Skeemakongruenssi. Morfologisten skeemojen kongruenssia lapsenkielessä

• Klaus Laalo

Avainsanat: kongruenssi, lapsenkieli, morfologia, skeema

Abstrakti

Schema concord in child language (englanti)

1995 (99)

Klaus Laalo

Schema concord: agreement between morphological schemas in child language

When a child learns the complex stem-formation processes of Finnish and the selection of appropriate ending allomorphs at the same time as practising how to expand NPs via premodifiers, forms easily emerge which are morphologically odd (e.g. omaissa, hyvej, leht) yet nevertheless have a natural explanation: the child is extending concord to affect not only the suffix elements but also the stem-final sound(s), e.g. omaissa rattaissa (pro omissa rattaissa), hyvej leikkej (pro hyvi leikkej), tt leht (pro tt lehte). I call this phenomenon schema concord; the child's flexible inflection system is based on word-final sound-schemas which show intensive mutual concord. Schema concord develops at the point where morphology and syntax meet, where paradigmatic and syntagmatic factors interact at a particular stage in language acquisition.

Morphological curiosities which are caused, or at least partly influenced, by schema concord are often perceptually clearer than the corresponding adult forms. For instance, stem variations can become simplified; or a plural stem can become more transparent, so that a stem-final vowel which is deleted in adult language before the plural marker i is either preserved intact or else alters in such a way that the original vowel can be easily inferred from it. A nominal with a generally clearer or more regular inflection has an assimilating effect on a nominal which tends to show variation or be problematic in child language at a given stage. If analysis focuses on isolated forms, this syntagmatic relation of mutual concord between nominals is easily overlooked.

Schema concord does not, of course, explain all the inflectional deviance in child language, but it does help to explain the origin of many forms that look strange when seen out of context.