Hostname: page-component-55f67697df-bzg56 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-19T08:54:11.873Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sound structure and input frequency impact on noun plural acquisition: Hypotheses tested on Danish children across different data types

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2014

Laila Kjærbæk ,
René dePont Christensen  and
Hans Basbøll
Laila Kjærbæk
Affiliation:
Department of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M, Denmark. kjarbak@sdu.dk
René dePont Christensen
Affiliation:
Research Unit of General Practice, J. B. Winsløws Vej 9, DK-5000 Odense C, Denmark. rechristensen@health.sdu.dk
Hans Basbøll
Affiliation:
Department of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M, Denmark. hba@sdu.dk
Get access

Abstract

This study analyses the emergence of the noun plural category in typically developing Danish-speaking children from its first appearance up to the age of 10 years, focusing on the impact of sound structure and input frequency. We use a multi-method research approach comparing different data types (dictionary data, naturalistic spontaneous child language input and output, semi-naturalistic/semi-experimental data, experimental data and reported data). We define cross-linguistically three degrees of stem changes (no change, prosodic change, phonemic change), and we also define three degrees of productivity of plural markers (which combine stem change and suffix). Noun plurals emerge from an early age, typically around the second birthday, but the acquisition is still underway at the age of ten years. Plural acquisition is affected by frequency and morphophonological category. Danish children produce more correct plural stems of nouns with non-changing plural stems compared to plural nouns with stem change, and more correct plural stems of nouns with prosodic change than with phonemic change. Furthermore, they produce more correct plural suffixes of nouns with a-schwa suffix than with e-schwa and zero suffix. Danish children also produce more correct plural forms of nouns with a fully productive than a semi-productive plural marker, and more of the latter than of nouns with an unproductive plural marker. We also discuss the important role in Danish of the plural marker ø, where pl = sg.

Keywords

Danishfrequencylanguage acquisitionmorphologynoun pluralphoneticsphonologysound structure
Type
Research Article
Information
Nordic Journal of Linguistics , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , May 2014 , pp. 47 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Nordic Association of Linguistics 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Argus, Reilli. 2009. The early development of case and number in Estonian. In Stephany, Ursula & Voeikova, Maria (eds.), Development of Nominal Inflection in First Language Acquisition: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective, 111–151. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Basbøll, Hans. 2005. The Phonology of Danish. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Basbøll, Hans. 2009. Is nothing something, or isn't it anything? Zeroes in Danish prosodic morphology. In Fraser, Bruce & Turner, Ken (eds.), Language in Life, and a Life in Language: Jacob Mey – a Festschrift, 19–24. Oxford: Emerald.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Basbøll, Hans, Bleses, Dorthe, Cadierno, Teresa, Jensen, Anne, Ladegaard, Hans Jørgen, Madsen, Thomas O., Millar, Sharon, Sinha, Chris & Thomsen, Pia. 2002. The Odense Language Acquisition Project. Child Language Bulletin 22, 11–12.Google Scholar
Basbøll, Hans, Kjærbæk, Laila & Lambertsen, Claus. 2011. The Danish noun plural landscape. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 43, 81–105,Google Scholar
Bates, Elizabeth & MacWhinney, Brian. 1987. Competition, variation and language learning. In MacWhinney, Brian (ed.), Mechanisms of Language Acquisition, 57–163. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Berko, Jean 1958. The child's learning of English morphology. Word 14, 150–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bleses, Dorthe, Basbøll, Hans & Vach, Werner. 2011. Is Danish difficult to acquire? Evidence from Nordic past-tense studies. Language and Cognitive Processes 26, 1193–1231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bleses, Dorthe, Vach, Werner, Slott, Malene, Wehberg, Sonja, Thomsen, Pia, Madsen, Thomas O. & Basbøll, Hans. 2008a. Early vocabulary development in Danish and other languages: A CDI-based comparison. Journal of Child Language 35, 619–650.Google Scholar
Bleses, Dorthe, Vach, Werner, Slott, Malene, Wehberg, Sonja, Thomsen, Pia, Madsen, Thomas O. & Basbøll, Hans. 2008b. The Danish Communicative Development Inventories: Validity and main developmental trends. Journal of Child Language 35, 651–669.Google Scholar
Bleses, Dorthe, Vach, Werner, Wehberg, Sonja, Faber, Karina & Madsen, Thomas O.. 2007. Tidlig kommunikativ udvikling: Et værktøj til beskrivelse af sprogtilegnelse baseret på CDI forældrerapportundersøgelser af danske normalthørende og hørehæmmede børn. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark.Google Scholar
Brown, Roger. 1973. A First Language: The Early Stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. 1985. Morphology: A Study of the Relation Between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. 1995. Regular morphology and the lexicon. Language and Cognitive Processes 10, 423–455.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan [L.] & Hopper, Paul (eds.). 2001. Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. & Slobin, Dan I.. 1982. Rules and schemas in the development and use of the English past tense. Language 58, 265–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cazden, C. 1968. The acquisition of noun and verb inflection. Child Development 39, 433–448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, Harald, Aveledo, Fraibet & Roca, Iggy. 2002. The development of regular and irregular verb inflection in Spanish child language. Journal of Child Language 29, 591–622.Google Scholar
Clahsen, Harald, Rothweiler, Monika, Woest, Andreas & Marcus, Gary F.. 1992. Regular and irregular inflection in the acquisition of German noun plurals. Cognition 45, 225–255.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dąbrowska, Ewa & Szczerbinski, Marcin. 2006. Polish children's productivity with case marking: The role of regularity, type frequency, and phonological diversity. Journal of Child Language 33, 559–597.Google Scholar
Demuth, Katherine. 2007. The role of frequency in language acquisition. In Gülzow, Insa & Gagarina, Natalia (eds.), Frequency Effects in Language Acquisition (Studies on Language Acquisition 32), 383–388. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U. 2003. Morphological typology and first language acquisition: Some mutual challenges. In Booij, Geert, Guevara, Emiliano, Ralli, Angela, Sgroi, Salvatore & Scalise, Sergio (eds.), Morphology and Linguistic Typology: On-line Proceedings of the Fourth Mediterranean Morphology Meeting (MMM4), Catania, 21–23 September 2003, 7–20. Bologna: Università degli Studi di Bologna.Google Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang U. 2010. A typological approach to first language acquisition. In Kail, Michèle & Hickman, Maya (eds.), Language Acquisition across Linguistic and Cognitive Systems, 109–124. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Fenson, Larry, Marchman, Virginia A., Thal, Donna J., Dale, Philip S., Reznick, J. Steven & Bates, Elizabeth. 1993. The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories: User's Guide and Technical Manual. San Diego, CA: Singular Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Gagarina, Natalia & Voeikova, Maria. 2009. Acquisition of case and number in Russian. In Stephany, Ursula & Voeikova, Maria (eds.), Development of Nominal Inflection in First Language Acquisition: A Cross Linguistic Perspective, 179–215. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillis, Steven, Souman, Agnita, Dhollander, Sim, Molemans, Inge, Kjærbæk, Laila, Rehfeldt, Katja, Basbøll, Hans, Lambertsen, Claus, Laaha, Sabine, Bertl, Johannes, Dressler, Wolfgang U., Lavie, Naama, Levie, Ronit & Ravid, Dorit. 2008. The classical task: From singular to plural form in Dutch, Danish, Austrian German, and Hebrew. Presented at the XI Congress of the International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL), Edinburgh, 28 July – 1 August 2008.Google Scholar
Goodman, Judith C., Dale, Philip S. & Li, Ping. 2008. Does frequency count? Parental input and the acquisition of vocabulary. Journal of Child Language 35, 515–531.Google Scholar
Grønnum, Nina. 2007. Rødgrød med fløde: En lille bog om dansk fonetik. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1923. Börnesprog. Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandel, Nordisk Forlag.Google Scholar
Kjærbæk, Laila. 2013. Tilegnelse af bøjningsmorfologi: En undersøgelse af substantivernes pluralisbøjning hos normaltudviklede danske børn i alderen 1–10 år. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern Denmark, Odense.Google Scholar
Laaha, Sabine, Kjærbæk, Laila, Basbøll, Hans & Dressler, Wolfgang U.. 2011. The impact of sound structure on morphology: An experimental study on children's acquisition of German and Danish noun plurals focusing on stem change. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 43, 106–125.Google Scholar
Laaha, Sabine, Ravid, Dorit, Korecky-Kröll, Katharina, Laaha, Gregor & Dressler, Wolfgang U.. 2006. Early noun plurals in German: Regularity, productivity or default? Journal of Child Language 33, 271–302.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, Brian. 2000a. The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk, vol. 1: Transcription Format and Programs, 3rd edn. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, Brian. 2000b. The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk, vol. 2: The Database, 3rd edn. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Marcus, Gary F., Pinker, Steven, Ullman, Michael, Hollander, Michelle, Rosen, T. John & Xu, Fei. 1992. Overregularization in Language Acquisition (Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 57). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Molbæk Hansen, Peter. 1990. Gyldendals røde ordbog: Dansk udtale. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.Google Scholar
Mugdan, Joachim. 1977. Flexionsmorphologie und Psycholinguistik. Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar
Peters, Ann M. & Menn, Lise. 1993. False starts and filler syllables: Ways to learn grammatical morphemes. Language 69, 742–777.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pizzuto, Elena & Caselli, Maria. 1994. The acquisition of Italian verb morphology in a cross-linguistic perspective. In Levy, Yonata (ed.), Other Children, Other Languages: Issues in the Theory of Language Acquisition, 137–187. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Plunkett, Kim. 1985. Preliminary Approaches to Language Development. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.Google Scholar
Plunkett, Kim. 1986. Learning strategies in two Danish children's language development. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 27, 64–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plunkett, Kim & Nakisa, Ramin Charles. 1997. A connectionist model of the Arabic plural system. Language and Cognitive Processes 12, 807–836.Google Scholar
Plunkett, Kim & Strömqvist, Sven. 1992. The acquisition of Scandinavian languages. In Slobin, Dan I. (ed.), The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition, vol. 3, 457–556. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Ravid, Dorit, Dressler, Wolfgang U., Nir-Sagiv, Bracha, Korecky-Kröll, Katharina, Souman, Agnita, Rehfeldt, Katja, Laaha, Sabine, Bertl, Johannes, Basbøll, Hans & Gillis, Steven. 2008. Core morphology in child directed speech: Cross-linguistic corpus analyses of noun Plurals. In Behrens, Heike (ed.), Corpora in Language Acquisition Research: History, Methods, Perspectives (Trends In Language Acquisition Research 6), 25–60. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Schaner-Wolles, Chris. 1988. Plural- vs. Komparativerwerb im Deutschen: Von der Diskrepanz zwischen konzeptueller und morphologischer Entwicklung. In Grünther, Hartmut (ed.), Experimentelle Studien zur Flexionsmorphologie, 155–186. Hamburg: Buske.Google Scholar
Slobin, Dan I. (ed.). 1985a. The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition, vol. 1: The Data. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Slobin, Dan I. (ed.). 1985b. The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition, vol. 2: Theoretical Issues. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Stephany, Ursula. 2002. Early development of grammatical number: A typological perspective. In Voeikova, Maria D. & Dressler, Wolfgang U. (eds.), Pre- and Protomorphology: Early Phases of Morphological Development in Nouns and Verbs, 7–23. Munich: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar
Walter, S. 1975. Zur Entwicklung morphologischer Strukturen bei Kindern. Ms., Psychologisches Institut, Universität Heidelberg.Google Scholar
Wehberg, Sonja, Vach, Werner, Bleses, Dorthe, Thomsen, Pia, Madsen, Thomas O. & Basbøll, Hans. 2007. Danish children's first words: Analysing longitudinal data based on monthly CDI parental reports. First Language 27, 361–383.Google Scholar
Wehberg, Sonja, Vach, Werner, Bleses, Dorthe, Thomsen, Pia, Madsen, Thomas O. & Basbøll, Hans. 2008. Girls talk about dolls and boys about cars? Analyses of group and individual variation in Danish children's first words. First Language 28, 71–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xanthos, Aris, Laaha, Sabine, Gillis, Steven, Stephany, Ursula, Aksu-Koç, Ayhan, Christofidou, Anastasia, Gagarina, Natalia, Hrzica, Gordana, Ketrez, F. Nihan, Kilani-Schoch, Marianne, Korecky-Kröll, Katharina, Kovačević, Melita, Laalo, Klaus, Palmović, Marijan, Pfeiler, Barbara, Voeikova, Maria D. & Dressler, Wolfgang U.. 2011. On the role of morphological richness in early development of noun and verb inflection. First Language 31, 461–479.Google Scholar
Xu, Fei & Pinker, Steven. 1995. Weird past tense forms. Journal of Child Language 22, 531–556.Google Scholar