |
Number of pages: | 19 |
First page: | 61 |
Last Page: | 79 |
Funding institution: | Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Science Foundation)German Research Foundation (DFG) [Sz 41/5-1, Sz 41/11-1] |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Bildungswissenschaften / Department für Inklusionspädagogik |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 415 Grammatik |
Peer review: | Referiert |