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The development of possession in the L1 acquisition of Northern East Cree

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2019

Ryan E. HENKE
Ryan E. HENKE*
Affiliation:
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, USA
*
Department of Linguistics, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 1890 East-West Road, Moore Hall 569, Honolulu, HI 96822USA. E-mail: rhenke@hawaii.edu
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Abstract

This study presents the first investigation of the development of possessive constructions in Northern East Cree, a polysynthetic language indigenous to Canada. It examines transcripts from naturalistic recording sessions involving one adult and one child, from age 2;01.12 to 3;08.24. Findings reveal that, despite the frequency of possessive inflection in child-directed speech, the child overwhelmingly produces a possessive construction that circumvents this morphology. This construction, named here the equational possessive strategy (EPS), is largely undescribed in existing literature but is the primary mechanism for the child to express possession. These findings have potential implications for the cross-linguistic acquisition of possessive morphology and the connections between child-directed speech and child language production.

Keywords

L1 acquisitionpossessionCreeAlgonquianpolysynthesis
Type
Brief Research Reports
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 46 , Issue 5 , September 2019 , pp. 980 - 997
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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