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Acquisition of prefixed denominal causatives in Polish

University of British Columbia

Forty-eight Polish-speaking children divided into 4 age groups: the 3's, 5's, 7's and 9's, participated in a study of the acquisition of prefixed denominal causatives. Twelve short (1.0-1.5 minute) video scenes were used as stimuli for the elicitation of existing and novel denominals. Deverbal items were used as a reference point for examining acquisition of denominals. Each video scene showed a protagonist actively involved in a causal action. The action scenes were nonverbal, except that the protagonist always provided a noun or verb, from which a prefixed causative was to be derived. Analysis of variance indicated significant main effects for Age and Item Type. The youngest children performed worst and the oldest performed best, with deverbal items being the easiest, followed by existing denominals, then novel denominals. This sequence of acquisition was not contradicted by the performance of any subject. A significant Age x Item Type interaction was also found, and reflected the fact that the older children performed better on the deverbal items than on the novel denominal items, while the younger children performed poorly on all item types. The major predictor of children's performance was their knowledge of the function of verbal suffixes in denominal derivatives, followed by their ability to perform a semantic analysis of the prefixes. Perfectivisation through prefixation was found easy even for the youngest subjects. Other factors, such as linguistic expression of causality, phonological and phonotactic skills, and metalinguistic knowledge combined with cognitive skills, might have played a role, however, more research needs to be done to estimate involvement of these factors in the acquisition process.

Thesis/Dissertation

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2009-01-27

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/3932

Audiology and Speech Sciences

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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