The study on first language acquisition is always a delight...

1
The study on first language acquisition is always
a delight...
2
Programme

• Overview of the system of inflectional morphology
  of Estonian
• Acquisition of inflectional types and patterns
  Acquisition of analytic and synthetic,
  agglutinating and fusional formation and some
  notes concerning the impact of morphological
  richness of the input language on acquisition
  rate
• Acquisition of case
• Acquisition of tense
• Acquisition of aspect
• Communication styles of Estonian children and
  mothers

3
Estonia

• Estonian language belongs to the Finnic group of
  the Finno-Ugric language family
• 1,1 million speakers
• Estonian language developed on the basis of
  dialects spoken in the Estonian area in 13th-16th
  centuries, Standard Estonian started to develop
  in the 16th century. Estonian was the official
  language of the Republic of Estonia in 1919-1940
  and regained this status once again in 1988.

4
Why to study the acquisition of first language?

• To understand the essential nature of the
  language
• is the language mainly for communication?
• or is it for thinking?
• is the language something that happens with us or
  something we learn step by step?
• if the language is something we learn, how do we
  learn it so quickly at so early age?

5
How do we learn a language?

• If we learn a language by just imitating the
  language we hear, why do we make mistakes we
  never hear in the input?
• Why do children start speaking differently one
  with sentences, another with just stems
  constructing a language peace by peace?
• Why can children in the same family even, for
  example, twins of triplets, acquire language in a
  different way?

6
Why to study the acquisition of first language?

• To help children with SLI (Specific language
  impairment, 7 of population, need help before
  6), to spot children with SLI, and to help them
  to acquire the language
• To help those who are acquiring the foreign
  language (if a 1-2 year old child can acquire a
  structure of a given language, there must be a
  universal and very simple acquisition procedure
  for acquiring this structure).

7
And why to study the acquisition of Estonian
Why is the acquisition of Estonian different from
the acquisition of English, for example?

• The languages are different
• amount of morphology,
• importance of word order,
• gradation in Estonian, no future, no gender, a
  lot of cases etc.
• To understand how and to what extent the
  structure of language itself can influence the
  acquisition course and speed.

8
Short description of Estonian language from
typological perspective

• The Estonian language has developed historically
  from an agglutinating to a more fusional language
  type (Erelt 2003 7) and, as is common in
  inflecting-fusional languages, there is often no
  clear boundary between the stem and a grammatical
  formative (Erelt et al. 1995 129).
• For example only 10 of nouns have an
  unchangeable stem in all their inflectional forms
  (Erelt et al. 1995 156).
• Therefore, phonological changes of the stem are
  very important in the inflection of Estonian
  nouns. (Erelt et al. 1995 129).

9
Phonological changes in stems

• Gradation in Estonian includes on the one hand
  alternation in quantity, in which a phonetically
  stronger stem shape (strong grade/3rd degree of
  length), alternates with a phonetically weaker
  one (the weak grade/2nd degree of length)
• for example vanni bathGEN Q2 vs. vanni
  bathILLAT Q3
• On the other hand, there is alternation in
  quality, which is mostly reflected in the change,
  assimilation or loss of a single onset obstruent
  of the second syllable in the weak grade.
• for example nägu 'faceNOM' gt näo 'faceGEN'

10
How children start to acquire a language?

• The process of language acquisition takes place
  quite in a similar way in many languages, but
  still there are some differences between
  languages.
• Estonian children start usually to acquire the
  language from reduplication and onomatopoeia.

11
Onomatopoeia An interesting part of Estonian
lexicon which is important in early language
acquisition

• Estonian language as also Finnish has a big
  amount of onomatopoetic words. All these words
  are not loanwords and the formation of such words
  is still productive.
• For example the are so called open strings of
  such words kolisema gt kilisema gt kõlisema gt
  kulisema - by modifying the stem vowel we can
  modify the sound.
• Onomatopoeia is frequently used in the input to
  small children for animals (muu, auh-auh,
  krooks-krooks, mjäu), for machines (viu-viu,
  põrr-põrr), etc.

12
Onomatopoeia and the acquisition of Estonian

• Onomatopoetic words are the first words in the
  child's speech already at the end of babbling
  period. In Estonian usually at age 010-12.
• Among very first imitatives are words for
  familiar animals, for example, a dog (auh-auh
  Hendrik at age 10). The meaning of such an early
  word can change at first the word denoted only
  our own dog, a month later also other dogs, some
  time later all furry animals and things, even a
  piece of cotton wool, and after two months it was
  used only for referring to our own dog, other
  dogs were referred by standard word koer.

13
Onomatopoeia and the input

• Onomatopoetic words have highly socio-cultural
  value. They are a part of the communication style
  used when speaking with small children. They are
  used in songs and rhymes and in everyday routines
  (mõmm-mõmm mõmm-mõmm nutab karujõmm,
  mull-mull-mull-mull väiksed kalad).
• Onomatopoetic words are used not only by mothers
  but also by fathers (although they do not usually
  admit it).
• The use of onomatopoeia is changing when the
  child is growing for example - at child's age
  10 the mother uses construction teeb kop-kop
  'make-3SG knock-knock', but when the child is 17
  there is the verb koputama 'to knock' in the
  speech of the mother. While there were both
  variants occurring in the speech of the mother
  several months (from 13-16).

14
Onomatopoeia and the acquisition of grammar

• Imitatives are not inflecting, they don't have
  morphology. So, the child can use these words
  without knowing anything about inflectional rules
  or patterns. Imitatives are like ready-to-use
  pieces of language system at the child's age when
  grammar hasn't started to develop. (For example
  teeb kiiga-kaaga, teeb piip-piip, teeb ai-ai,
  teeb mämm-mämm)?
• Onomatopoetic words are reduplicative (tuut-tuut,
  kop-kop), and reduplicative elements are used
  when the child has not yet started to acquire the
  grammar. Reduplication helps the child to
  recognize the boundary of the syllable and to
  identify the meaningful piece of the speech flow.

15
The task for the child the system of
inflectional morphology of Estonian

• In Estonian, nominals, i.e. nouns, adjectives,
  numerals and pronouns, are all inflected for
  number and case.
• Estonian has 14 nominal cases, both in the
  singular and plural.
• A nominal paradigm may contain case forms
  consisting of the bare stem or suffixed stems.
• Verbs have finite forms and non-finite forms.
  Finite forms are inflected for mood, tense,
  voice, person, and number.

16
When do Estonian children start to acquire
morphology?

• Estonian children start to acquire morphology
  after age 12 and before age 20.
• The first productive forms of the oblique case of
  the noun appear in the speech of the Estonian
  child as early as at the age of 17,
  (partitives) the first verb forms (simple
  present, simple past) become productive somewhat
  later, at the age of 19.

• The richer inflection is in the input, the more
  stimulated children are to develop inflection in
  this domain, and the more rapid is development
  (Dressler et al. 2007 69).
• Children acquiring an agglutinating language
  develop the inflectional system most rapidly
  (Laaha Gillis 2007).

17
How can (s)he manage with such a difficult task?

• She starts from highly functional oppositions of
  two most frequent forms, for example nominative
  and partitive or imperative and simple past.
• Nominative can be used for pointing to something
  and partitive for demanding something.
• Imperative is used for giving orders and simple
  past is used for telling of something has
  happened.

18
Some things are easier to acquire

• What makes things easier to acquire?
• simple and transparent structure of a language
  element
• simple and transparent way to make forms
• input frequency

19
Gradation is typologically a very specific
feature of Estonian

• Phonological changes in stems are principally of
  two kinds
• gradation changes (affecting the root and medial
  sounds) and
• other changes (omission, addition and ordering
  changes of final phonemes)?
• In addition, there are some suppletive stems
• When the stem is subject to gradation it will
  occur in strong or weak forms in different
  grades in the case of a change concerning the
  final phoneme there will be different final
  phonemes in different case forms (Erelt et al.
  1995 130).

20
At first sight...

• ...the gradation can be considered to be a
  language-specific factor that might hamper the
  acquisition of the inflectional system because in
  the case of gradational words a child has to
  select a suitable stem shape in addition to a
  suitable suffix.
• There are a lot of frequent words with grade
  alternation in the input, but gradation is
  sometimes avoided in child-directed speech by
  numerous diminutive derivatives where a
  non-gradational word has been derived from an
  originally gradational word
• koer dog gt kutsu doggy kass cat gt kiisu
  kitten.

21
But...

• ...Estonian children acquire quantity alternation
  at an early age and use it to distinguish between
  two case forms already during the stage when they
  have not acquired the case suffixes.
• For example, functional oppositions of
• 1) genitive piti (pildi) 'picture' Q2 and the
  partitive pitti (pilti) Q3 (18)?
• 2) illative nanni (vanni) (into) bath Q3 and
  nanni- (vannis) (in) bath Q2
• linna into townQ3 and linna in town Q2
  (18).
• Functional oppositions for expressing important
  semantic roles like direction and location or
  possessor and object.

22
Almost errorless acquisition of gradation

• No overgeneralizations and errors in the
  acquisition of grade alternation were found, only
  few errors appeared in case forms with quality
  alternation e.g. nuga-ga 'knife-COM' instead of
  noa-ga, käsi-ga 'hand-COM' instead of käe-ga.
• The functionality of a phenomenon plays the most
  significant role in the acquisition of grade
  alternation, that is, if a word form in a weak or
  strong quantity distinguishes important
  grammatical meanings (without making words longer
  than 2 syllables!) and if grade alternation is
  also frequent, that is, it occurs in those words
  that are most frequent in child-directed speech,
  then such a phenomenon is acquired early and
  without errors.

23
Acquisition of case

• The case system is often regarded as one of the
  most difficult aspects of Estonian grammar there
  are many cases, a single case often has several
  different allomorphs and the inflectional classes
  of nouns are not always simple or regular.
• In spite of the fact that the agglutinating case
  formation is not complicated in most cases
  historical developments have produced
  unpredictable stem changes (especially in the
  partitive and illative cases).

24
First words and first forms

• Estonian child usually starts to inflect words
  when she has at least 50 words in her lexicon.
• At the beginning almost all nouns are in the
  nominative, only few lexemes occur in the
  partitive and genitive. The next cases are the
  illative and inessive (age 18110). There are
  no instances of marginal cases in children's
  speech at early stage.

25
First rote-learned forms and oppositions

• Although some adult-like forms of nouns carrying
  a suffix do occur already in the premorphological
  phase, most of the first rote-learned case forms
  do not carry a suffix.
• In such forms, the category of case is expressed
  by the stem variant corresponding to the case
  form and its function in Standard Estonian.
• The first forms of nouns contrasting with the
  nominative are usually forms of other grammatical
  cases, namely the partitive and genitive some
  instances of the nominative opposed to the
  illative or comitative forms of a given lexeme
  are also found.

26
Acquisition of analytic and synthetic,
agglutinating and fusional formation

• There is some evidence that agglutinating
  formation can be acquired more easily than
  fusional formation technique not only in general,
  but also within one language because of its
  transparency.
• For example tüdruku-te-ga 'girl-Pl-COM'
• The acquisition of a morphological system is
  easier if inflectional markers in a word form are
  ordered so that each suffix corresponds to a
  specific grammatical category in case a suffix
  carries several grammatical meanings, it is more
  difficult to acquire the inflected form (see
  Voeikova 2002).

27
Agglutination vs Fusion

• For example, it can be supposed that it would be
  easier to acquire the agglutinating partitive
  form tüdruku-i-d 'girl-PL-PRTV'
• than the form maja-sid 'housePL.PRTV' where
  partitive and plural are mixed into one suffix.
• It is possible to use different formation
  techniques for a partitive plural
• 1) the fusional stem plural maja (houseNOM) gt
  maju (housePLPRTV)?
• 2) form with the cumulative formative, the
  sid-marker maja-sid (house-PLPRTV)?
• 3) agglutinating i-plural forms raamat
  (bookNOM) gt raamatu-i-d (book-PL-PRTV).

28
But how it actually happens Acquisition order of
different partitive plural types

• 1. First partitive plural form lilli flowers
  was the fusional stem plural, at the age of 18,
  fusional formation productively used at age 20.
• 2. The fusional sid-formative, maja-sid
  house-PLPRTV, patarei-sid batterie- PLPRTV
  at the age of 20, productively used at 20.
• 3. The agglutinating i-formative appeared at age
  20, katule-i-d potato-PL-PRTV), the use of the
  i-plural productive only at 24.

29
What makes the acquisition of fusional partitive
plural easier to acquire

• 1. Lexical patterns
• First partitive plural nouns occurred often in a
  quantifier construction (palju loomi a lot of
  animals).
• 2. Phonological factors
• a) Trochaic stage - the speech of an Estonian
  child consists of less than 10 words which are
  longer than 2 syllables at age 20. Towards the
  end of the trochaic stage, from 20 the child
  begins to use also sid-marked and agglutinating
  i-plural forms, which make the words longer than
  two syllables.
• b) Inability to pronounce a closed non-initial
  syllable - no words with closed non-initial
  syllables were found before the age of 20.
• 3. Input frequency 60 of the partitive plural
  forms in child-directed speech represent fusional
  formation.

30
Error Analysis Partitive plural

• In the case of the stem plural the plural differs
  from the singular only by the stem vowel.
• On the one hand, it is easy to make a distinction
  between the singular and the plural because the
  plural form has a different final vowel, on the
  other hand, the conditions of vowel alternations
  complicate matters.
• Many mistakes were made in the choice of the
  correct stem vowel, especially in a-stem words,
  as silme instead of silmi eyePL.PRTV at age
  26, kinge instead of kingi shoePL.PRTV at
  age 28.

31
Partitive plural

• The formation of the partitive plural by the
  cumulative formative -sid revealed only some
  mistakes onu-seid instead of onu-sid
  uncle-PL.PRTV and tädi-seid instead of
  tädi-sid aunt-PL.PRTV at the age of 26.
• Analogy of ne-words (punane gt punase-i-d
  'red-PL-PRTV').
• A child declines the adjective võõras strange
  similarly to typical Estonian ne-ending
  adjectives (e.g. punane punase-i-d
  red-PL-PRTV). A child was able to form fusional
  partitive plural forms without any mistakes only
  at the age of 30.
• Estonian children acquire the fusional vowel
  plural earlier than the agglutinating plural, but
  error analysis shows that the correct use of the
  fusional technique poses more difficulties for a
  child.

32
Rote-learned forms are followed by miniparadigms

• Miniparadigms are sets of most important forms of
  the same stem.
• The first miniparadigms are clearly lexeme-based
  there is a certain choice of case forms for each
  lexeme.
• Thus, the noun kast box is used in the
  genitive, inessive and elative (Andreas at age
  20) while other lexemes may be used with
  different cases.
• For some pragmatically important lexemes, such as
  issi daddy, emme mummy, piss pee-pee, see
  this, the child needs more forms while for
  others, three seem to suffice (e.g. müts hat).
• Adverb-like nouns usually have only two local
  case forms, illative and inessive (e.g. õue
  (to go) outsideNOM and õue-s (to be)
  outside-INESS) tuppa roomILL( (to go)
  inside) vs. toas room-INESS ( (to be) inside)
  Andreas 21).

33
Miniparadigms

• The choice of case forms appearing in
  miniparadigms seems to depend on the semantic
  category of the noun.
• There are three main kinds of miniparadigms to be
  found in Andreas data at 26
• miniparadigms of nouns for food containing three
  grammatical cases (e.g. pähkli nutGEN,
  pähkli-d nut-NOMPL, pähklei-d
  nut-PARTITPL),
• miniparadigms of animated nouns and baby-talk
  words containing grammatical cases and the
  allative (e.g. issi daddyNOM issi daddyGEN
  issi-t daddy-PARTIT issi-le daddy-ALL)
  and finally
• miniparadigms of words expressing location
  consisting of two or more local cases (e.g.
  sahtli-sse drawer-ILL, sahtli-s drawer-INESS,
  sahtli-st drawer-ELAT.

34
Abundance of inflectional types and patterns and
the speed of acquisition of morphology

• Estonian has many inflectional classes and a
  quite complex morphophonology. Children use
  different strategies to simplify this complicated
  inflectional system.
• One such strategy is the overextension of a
  regular inflectional pattern to irregular nouns.
  At 20, Andreas forms the partitive of the
  irregular noun juhe wireNOM based on the
  genitive stem juhtme, as is usual with regularly
  inflecting nouns without grade alternation,
  producing juhtme-t instead of juhe-t
  wire-PARTIT without quality alternation.

35
Abundance of inflectional types and patterns and
the speed of acquisition of morphology II

• A child does not acquire all inflectional
  patterns at once rather at first (s)he picks up
  those words in child-directed speech that belong
  only to certain (extremely productive)
  inflectional types
• preferred inflectional types are highly frequent
  inflectional types in the input language and
  productive and open types. For example the type
  with monosyllabic gradational words with
  weakening stems, model word sepp blacksmith),
  e.g. poeg son, lill flower, klots block.

36
Children acquire only some of these types at first
37
Rate of the acquisition of case

• Estonian children have acquired the core of
  Estonian case system (7-10 cases of 14) and the
  core of verbal inflectional system - all persons,
  simple present and past, past perfect (in
  indicative, imperative voice) at age 30 .

• The number of cases in a language does not play
  a special role at the early stage of acquisition
  because a child does not acquire all the cases at
  a time but only the core at first (Voeikova
  2002 3437)?

38
Acquisition of case from first rote-learned forms
to miniparadigms

• What was supposed to make the acquisition
  difficult?
• Were these factors really making the acquisition
  process difficult?
• What makes the acquisition easier?

39
Acquisition of Tense

• Why to study the acquisition of tense?
• to understand how children start to acquire
  temporal relations, for example, how they start
  to differentiate past from non-past
• tense morphology has been a most vulnerable area
  of language system for children with SLI

40
Tense in Estonian

• Estonian has a comparatively small core tense
  system. In traditional grammars of Estonian
  language, four tenses are distinguished.
• Estonian has no morphological form for the
  future, which is expressed with present tense
  form and by some kind of lexical means.
• Present tense is unmarked kuku-n 'fall-1Sg'.
• Imperfect uses agglutinative means in indicative
  (kukku-si-n 'fall-PAST-1Sg') and analytic means
  in other moods and analytic means also in
  negative.
• Perfect and past perfect use analytic means.

41
How I studied the acquisition tense

• Experiment
• Design the road and three landmarks on the road
  referring to the past, present and future, the
  protagonist who has to perform the same action
  near these landmarks.
• Comprehension and production Sentences in
  comprehension were presented to the child and she
  had to point to one of landmarks. The beginnings
  of these sentences were presented to the child in
  production part and child had to elicit these
  sentences.
• COMPREHENSION The king was snoring ...
• PRODUCTION Near the plant the king ...
• TEST!

42
Comprehension (N20, aged 50-60)

• Children can understand present.
• They can not fully understand past and future,
  but they still have started to acquire these
  tenses.
• There could be a initial present-centered
  tense-system for children (they start to
  differentiate tenses from one big present tense
  system - me-here-now)?

43
Production (N20, age 50-60)?

• Children produce correctly past, but no present
  and future.
• Why?

44
Future in Estonian

• Present tense form
• Present tense form time adverbial
• Periphrastic construction to start to....
• Perphrastic construction to go to...
• Only last two options are grammaticalized as a
  future forms tense
• Three last options are differentiable from the
  present

45
ProductionTenses used
46
Conclusions acquisition of tense

• The design of the experiment can influence the
  use of past tense in present situations.
• There is no uniform present-centered tense-system
  in the acquisition of Estonian.
• The future was interesting children used a lot
  of negative constructions (has not done yet, has
  not snored, is not snoring) they differentiate
  future from present using past! The future is
  problematic also cognitively you have not seen
  the situation yet, how can you decide if the
  action will take place or not...
• The tense is not acquired at age 50-60 in
  Estonian.

47
Aspect some general remarks

• Similarly to the other Finno-Ugric languages, the
  aspect in Estonian has not developed into a
  consistent grammatical category. The aspect can
  be expressed by means of progressive and
  resultative constructions (mostly with adverbs
  and verb particles) as well as by the case
  alternation of the object.
• The case alternation of the object is a
  manifestation of the aspect expressed by
  grammatical means in Estonian. It is the most
  regular means of expressing the aspect in
  Estonian.

48
The choice of the object case...

• ...is determined
• 1) by the perfectivity or imperfectivity of the
  action and,
• 2) by the quantitative boundedness or
  non-boundedness of the object item.
• The total object (object in the genitive or the
  nominative) is used when both the action and the
  object item are bounded, and the partial object
  (object in the partitive case) is used when the
  action, object item, or both are unbounded (Erelt
  et al. 1995 5152 Tamm 2004 29).
• Thus, the Estonian object may occur in three
  grammatical cases
• the partial object in the partitive,
• and the total object in the genitive (singular)
  and the nominative.

49
What was my question?

• Case alternation is a very difficult part of
  Estonian grammar for learners of Estonian as a
  second language. - is it difficult also for
  children?
• When do Estonian children acquire case
  alternation?
• Would it be easier in certain kinds of
  situations or not?

50
How I studied the acquisition of aspect

• Experiment comprehension and production
• Four conditions Completed situation Perfective
  form, Completed situation Imperfective form,
  Incompleted situation Imperfective form,
  Incompleted situation Perfective form
• Two conditions in production test Completed
  situation and Incompleted situation
• Tense is constant (past), aspect (genitive -
  partitive form) varies
• Situation is presented visually (video clips) in
  comprehension test the child must decide if the
  sentence is tru or not, in production test
  children must elicit sentences
• There are some triggers between test items to
  keep the child's attention on the task.
• TEST!

51
Example

• Video
• Comprehension
• Introduction Here is a clown, he has to draw
  several things. Sometimes she will get ready
  sometimes not. At first the sun.
• Trigger When the music stopped, was the pencil
  touching the board?
• Question (Com-I) While the music was playing the
  clown was drawing the sun. True or not?
• Production
• Introduction Now the moon. Tell me about the
  moon and drawing.
• Test sentence While the music was playing the
  clown...

52
Results control group (N20)Comprehension
53
AdultsProduction
54
Children (N20, age 50-60)Comprehension
55
Correct answers with different verbs
56
Conclusions

• What is the common feature of verbs with low
  results?
• What kind of conclusions we can draw of these
  results?

57
ChildrenProduction
58
Answers and verbs (and objects)?
59
Conclusions about the experiment used

• Estonian children acquire the case alternation
  (the aspect) quite late, after age 5.
• The semantics of used verbs is extremely
  important! So the aspect in Estonian can not be
  considered to be fully grammaticized in the case
  alternation.
• There is some inconsistent use of case
  alternation also in adult data.

60
Conclusion How does the Estonian Child Acquire
Estonian language

• The richness of the Estonian morphological system
  stimulates the acquisition of inflectional
  morphology at an early age, whereas the large
  number of inflectional types and patterns does
  not slow down the acquisition of morphology.
• The child uses the so-called compensatory
  strategies for copying with a fragmented system
  of inflectional patterns and restricts at first
  the number of inflectional types to two or three
  most productive and most frequent types in
  child-directed speech.

61
How does the Estonian Child Acquire Estonian
language II

• Grade alternation, which is a characteristic
  feature of the Finnic languages, is acquired at
  an early age, whereas quantity alternation is
  acquired earlier than quality alternation.
• A child acquiring the Estonian language starts to
  pay attention to the case alternation of the
  object, that is, to use both the partial and the
  total object with one and the same verb, rather
  early, but the correct choice of the object case
  will be acquired as late as at the age of six.

62

• When coping with the categories and the large
  number of inflectional patterns, the child uses
  the acquisition of an initial restricted system
  as a compensatory strategy.
• On the other hand, in the case of morphologically
  complicated forms (partitive plural) and the
  choice of the case of the object or the
  acquisition of the most difficult rule the child
  relies on some special lexical pattern.
• It can be claimed, however, that in the case of
  all the studied structures a child begins the
  acquisition of Estonian inflectional morphology
  from those parts of the language that are
  typologically characteristic, unmarked, and
  central. Parts of language structure which are
  not stable (case alternation in objects), are
  acquired later.