- Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- The Contributors
- Introduction: Theory and Theories in Morphology
- A Short History of Morphological Theory
- Theoretical Issues in Word Formation
- Theoretical Issues in Inflection
- Structuralism
- Early Generative Grammar
- Later Generative Grammar and Beyond: Lexicalism
- Distributed Morphology
- Minimalism in Morphological Theories
- Optimality Theory and Prosodic Morphology
- Morphology in Lexical-Functional Grammar and Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar
- Natural Morphology
- Word and Paradigm Morphology
- Paradigm Function Morphology
- Network Morphology
- Word Grammar Morphology
- Morphology in Cognitive Grammar
- Construction Morphology
- Relational Morphology in the Parallel Architecture
- Canonical Typology
- Morphological Theory and Typology
- Morphological Theory and Creole Languages
- Morphological Theory and Diachronic Change
- Morphological Theory and Synchronic Variation
- Morphological Theory and First Language Acquisition
- Morphological Theory and Second Language Acquisition
- Morphological Theory and Psycholinguistics
- Morphological Theory and Neurolinguistics
- Morphological Theory and Computational Linguistics
- Morphological Theory and Sign Languages
- References
- Language Index
- Index of Names
- General Index
- Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter reviews findings from the field of first language acquisition that shed light on morphological theory. The focus is on the acquisition of multimorphemic words and the distinction between regular and irregular inflection. The first aim of the chapter is to show that child data should always be interpreted against the background of developments in other areas that may influence children’s morphological performance. Child data have played a role in the debate about single versus dual route processing, which overlaps in part with the theoretical distinction between full and impoverished lexical entries. The second aim of the chapter is to provide a balanced overview of the empirical arguments that may support these different theoretical views. Specific attention is paid to the interpretation of developmental errors, languages other than English, and patterns observed in atypical language learners.
Keywords: language acquisition, development, inflection, past tense debate, omission error, overregularization, Specific Language Impairment, Williams Syndrome, input frequency
Elma Blom is Professor at the Department of Special Education at Utrecht University where she teaches about language development. Her research and publications are about developmental language disorder, the parallel development of multiple languages in immigrant children, and the relationship between language and cognition both in language-impaired and multilingual children. Besides theoretical issues, she works on the improvement of diagnostic tools for multilingual children.
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- Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- The Contributors
- Introduction: Theory and Theories in Morphology
- A Short History of Morphological Theory
- Theoretical Issues in Word Formation
- Theoretical Issues in Inflection
- Structuralism
- Early Generative Grammar
- Later Generative Grammar and Beyond: Lexicalism
- Distributed Morphology
- Minimalism in Morphological Theories
- Optimality Theory and Prosodic Morphology
- Morphology in Lexical-Functional Grammar and Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar
- Natural Morphology
- Word and Paradigm Morphology
- Paradigm Function Morphology
- Network Morphology
- Word Grammar Morphology
- Morphology in Cognitive Grammar
- Construction Morphology
- Relational Morphology in the Parallel Architecture
- Canonical Typology
- Morphological Theory and Typology
- Morphological Theory and Creole Languages
- Morphological Theory and Diachronic Change
- Morphological Theory and Synchronic Variation
- Morphological Theory and First Language Acquisition
- Morphological Theory and Second Language Acquisition
- Morphological Theory and Psycholinguistics
- Morphological Theory and Neurolinguistics
- Morphological Theory and Computational Linguistics
- Morphological Theory and Sign Languages
- References
- Language Index
- Index of Names
- General Index
- Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics