Alkukatsaus lapsenkielen esi- ja varhaismorfologiaan

• Klaus Laalo

Avainsanat: lapsenkieli, morfologia

Abstrakti

Introduction to pre- and protomorphology in Finnish child language (englanti)

2/1997 (101)

Klaus Laalo (University of Tampere; fi)

INTRODUCTION TO PRE- AND PROTOMORPHOLOGY IN FINNISH CHILD LANGUAGE

True inflection is not yet evident at the premorphological stage of child language: the child has not had time to construct grammar, but has adopted word-forms from adult language in their entirety, as unanalysed wholes. Iconicity and extragrammatical linguistic creativity are characteristic of the premorphological stage: the child uses, for example, a lot of onomatopoeic expressions. Nevertheless, at the premorphological stage the child is already using different methods (e.g. reduplication) in speech with which s/he practises true inflection. In Finnish children's speech, an important premorphological method is the alternation between short and long final vowels.

The first short final vowel (V) and long final vowel (VV) forms for a Finnish child are in a very iconic distribution: a short vowel expresses distinctness, in the case of a verb the completion of the action, and in the case of a nominal the countability of the referent; a long vowel, on the other hand, expresses either the continuity of the action or the divisibility of the nominal's referent. Of the first forms of nominal, the VV form of the partitive is used to express mass nouns, and the V form of the nominative to express countable entities. Of the first forms of verb, 2nd person singular imperatives are generally connected with distinct accomplishment (e.g. anna 'give', ota 'take'), and 3rd person singular indicatives with a continuous process (e.g. nukkuu 'is sleeping', hyppii 'is jumping'); most of a child's first indicatives could, in fact, be translated into English by the construction 'is doing'. This linking of mood with aspect fits well with an extension of the 'Aspect before tense' hypothesis proposed by van Valin (1991), namely that a child learns to use first aspect, then mood, and only after these, tense.

Other early morphological methods adopted by Finnish children are reduplication, suffixless consonant gradation and alternations in the final vowel of stems.

Reduplication is a child's very early method of first acquainting him/herself with the principles of inflection in a suffixal language. According to Maria Voeykova, reduplication enables a child to get used to the fact that word-forms consist of several parts, and so a foundation is developed for analysing word-forms into units made up of a stem and an ending. From this point of view, it can be considered indicative that many Finnish children's first word-forms include tt ('this'+PARTITIVE), which is on the one hand purely reduplicative and on the other, is divided transparently into stem and suffix.

Suffixless consonant gradation demonstrates that a child is able to observe the alternation present in stem allomorphs and thus to make an approximate two-way distinction between the basic form of a nominal and the diffuse oblique form. It appears that utilisation of this method of inflection begins with the need to distinguish between the nominative form of the subject and the n-accusative form of the object, but the faltering pronunciation of the final -n means that stem alternation becomes a more salient method of inflection than a suffix with its changing forms. For a certain period the child might then use stem alternation also in place of other, longer case endings. The child therefore already succeeds in selecting an adequate stem allomorph before s/he learns to use most suffixes.

Of the alternations in the final vowel of the stem, the most important is the alternation of -i in the nominative with -e- in the oblique stem, for example tommi : tomme 'sormi : sorme-' ('finger'). At the stage when a child has still not learnt to use most suffixes, s/he also uses this type of stem alternation for expressing oppositions that need to be formed.

The child progresses from premorphology to protomorphology when s/he starts to use inflection productively: the child starts to build his/her own system based on the system of adult language. Typical of this emerging inflectional system are the child's own provisional analogical formations, but these simplifications of the inflectional system remain a temporary impasse. An example of analogical formation at the protomorphology stage is that the child may also extend the -V : -VV alternation typical of the opposition of imperative and indicative forms (e.g. ota : ottaa ['take'], ved : vet ['pull'], koeta : koettaa ['try']) to contracted verbs (short vowel for imperative: leikkaa ['cut'] -> leika) and to single syllables (final vowel extension in indicative: juo ['drink'] -> juoo).

In comparing a child's premorphology with adult language, the starting point must be the spoken language of adults, which includes a lot of variants that differ from standard forms of language. There is, therefore, good reason to take notice of the variation in spoken language, too. On the other hand, from an early stage the child is already hearing the full forms of the written language when stories are read to him/her, and so there are many models for the variation in forms in a child's language.