engleski

Morphological doublets in language acquisition

Theoretical accounts on morphological doubletism hold a great importance for the scientific work in applied linguistics and psycholinguistics, as well as in professional work based on the scientific findings. In this talk, the consequences of theoretical assumptions on practical considerations and conclusions regarding morphological doubletism in the child language will be discussed. Language varies in terms of geographical and social aspects, and changes over time. However, work on language variation in the child language is rather limited (but see Roberts 2008). Yet, in order to study language processing and acquisition, it would be valuable to obtain data about the evidence and frequency of certain linguistic items (words, syntactic structures, morphological forms) in the language variety spoken by the population studied. This is especially important when observing young children who have not yet been exposed to the standard language through formal schooling. Children might produce morphological doublets due to the differences in language varieties. Acquiring the first language is a fast, yet gradual process. Children acquire subsystems of a language within couple of years, and their production (e.g. systematic errors they make) might point us towards the elements within the language system that present special challenge for young learners. Important fact is that children might produce morphological doublets due to the gradual development of language subsystems. Since children acquire the language they are exposed to, they should show similar tendencies towards the usage of morphological doublets as adult speakers in their environment. Research aiming at investing this potential phenomenon has never been conducted. It might be relevant to establish the existence of parallel forms in a language, as well as their frequency and semantic features, in order to detect weather they correspond to those in the child language, or whether the child language, being a specific variation of a language, complies to different rules. Therefore, children might produce morphological doublets that do or do not correspond to the forms verified in the adult language. In conclusion, morphological doublets in the child language might be the result of language acquisition, language variation and change, and of morphological doubletism in the adult language. Without the solid knowledge about both spoken and written child language, it is often hard or impossible to determine the causation. This, in turn, affects the conclusions about language development, constructions of tasks designed to study language processing and assessment, and on the professional work in language assessment and therapy.

morphological doublets ; language varieties ; child language acquisition ; language assessment ; professional implications

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