Verbal acquisition and morphological processing: a preliminary study

Abstract

We investigate the acquisition of a novel verb and the morphological processing of its inflectional variations by children acquiring BP. We consider the hypothesis that distributional cues guide the recognition of a novel word as a verb. Besides, the recurrence of verbal affixes leads to the verb’s internal segmentation into root and affixes. An experiment with the Split-Screen Preferential Looking Paradigm technique suggests two-year-old children seem to acquire the novel verb’s concept and treat its inflectional variations as words that share a common meaning. Similar experiments with the Picture Identification Task technique suggest that three-year-old children tend to map a concept into the novel verb, but seem to be confused when tested with its inflectional variations. Four-year-old children, however, seem to acquire the concept of the novel verb after a brief familiarization and to treat its inflectional variations as sharing a basic meaning.