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The Acquisition of Derivational Morphology: A cross-linguistic perspective
Edited by Veronika Mattes, Sabine Sommer-Lolei, Katharina Korecky-Kröll and Wolfgang U. Dressler
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 66] 2021
► pp. 53–84

Chapter 3
Derivational patterns in spontaneous data of French-speaking parent-child interactions before age three

 | University of Lausanne
 | University of Lausanne
This chapter is a first step towards the characterisation of the morphological structure of the French lexicon in early first language acquisition, i.e. before children coin novel word formations. Focusing on nouns and verbs, it analyses the variety of derivational means used by toddlers and caregivers in two corpora of French-speaking children (1;4/1;6–2;11). A comparison is done with a sample of adult-directed (ADS) speech. Findings on derivation are compared with previous observations on compounds in the same data. The results display the development of tight-knit morphological relationships within the lexicon and a clear prevalence of suffixation over other derivational means and compounding. Along with errors in affixed words, these relationships provide cues of early detection of derivational morphology in child speech.
Keywords: affixed words, converted words, morphological errors, compounds
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.French derivational morphology in the target system
    • 2.1Noun formation
    • 2.2Verb formation
    • 2.3Adjective formation
  • 3.Data and method
    • 3.1Data
    • 3.2Method
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Suffixation
      • 4.1.1Nominal suffixes
      • 4.1.2Adjectival suffixes
      • 4.1.3Errors
      • 4.1.4Development of semantic categories
    • 4.2Prefixation
    • 4.3Conversion
      • 4.3.1N-V pairs
        • 4.3.1.1Homophonous N-V pairs
        • 4.3.1.2N-V pairs with modification
      • 4.3.2Verbs derived from adjectives
      • 4.3.3Adjectives converted from verbs (PP, PPres, sg. pres. ind.)/deverbal adjectives
    • 4.4ADS
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.66.03kil
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Forshaw, William
2022. Book Review: Veronica Mattes, Sabine Sommer-Lolei, Katharina Korecky-Kröll and Wolfgang U. Dressler (Eds.), The acquisition of derivational morphology: A cross-linguistic perspective. First Language 42:5 ► pp. 696 ff. DOI logo

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