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Acquisition of gender agreement in Lithuanian: Exploring the effect of diminutive usage in an elicited production task*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

INETA SAVICKIENĖ ,
VERA KEMPE  and
PATRICIA J. BROOKS
INETA SAVICKIENĖ*
Affiliation:
Vytautas Magnus University
VERA KEMPE
Affiliation:
University of Abertay, Dundee
PATRICIA J. BROOKS
Affiliation:
College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center of City University of New York
*
Address for correspondence: Ineta Savickienė, Regional Studies Department, Vytautas Magnus University, Donelaičio 58, Kaunas LT-44248, Lithuania. e-mail: i.savickiene@pmdi.vdu.lt
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Abstract

This study examines Lithuanian children's acquisition of gender agreement using an elicited production task. Lithuanian is a richly inflected Baltic language, with two genders and seven cases. Younger (N=24, mean 3 ; 1, 2 ; 5–3 ; 8) and older (N=24, mean 6 ; 3, 5 ; 6–6 ; 9) children were shown pictures of animals and asked to describe them after hearing the animal's name. Animal names differed with respect to familiarity (novel vs. familiar), derivational status (diminutive vs. simplex) and gender (masculine vs. feminine). Analyses of gender-agreement errors based on adjective and pronoun usage indicated that younger children made more errors than older children, with errors more prevalent for novel animal names. For novel animals, and for feminine nouns, children produced fewer errors with nouns introduced in diminutive form. These results complement findings from several Slavic languages (Russian, Serbian and Polish) that diminutives constitute a salient cluster of word forms that may provide an entry point for the child's acquisition of noun morphology.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , June 2009 , pp. 477 - 494
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

[*]

This project was supported by a Fulbright grant to I. Savickienė, and a PSC-CUNY award to P. J. Brooks. We thank Ingrida Balčiūnienė and Laura Kamandulytė for assistance with data collection and coding.

References

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