Välikatsaus lapsenkielen varhaismorfologiaan

• Klaus Laalo

Avainsanat: lapsenkieli, morfologia

Abstrakti

Interim review of protomorphology in child language (englanti)

3/1998 (102)

Klaus Laalo ([e-mail])

INTERIM REVIEW OF PROTOMORPHOLOGY IN CHILD LANGUAGE

A child's very first word forms represent the premorphological stage: the child simply imitates the forms it hears from others without even attempting to inflect the words itself. The protomorphological stage begins when the child has learnt enough word forms to enable it to identify morphological elements of the language and to start actively producing inflected forms itself. These early utterances of the child include different kinds of analogical forms which interestingly shed light on both the language learning process and the various analogy tendencies present in the language system.

In a Finnish-speaking child's verb inflection, the use of i-, oi- and si-final preterites expands, and in each case oversteps the bounds of adult language. In the child's speech examined in the article, si-preterites in contracted verbs were at first displaced by i- and oi-final analogical forms, but later the si-variant spread (on the contracted-verb model) particularly to i-stems to clarify the present/preterite opposition. Differences exist between children in the position occupied by preterite variants in verb inflection. Other lines of development were also observed in the language of the children studied.

Amongst other verb forms, above all in the 1st infinitive and in the active past participle, there are different types of analogies between contracted verbs and other verbs.

In nominal inflection, tendencies for analogies appear especially in contracted nominals whose inflected forms children try to create in a simpler way than in adult language, in other words in the manner of other nominals (e.g. pyyhe : pyyhen 'pyyhkeen', huone : huoneen 'huoneeseen'). Various analogies, often very individualized, also appear in the formation of plural stems.

The lack of differentiation between word formation and inflection that is characteristic of the protomorphological stage is evident in many ways. Children may, for example, use certain of their first suffixes in an undifferentiated manner both as an inflectional suffix and as a filler syllable in the manner of a derivational suffix element. Children may also create new inflectional forms, e.g. (tulee) tyteen -> (on) tydess 'tynn', on the basis of previous inflectional forms that have become fossilised into particles. In some cases, a derivational suffix element and an inflectional suffix can fuse so that a longer suffix is formed than in adult language (e.g. -kalla and -kalle are case endings created from the diminutive suffix -kka and endings of external local cases -lla and -lle).

The system of inflectional types at the protomorphological stage has not yet become organised but instead there are plenty of divergent analogies between different types. Moreover, the simplification and equalisation tendencies of protomorphological analogies often lead to incoherence because the differences between inflectional types become equalised only in places. At the beginning of the stage, the greatest achievement from the viewpoint of language learning is that the child shifts from the earlier imitation to active processing of linguistic elements. The stage is concluded when the organization of the inflectional system progresses beyond its initial phases.