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Re: L1 learning question

From:Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
Date:Sunday, September 27, 1998, 3:25
Nik Taylor wrote:

> When children learn a language like Spanish, which has multiple verb > paradigms, do they ever confuse the paradigms? For example, do young > children sometimes produce forms like *habli', much as English-speaking > children sometimes say things like *speaked? I realize that's not quite > the same, since that's a matter of irregular vs. regular (and the > contrast between the correct hable' and the incorrect habli' is > predictable based on verb class), but it's a related issue. Also, if > they do, are -er and -ir endings more often confused than those and -ar, > since the -er and -ir have fewer differences, so are children more > likely to produce a form *podimos than *hablimos?
In terms of language acquisition, it is perfectly normal for children to introduce regularity into their speech, at some point. Generally (and this will be a useful oversimplification, but a simplification nonetheless), children enter into the world with very little if any capacity to speak. Now, of course, they are very probably hard-wired to be *able* to speak, but at very early stages of development, they do not have the muscular dexterity to manipulate the organs of speech properly. Once they have progressed beyond one and two word phrasal sentences, they generally burst into full-blown normal sentences. For morphology, they only subtly begin to learn this, quite a bit after they learn to manage certain properties of syntax, but the thing is that once they do learn a morphological function, their tendency is to generalize that to the greatest extent possible. Before this point, they would use every form they know as a seperate lexical entity, so when the rule comes along that past tense (e.g.) is formed with a dental suffix, they think (quite logically so) that all verbs form past tense in this way. Only later do they reacquire, so to speak, the irregular forms they had been previously using. So, that having been said, any irregularity will naturally be eliminated for a time until the child learns otherwise. This is of course a generalization, but it's a very useful guide to understanding the complexities of the situation. ======================================================= Tom Wier <artabanos@...> ICQ#: 4315704 AIM: Deuterotom Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/> "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero." We look at [the Tao], and do not see it; Its name is the Invisible. - Lao Tsu, _Tao Te Ching_ Nature is wont to hide herself. - Herakleitos ========================================================