Academic literature on the topic 'Adjective acquisition'

ABSTRACT The article reviews various definitions of adjectival category in Norwegian, and shows that although they define it in different ways, the core of the definitions is always the same. However, there are some classes of adjectives, which are treated diversely by the Norwegian linguists because of the unlike set of criteria they use in their classifications. In my Ph.D. project, I analyze acquisition of Norwegian adjective agreement by Polish L1 speakers of L2 Norwegian. The aim of the present paper is to propose my own definition of adjective, which is based on prototypical and peripheral meanings. The definition shows a Norwegian prototype adjective (that is not unlike the adjectives presented by the Norwegian grammarians) and discusses the more peripheral cases. The definition focuses on the Norwegian adjectives, but also the Polish are mentioned.

Properties of the input, such as raw frequency and syntactic diversity, have been shown to play a role, to different extents, in the acquisition of nouns and verbs. This study investigated the relationship between three properties of the input (input frequency, syntactic diversity, and variety in noun-type co-occurrence) and age of acquisition of English adjectives. In addition, this study explored the relationship between adjectival semantic typology and order of acquisition. The data are 7262 child utterances and 6318 maternal utterances containing one of 272 adjective in the language samples of two children, Sarah and Adam, from age 2;3 to 5;0 (Brown, 1973) available in CHILDES (MacWhinney, 2000). Statistical analyses revealed that all three properties of the input were significantly correlated with age of acquisition, but variety in noun-type co-occurrence was not a significant predictor once input frequency and syntactic diversity were taken into account. Semantic analyses revealed that the distribution of adjective types and tokens differed between the children and the mothers (to an extent) when the data were examined in terms of adjectival semantic types. The results suggest that both properties of the input and the semantic properties of the English adjective class play a role in its acquisition.

Recent semantic studies show that adjectives differ in terms of the scalar structures associated with them, which has implications for patterns of degree modification. For example, relative adjectives in Dutch are associated with unbounded (open) scales and are, therefore, incompatible with maximizing adverbs (e.g. #helemaal groot ‘completely big’, #helemaal klein ‘completely small’). This paper tests the hypothesis that children acquire the relevant distinctions in the domain of boundedness in a piecemeal fashion by storing ready-made modifier-adjective pairings from the input and later generalizing over them. The results of the longitudinal corpus study of four degree adverbs in the spontaneous speech of nine children acquiring Netherlandic Dutch are consistent with the idea that language learners start by reproducing target-like modifier-adjective combinations stored as prefabs from the input. Once a critical mass of such adverb-adjective pairings has been stored, children make generalizations over the stored instances and proceed to productive use. This phase is marked by over-generalization errors that are attested, on average, six months after the emergence of a degree adverb. Most of the over-generalization errors involved combining a degree adverb with an adjective of an incompatible scalar structure. It is concluded that the acquisition of boundedness has a more protracted time course than has been hitherto assumed on the basis of comprehension experiments.

A comparison of the error profiles of monolingual (child L1) learners of Dutch, Moroccan children (child L2) and Moroccan adults (adult L2) learning Dutch as their L2 shows that participants in all groups massively overgeneralize [—neuter] articles to [+neuter] contexts. In all groups, the reverse gender mistake infrequently occurs. Gender expressed by Dutch attributive adjectives reveals an age-related asymmetry between the three groups, however. Whereas participants in the child groups overgeneralize one particular suffix (namely the schwa), adult participants use both adjectival forms, the schwa-adjective and the bare adjective, incorrectly. It is argued that the asymmetry observed in adjectives reflects that adult learners exploit an input-based, lexical learning route, whereas children rely on grammar-based representations. The similarity in article selection between all groups follows from the assumption that adults, like children, make use of lexical frames. Crucially, lexical frames can successfully describe the distribution of gender-marked articles, but they cannot account for gender in adjectives.

This paper is a study of the complexity of Japanese adjective conjugations in relation to sources of foreign language learning difficulty. It focuses on two types of adjectives: i-adjectives and na-adjectives and their conjugation patterns, including their respective morphological requirements for particular grammatical functions. This study regards knowledge of Japanese adjective conjugations as one of the levels of abstract lexical structure: morphological realization patterns. To explore sources of learner errors in producing Japanese adjective conjugations, the speech performance data are from two groups of adult speakers of American English learning Japanese as a foreign language. This study makes two claims: Any successful acquisition of a foreign language must involve the complete acquisition of not only foreign language lexical items but also its morphological realization patterns, and any successful foreign language learner must be able to use language-specific morphological realization patterns as surface devices in speech production. This study offers some pedagogical suggestions for successful acquisition of Japanese adjective conjugation patterns.

This paper reports on a test of the validity of Pienemann's (1998) Processability Theory (PT). This theory predicts that certain morphological and syntactic phenomena are acquired in a fixed sequence. Three phenomena were chosen for this study: attributive adjective morphology, predicative adjective morphology, and subordinate clause syntax (placement of negation). These phenomena are located at successive developmental stages in the hierarchy predicted by PT. We test whether they actually do appear in this predicted hierarchical order in the L2 of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish learners. The three languages mentioned are very closely related and have the same adjective morphology and subordinate clause syntax. We can, therefore, treat them as one language for the purposes of this study. Three analyses have been carried out: The first follows Pienemann's theory and is concerned only with syntactic levels; the second is a semantic analysis of the acquisition of number versus that of gender; the third analysis studies the various kinds of mismatches between the inflection of the noun, the controller, and the adjective. The results are the following: The first test supports PT as it has been described by Pienemann. The second analysis shows that there is an acquisitional hierarchy such that number is acquired before gender (in adjectives), and the mismatch analysis raises questions about the fundamental assumptions of the theory.

This paper is a longitudinal investigation of adjective use by children aged 1;8−2;8, speaking Dutch, German, French, Hebrew, and Turkish, and by their caregivers. Each adjective token in transcripts of spontaneous speech was coded for semantic class. The development of adjective use in each semantic class was analysed by means of a multilevel logistic regression. The results show that toddlers and their parents use adjectives more often as the child grows older. However, this holds only for semantic classes denoting concrete concepts, such as physical properties, colour, and size. Adjectives denoting more abstract properties are barely used by children and parents throughout the first year of adjective acquisition. The correlations between adjective frequencies in child speech and child-directed speech are very strong at the beginning, but decrease with time as the child develops independent adjective use. The composition of early adjective lexicons is very similar in the five languages under study.

AbstractAdjectives are essential for describing and differentiating concepts. However, they have a protracted development relative to other word classes. Here we measure three- and four-year-olds’ exposure to adjectives across a range of interactive and socioeconomic contexts to: (i) measure the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic variability of adjectives in child-directed speech (CDS); and (ii) investigate how features of the input might scaffold adjective acquisition. In our novel corpus of UK English, adjectives occurred more frequently in prenominal than in postnominal (predicative) syntactic frames, though postnominal frames were more frequent for less-familiar adjectives. They occurred much more frequently with a descriptive than a contrastive function, especially for less-familiar adjectives. Our findings present a partial mismatch between the forms of adjectives found in real-world CDS and those forms that have been shown to be more useful for learning. We discuss implications for models of adjective acquisition and for clinical practice.

This study aims at investigating the acquisition of spatial adjectives in a four-year-old multilingual child speaking Azerbaijani Turkish, English and Farsi. The subject of the current study has been exposed to the mentioned languages from birth. The opposite game is played for the elicitation of the adjectives. The results show that the child's answers are not the same in the three languages. For instance, he could produce kiçik for low in Azerbaijani Turkish but he could not produce the same adjective in English nor Farsi. Furthermore, the results of the current research do not completely agree with Clark (Clark, 1972)'s hierarchy of acquisition for spatial adjectives including big/little, tall/short, long/short, high/low, wide/narrow and thick/thin, respectively. For example, the child could produce arıq in Azerbaijani Turkish, small in English and کوچولو in Farsi for thin listed in Clark (Clark, 1972)'s hierarchy of acquisition for spatial adjectives as the most difficult adjective to acquire by children. Moreover, the child could not produce any words in the three languages he knew for low which is said to be acquired earlier than thin in Clark (Clark, 1972)'s hierarchy.

ABSTRACTThis study presents data from an elicitation study on French size and color adjectives in noun phrases (DPs), both early acquired structures. Thirty-two francophone children aged 3–5 years participated in the study. Adjectives were elicited using specially designed puzzles and spontaneous speech corpora. We observed that errors in French variable adjectives are produced in the early acquisition stages, especially in the context of feminine colour DPs. We propose that the source of difficulty for feminine variable adjectives is the retrieval of a lexicalized form that competes with the masculine adjective denoting the same concept.

The main results of the PhD thesis are described in the summary. The main objective of the thesis is to define the acquisition of lexical and morphosyntactic features of Lithuanian adjective. The analysis is based on the large quantity of linguistic data (~ 400 000 words), which is the corpus of four children compiled according the method of longitudinal observation. The study has interchangeably applied several methods of analysis: longitudinal observation, corpus linguistics, error analysis and comparative method. Statements to be Defended 1. Lexical features of adjectives are acquired by children with difficulties: they often confuse adjectives of a single semantic group and make many errors. 2. Children easily acquire morphosyntactic features of adjectives: they do not make many errors. Some errors may be observed only in cases, when adjective paradigms do not coincide with noun paradigms. 3. Lexical and morphosyntactic features of adjectives are acquired simultaneously. The meaning of adjective is realised only when multi-word combinations and morphosyntactic features have been acquired. 4. The acquisition of adjectives correlates with the individual language development. Bigger lexical variety of adjectives is more characteristic to children with early and late language development, if compared to children with typical language development. Morphosyntactic features of adjectives do not pose problems to children with late language development. 5. The acquisition of... [to full text]<br>Santraukoje pateikiami pagrindiniai disertacinio tyrimo metu gauti rezultatai. Aprašomo tyrimo tikslas – išanalizuoti leksines ir morfosintaksines lietuvių kalbos būdvardžio įsisavinimo ypatybes. Tyrimui pasirinktas didelės apimties šaltinis – keturių vaikų kalbos tekstynas (~ 400 000 žodžių), sukauptas ilgalaikio stebėjimo metodu. Tyrimas atliktas taikant ir derinant kelis metodus: ilgalaikio stebėjimo, tekstynų lingvistikos, klaidų analizės ir lyginamąjį. Atlikus tyrimą darbe pagrindžiami šie ginamieji teiginiai: 1. Vaikams sudėtinga įsisavinti būdvardžio leksines ypatybes: dažnai painiojami vienos leksinės semantinės grupės būdvardžiai, daroma daug klaidų. 2. Vaikai lengvai įsisavina morfosintaksines būdvardžio ypatybes: klaidų nėra daug, dažniau klystama tik retų paradigmų būdvardžius derinant su daiktavardžiais. 3. Būdvardžio leksinės ir morfosintaksinės ypatybės įsisavinamos drauge. Būdvardžio reikšmė suvokiama tik pradėjus vartoti keliažodžius pasakymus, įsisavinus gramatines ypatybes. 4. Būdvardžio įsisavinimas susijęs su individualia vaiko kalbos raida. Ankstyvajai ir vėlyvajai kalbos raidai būdinga didesnė būdvardžių leksinė įvairovė nei įprastai kalbos raidai, o vaikams, kurių kalbos raida vėlyva, nesudėtinga įsisavinti būdvardžio morfosintaksinius požymius. 5. Būdvardžio įsisavinimą veikia ne tik aplinkos veiksniai (vaikiškoji kalba), bet ir kalbos sistema. Kaip ir įsisavinant kitas kalbos dalis, vaikų kalboje vyrauja vaikiškojoje kalboje dažniausiai vartojamos... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

Aquesta tesi tracta l'adquisició automàtica de classes semàntiques per a adjectius. La tesi es basa en dues hipòtesis. La primera, que alguns aspectes de la semàntica dels adjectius no són totalment impredictibles, sinó que corresponen a un conjunt de tipus denotacionals, o classes semàntiques. En conseqüència, els adjectius es poden agrupar en funció de la seva classe semàntica. La segona hipòtesi de treball és que la classe semàntica es reflecteix en més d'un nivell de descripció lingüística. Les interfícies entre morfologia i semàntica i entre sintaxi i semàntica són les que s'exploren en detall a la tesi. <br/><br/>Com que no ens podíem basar en una classificació establerta prèviament, bona part dels esforços van dirigits precisament a definir una classificació adequada. La proposta de classificació s'assoleix mitjançant una metodologia iterativa. Es combinen aproximacions deductives i inductives, cosa que permet evolucionar d'una classificació inicial basada en la bibliografia teòrica a una classificació final que té en compte els resultats empírics dels diversos experiments.<br>Esta tesis versa sobre la adquisición automática de clases semánticas para adjetivos. La tesis se basa en dos hipótesis. La primera, que algunos aspectos de la semántica de los adjetivos no son totalmente impredecibles, sino que corresponden a un conjunto de tipos denotacionales, o clases semánticas. En consecuencia, los adjetivos se pueden agrupar en función de su clase semántica. La segunda hipótesis de trabajo es que la clase semántica se refleja en más de un nivel de descripción lingüística. Las interfaces entre morfología y semántica y entre sintaxis y semántica son las que se exploran en detalle en la tesis. <br/><br/>Dado que no nos podíamos basar en una clasificación establecida previamente, buena parte de los esfuerzos van dirigidos precisamente a definir una clasificación adecuada. La propuesta de clasificación se logra mediante una metodología iterativa. Se combinan aproximaciones deductivas e inductivas, cosa que permite evolucionar de una clasificación inicial basada en la bibliografía teórica a una clasificación final que tiene en cuenta los resultados empíricos de los diversos experimentos.<br>This thesis concerns the automatic acquisition of semantic classes for adjectives. Our work builds on two hypotheses: first, that some aspects of the semantics of adjectives are not totally unpredictable, but correspond to a set of denotational types (semantic classes). Therefore, adjectives can be grouped together according to their semantic class. Second, that the semantic class of an adjective can be traced in more than one linguistic level. In particular, the morphology-semantics and syntax-semantics interfaces are explored for clues that lead to the acquisition of the targeted semantic classes.<br/><br/>Since we could not rely on a previously established classification, a major effort is devoted to defining an adequate classification. The classification proposal is reached through an iterative methodology. By combining deductive and inductive approaches, we evolve from an initial classification based on literature review to a final classification proposal that takes advantage of the insight gained through a set of experiments.

Acquérir l’adjectif épithète pose deux problèmes majeurs en français. D’abord, l’adjectif dénote une propriété à propos d’un nom, les enfants doivent donc pouvoir concevoir un objet comme un tout et comme un ensemble de propriétés pour manier un SN avec épithète. Ensuite, l’alternance est un trait définitoire de l’adjectif du français, mais son placement n’est pas aléatoire et les contraintes en jeu sont multiples et d’ordre tendanciel. De plus, bien que les locuteurs connaissent cette possibilité, ils optent plutôt pour un placement fixe en usage. Ces faits nous ont amenée à nous demander si l’input permet à l’enfant de se construire la notion d’adjectif épithète sans avoir recours à des connaissances langagières innées. Pour y répondre, nous proposons une étude comparant les usages de trois enfants à ceux de leur famille à deux temps de leur acquisition (T1 : 3 ;8, T2 : 4 ;6). Nous étudions quatre aspects de l’usage de l’épithète (lexique, placement, combinaison avec d’autres modifieurs ou un dépendant adjectival) et nous confrontons l’adjectif aux autres modifieurs nominaux. Ces phénomènes montrent tous la même évolution. À T1, les enfants emploient la construction la plus fréquente des adultes, avec un fort degré de spécificité lexicale. À T2, d’autres constructions émergent selon leur ordre de fréquence chez les adultes. Le lexique de la construction de T1 s’est en outre élargi dans le champ de la classe sémantique des usages de T1. Les enfants montrent ainsi une sensibilité aux informations quantitatives et une abstraction graduelle des structures par analogie sémantique, qui plaident pour une construction progressive de la notion d’adjectif épithète à partir de l’input<br>The acquisition of attributive adjectives is subject to two major difficulties in French. First, adjectives express a property of a larger unit : children must be able to conceive an object as a whole and as a set of properties to use a NP with an adjective. Second, adjectives in French may occur before or after the noun. Alternation is a defining feature of the category but it is not random, and the constraints at play are numerous and preferential in nature. Also, although speakers are aware of this possibility, they tend to choose a fixed position in usage. These facts raise the question of whether the input allows children to construct the notion of attributive adjectives without a resort to innate linguistic knowledge. To answer this, I propose a comparative study of the productions of three children interacting with their family at two times of their development (T1 : 3 ;8, T2 : 4 ;6). I examine four phenomena concerning attributive adjectives (lexicon, placement, combination with other modifiers or adjectival dependents), and I compare adjectives with other nominal modifiers. All of these phenomena show the same evolution. At T1, the children use the most frequent construction in the adult data, with a high degree of lexical specificity. T2 shows the appearance of other constructions according to their order of frequency in the adult data. The construction from T1 is also used with a greater choice of lexical units, but within the same semantic classes. The children thus show sensitivity to quantitative information and a gradual abstraction of constructions by semantic analogy, which pleads for a progressive construction of the knowledge of adjectives based on the input data

Submitted by isabela.moljf@hotmail.com (isabela.moljf@hotmail.com) on 2017-02-22T11:54:05Z No. of bitstreams: 1 cristianopereiradealmeida.pdf: 1470118 bytes, checksum: 522a21d105ff4f78a62d83e79c30931c (MD5)<br>Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2017-02-22T14:52:08Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 cristianopereiradealmeida.pdf: 1470118 bytes, checksum: 522a21d105ff4f78a62d83e79c30931c (MD5)<br>Made available in DSpace on 2017-02-22T14:52:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 cristianopereiradealmeida.pdf: 1470118 bytes, checksum: 522a21d105ff4f78a62d83e79c30931c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-08-29<br>Esta dissertação diz respeito ao processo de identificação dos elementos das categorias lexicais Nome e Adjetivo no Português do Brasil, buscando dar conta de especificidades do PB, como a variação possível de ordem dos elementos constituintes do DP complexo e a ausência de marcas morfofonológicas que distingam adjetivos de nomes A hipótese de trabalho assumida é a de que, em um primeiro momento da aquisição da linguagem, a informação estrutural disponibilizada pela ordem preferencial de ocorrência destes elementos no PB atua como uma pista robusta da qual a criança faz uso. A abordagem teórica adotada busca conciliar um modelo de língua que trate do fenômeno de aquisição (Programa Minimalista: Chomsky, 1995), com modelos de processamento voltados para a aquisição da linguagem (modelos de bootstrapping). Foram desenvolvidas atividades experimentais cujos resultados apontam para a importância da informação estrutural, em um primeiro momento, e da informação semântica em etapas posteriores do processo de identificação de nomes e adjetivos.<br>This dissertation aims at the identification process of elements in the lexical categories of Name and Adjectives in Brazilian Portuguese trying to treat the specificities of the BP such as the possible variation of the complex DP constituent elements order and the absence of morphophonological marks that distinguish adjectives and names. The working hypothesis assumed is that in a first moment of the language acquisition the structural information made available by the preferential order of occurrence of that elements in BP acts as a powerful clue of which the child makes use of. The theoretical approach adopted tries to conciliate a language model that treats the phenomenon of acquisition (Minimalist Program: Chomsky, 1995) and processing models for the language acquisition (bootstrapping models). Experimental activities were developed and the results point to the importance of the structural information in a first moment and the semantic information in posterior stages of the identification process of names and adjectives.

Teaching & Learning<br>Ed.D.<br>The purpose of this experimental study is to examine the effects of recasts on narrowing overgeneralized grammar in the second language (L2). The study involved testing three major hypotheses of the mechanisms underlying recasts: the direct contrast hypothesis (Saxton, 1997, 2000), the additional input hypothesis (Gass, 1997; Gass & Mackey, 2007; Long, 1996, 2007), and the enhanced salience hypothesis (Leeman, 2003). Two structures (adjective ordering and indirect passives) were selected for this study, mainly because it was assumed that Japanese learners of English might produce overgeneralized rules that allow incorrect structures because of their first language (L1) influence. The participants were 97 Japanese university students learning English as a foreign language in Japan. They were randomly assigned to four treatment groups: recast (the REC Group), non-contingent positive evidence (the POS Group), recast plus additional input (the REC+ Group), and input with enhanced salience (the SAL Group). A pretest, posttest, and delayed-posttest design were employed. The measurement instruments were an oral production task, elicited imitation task, and untimed grammaticality judgment task, each of which was designed to elicit participants’ implicit and explicit knowledge about adjective ordering and indirect passives. Thus, the independent variable was the treatment conditions, and the dependent variable were the test scores regarding ungrammaticality of the overgeneralized rules of the target structures. After data screening, the data from 75 of the 97 participants were analyzed for adjective ordering, and the data from 90 participants were analyzed for indirect passives. The results showed that the POS Group did not improve on all the measures for adjective ordering and indirect passives; thus, it was suggested that positive evidence was not sufficient for the participants to narrow overgeneralized rules for the target structures. The findings indicated that for adjective ordering, medium effect sizes for the comparison of the POS and REC Groups were obtained on the grammaticality judgment tests for the pretest-posttest and pretest-delayed posttest comparisons. Thus, based on these effect sizes, the direct contrast hypothesis was partially supported (i.e., for one of the two structures and one measure of the three tests). Furthermore, on the basis of the results that the REC and REC+ Groups did not differ significantly on any measure and that on the adjective-ordering grammaticality judgment tests, the comparison between the REC+ Group and the POS Group obtained a medium effect size for the pretest-delayed posttest comparison, the provision of recasts in the REC and REC+ Groups was effective at least for the adjective-ordering grammaticality judgment tests; however, additional input alone did not have an impact on L2 learners’ retreat from the overgeneralized rules. Finally, the results showed that the POS and SAL Groups did not differ significantly and that there existed a difference in the performance on the adjective-ordering grammaticality judgment tests between the REC Group and the SAL Groups. Salience might not be effective in helping L2 learners retreat from overgeneralized rules, and the enhanced salience hypothesis can be interpreted as being limited to learning some linguistic structures. In conclusion, the present study provides empirical evidence that L2 learners can persist in using incorrect overgeneralized rules due to L1 rules and that ten tokens of the target structures are not effective for L2 learners to retreat from the overgeneralized rules. Furthermore, the findings lend support to the direct contrast hypothesis as a mechanism underlying recasts for one of the two target structures.<br>Temple University--Theses

Les adjectifs n’ont pas toujours eu bonne presse chez les grammairiens et les gens de lettre. Leur caractère facultatif a peut-être aussi rebuté les auteurs intéressés par les premiers développements des répertoires de l’enfant, conscients de leur probable rareté à ces stades précoces. C’est pourtant justement leur inscription sur ce versant optionnel et en outre souvent assez subjectif qui leur confère, à notre sens, tout leur intérêt. Leur choix n’étant contraint ni sur l’axe paradigmatique (lorsqu’ils sont épithètes) ni sur l’axe syntagmatique (fonctions déterminative et classifiante exclues), ces marqueurs seront des révélateurs privilégiés des mondes sensoriels, perceptuels et psychiques des locuteurs. Dans un cadre théorique souple et syncrétique, à la croisée des théories énonciatives françaises et des approches anglo-saxonnes dites basées sur l’usage, nous retracerons le développement des répertoires adjectivaux de trois enfants, francophone, anglophone et bilingue français anglais, jusqu’à leur quatrième anniversaire, période généralement admise comme la plus propice aux variations. Nous élargirons ensuite les perspectives aux autres classes de mots constitutives de ces premiers inventaires, afin de percevoir comment la catégorie des adjectifs se développe dans ce système global. Une attention particulière sera accordée aux propriétés de l’environnement susceptibles d’influencer les comportements des enfants. Les résultats montrent que les enfants se saisissent d’abord de propriétés concrètes et perceptuellement saillantes, souvent assez descriptives. Leurs parents utilisent dans le même temps des propriétés plutôt évaluatives, qui traduisent l’affect. La dyade anglophone utilise significativement plus de propriétés évaluatives que les autres dyades. Les adjectifs émergent quelques mois après les premiers mots conventionnels, et restent une catégorie somme toute assez peu fréquente (4 % du lexique total en moyenne)<br>Adjectives have not always had good press among writers, as they may reflect a distorted prose. Researchers in early lexical development currently regard adjectives as problematic: they may well emerge late in child language, and comprise a small portion of the lexicon. However, we argue that it is precisely this property, along with their subjective stance, which makes adjectives relevant for research. Given that their choice is non obligatory, both on the paradigmatic axis (for attributive adjectives) and on the syntagmatic one (determinative and classifying functions excluded), these markers may help reveal the speaker’s sensory, perceptual and mental worlds. Using a theoretical approach at the crossroads of the French enunciative and the Anglo-Saxon usage-based theories, the data of three children speaking French, English, and bilingual French English, were analysed. We first tracked how their inventories developed until their fourth birthday, the range during which considerable variations occur. These perspectives were then broadened to encompass other categories so as to further understand how the adjectival category develops within this larger system. The environmental properties that might have an impact on the children’s behaviour were examined in detail. The results show that children first use properties anchored in immediate perceptions, while their parents favour more abstract properties, often expressing affect. The English speaking dyad uses significantly more affective adjectives than the other dyads. Adjectives emerge a few months after the first conventional words, and remain a low frequency category (4% of the lexicon in average)

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-04-05T13:59:08Z No. of bitstreams: 1 azussamatsuoka.pdf: 3758292 bytes, checksum: 774cb991b0c5692d75381aa929113ca5 (MD5)<br>Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-04-24T03:40:59Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 azussamatsuoka.pdf: 3758292 bytes, checksum: 774cb991b0c5692d75381aa929113ca5 (MD5)<br>Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-24T03:40:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 azussamatsuoka.pdf: 3758292 bytes, checksum: 774cb991b0c5692d75381aa929113ca5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-12-18<br>CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior<br>Esta tese investiga a contribuição das propriedades prosódicas da fala dirigida à criança (FDC) para a aquisição do adjetivo no Português Brasileiro (PB). No PB, os adjetivos constituem uma categoria sem marca morfológica obrigatória de gênero e sem posição sintática fixa. Além disso, adjetivos e nomes compartilham marcas morfofonológicas de gênero e número e podem aparecer imediatamente após o Determinante (DET) no DP, o que poderia dificultar a distinção entre essas duas categorias lexicais pela criança no processo de aquisição. Assim, esta tese busca, como objetivo geral, investigar o papel das pistas prosódicas de ADJ(etivo) na fala dirigida à criança brasileira para a aquisição lexical. Assumimos a perspectiva gerativista e o modelo de língua proposto pelo Programa Minimalista (CHOMSKY, 1995 e anos seguintes). Assumimos a Hipótese do Bootstrapping Prosódico (CHRISTOPHE et al.,1997; MORGAN & DEMUTH, 1996) como explicação do modo pelo qual a criança procede à formação do seu léxico inicial e à aquisição da sintaxe de sua língua, pela exploração de habilidades perceptuais. Como objetivos específicos, a presente tese busca: (i) em situação de interação mãe-criança, caracterizar propriedades prosódicas de N(ome) e ADJ no DP pleno na FDC; (ii) investigar a sensibilidade de bebês, em seu primeiro ano de vida, a pistas prosódicas da FDC brasileira, relativas ao posicionamento de ADJ no DP pleno; (iii) verificar o papel das pistas prosódicas de ADJ no PB no mapeamento de palavras novas a propriedades de objetos por crianças em torno de 2 e 3 anos. Na primeira atividade experimental, observamos que os parâmetros prosódicos de ADJ são realçados, se comparados aos de N, em FDC produzida em situação de interação semiespontânea. Na segunda atividade experimental, bebês em seu primeiro ano de vida parecem ser sensíveis às distinções de ordem prosódica dos DPs plenos, nos quais a posição do ADJ foi manipulada. Na terceira atividade experimental, crianças de 2 e 3 anos exploraram pistas prosódicas de ADJ para o mapeamento de pseudopalavras em função de adjetivos. Em conjunto, os resultados obtidos são compatíveis com a hipótese de que as pistas prosódicas são fonte robusta para a distinção dos elementos lexicais de N e ADJ na FDC brasileira e sustentam a tese de que o uso dessas pistas pode ser relevante para a aquisição de ADJ e para o desencadeamento do processo de aquisição lexical pela criança brasileira.<br>This thesis investigates the role of prosodic properties of infant directed speech (IDS) for the acquisition of adjectives in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). In BP, adjectives constitute a category that does not present fixed morphological mark or syntactic position. Besides, adjectives and nouns share mopho-phonological morphemes, and either one can follow DET- in the DP. This study aims at investigating the role of prosodic cues of ADJ(ective) in Brazilian IDS for distinguishing lexical elements of ADJ(adjectivs) and N(ouns) and for the process of language acquisition. The generative language model proposed by Chomsky (1995, and subsequent works), Minimalism Program is assumed. We also assume the Prosodic/Phonological Bootstrapping Hypothesis (MORGAN & DEMUTH, 1996; CHRISTOPHE et al., 1997) that explains how children acquire their lexicon exploring perceptual abilities. Our specific objectives are: (i) characterize prosodic properties of N and ADJ in the DP, in a mother-child interactive situation; (ii) investigate infants sensitivity to prosodic cues of Brazilian IDS, related to the position of ADJ in the DP; (iii) verify the role of prosodic properties of the adjective in BP for the mapping of pseudo words to object properties by 2- and 3- year-old children. In the first experiment, we observed that ADJ is accented, in comparison to N, when IDS was produced in a semi-spontaneous environment. In the second experiment, infants were sensitive to prosodic distinctions in DPs, in which the position of ADJ was manipulated. In the third experiment, 2- and 3- year-old used prosodic cues of ADJ to map novel words to properties. Our results are compatible with the hypothesis that prosodic cues are reliable sources of information for the distinction of the lexical elements of N and ADJ in Brazilian IDS and indicate that prosodic cues might be relevant for the acquisition of ADJ and for the bootstrapping of the process of lexical acquisition by Brazilian children.

Esdevenir parlants competents d’una llengua és un dels desenvolupaments més notables del nostre creixement com a persones. En aquesta tesi ens proposem estudiar l’adquisició del català com a primera llengua (L1), fixant-nos en el desenvolupament d’una categoria lèxica – l’adjectiu – al llarg de l’escolaritat i fins a l’edat adulta, en diferents gèneres discursius (expositiu i narratiu) i modalitats de producció (oral i escrita). Els adjectius són un dels recursos descriptius més potents de què disposa la llengua, l’aprenentatge i el perfeccionament del seu ús és un procés llarg que s’estén més enllà de l’adolescència i està íntimament lligat a l’escolaritat i l’alfabetització, per la qual cosa l’ús dels adjectius pot ser un bon indicador del desenvolupament del lèxic. Durant l’última dècada, diversos estudis han analitzat el creixement i la composició de la categoria adjectiu al llarg de l’etapa escolar, principalment en anglès (Marineille & Kneile, 2012; Nippold & Sun, 2008) i hebreu (Ravid & Levie, 2010). Estudis duts a terme en català també han mostrat els adjectius com una de les categories que més creixement experimenta amb l’edat (Cordero, 2002; Gili Gaya, 1972; Llauradó & Tolchinsky, 2013). El present treball és un estudi de l’ús dels adjectius des d’una aproximació corpus- based. Aplicarem aquesta metodologia a l’anàlisi del desenvolupament tardà del català. L’estudi es basa en el corpus GRERLI-CAT1, el qual consta de 316 textos produïts per 79 informants bilingües català/castellà, que tenen el català com a llengua d’ús habitual. Els informants pertanyen a diferents nivells educatius: Primària (9-10 anys), Secundària (12-13 anys), Batxillerat (16-18 anys) i Universitat (majors de 19 anys). Cada informant va produir quatre textos sobre els conflictes escolars: un expositiu oral, un expositiu escrit, un narratiu oral i un narratiu escrit. Compararem els textos, doncs, tenint en compte aquestes variables independents: l’edat/nivell educatiu, el gènere discursiu i la modalitat de producció. Els objectius generals són tres. En primer lloc, volem identificar quines mesures lèxiques serveixen per a diagnosticar el desenvolupament del lèxic i la diferenciació entre gèneres i modalitats. En segon lloc, volem caracteritzar l’ús dels adjectius segons l’edat i el tipus de text. Finalment, volem identificar quines característiques morfològiques i de freqüència d’ús dels adjectius expliquen millor els judicis dels parlants sobre la seva composicionalitat. Per a complir aquests objectius hem dut a terme tres estudis. El primer centrat en analitzar la diversitat i densitat lèxica, la llargada de paraula i la productivitat verbal, i la influència que hi tenen les variables independents del corpus. El segon encaminat a descriure l’ús dels adjectius segons l’edat, el gènere discursiu i la modalitat de producció; analitzant la quantitat, la freqüència i l’estructura morfològica interna dels adjectius. I el tercer dedicat a esbrinar de quina manera els parlants accedeixen al seu coneixement morfològic a l’hora de jutjar la composicionalitat dels adjectius extrets del corpus GRERLI-CAT1. Els resultats del primer estudi indiquen que la llargada de paraula és el millor diagnòstic del desenvolupament lèxic i de la diferenciació entre gèneres i modalitats. La diversitat i la densitat lèxiques també són bons indicadors evolutius. D’aquestes dues mesures, la primera serveix per a diferenciar entre modalitats i la segona és útil per a fer-ho entre gèneres. En canvi, la productivitat verbal no és apropiada per al nostre objectiu. Els resultats del segon estudi mostren que l’ús dels adjectius s’expandeix al llarg de l’escolaritat, donat que augmenta amb el nivell educatiu. També s’ha detectat un efecte del gènere discursiu i de la modalitat de producció. Els quatre tipus de text analitzats presenten una gradació en la seva complexitat, des dels expositius escrits fins als narratius orals, passant pels expositius orals i els narratius escrits. Els resultats del tercer estudi revelen que els parlants jutgen la composicionalitat dels adjectius en termes d’un contínuum i no pas en termes dicotòmics – adjectius simples vs. complexos. Els predictors més forts de la composicionalitat són la llargada de l’adjectiu, el número de morfemes comptats des del punt de vista sincrònic, la presència d’un prefix productiu i que la base sigui més freqüent que l’adjectiu derivat. En resum, l’anàlisi quantitativa del lèxic mostra que, a mesura que avancen pels nivells educatius, els informants utilitzen un lèxic més complex en els textos expositius i en la modalitat escrita. L’examen de l’ús dels adjectius ens ha permès obtenir una visió evolutiva de la riquesa lèxica i de com s’adapta el vocabulari usat a cada tipus de text. L’estudi sobre la composicionalitat dels adjectius indica que la complexitat morfològica afecta als usos lèxics, però que és un coneixement implícit dels parlants. Així doncs, el present estudi proveeix a la comunitat acadèmica d’una descripció acurada de l’ús dels adjectius al llarg del desenvolupament tardà del català.<br>Becoming proficient speakers of a language is one of the most prominent developments in our growth as people. This thesis is aimed to study Catalan acquisition as first language (L1), focusing on the development of a lexical category – the adjective – throughout school age and until adulthood, in different discourse genres (expository and narrative) and modes of production (spoken and written). Adjectives are one of the most powerful descriptive devices a language has; learning and improving its use is a long process which goes beyond adolescence and it is closely related to schooling and literacy. Therefore, the use of adjectives is a good indicator of lexical development. During the last decade, several studies have analysed the growth and composition of adjective category through the school years, mainly in English (Marineille & Kneile, 2012; Nippold & Sun, 2008) and Hebrew (Ravid & Levie, 2010). Studies which were carried out in Catalan have also shown adjectives as one of the categories which experience a higher increase with age (Cordero, 2002; Gili Gaya, 1972; Llauradó & Tolchinsky, 2013). In this thesis the study of the use of adjectives is tackled from a corpus-based approach. We apply this method to the analysis of later Catalan language development using the GRERLI-CAT1 corpus. The corpus contains 316 texts produced by 79 Spanish/Catalan bilinguals whose home language is Catalan. Subjects were from different schooling levels: Primary School (9- to 10-year-olds), Secondary School (12- to 13-year-olds), Sixth Form (16- to 18-year-olds) and University (more than 19). Every subject produced four texts about school conflicts: spoken expository, written expository, spoken narrative and written narrative. We are going to compare these texts taking into consideration the following independent variables: schooling level, discourse genre and mode of production. The general objectives are three. Firstly, to identify which lexical measures are used in order to diagnose the lexical development and the differences between discourse genres and modes of production. Secondly, to characterize the use of adjectives according to schooling level and text type. Finally, to identify which morphological features and frequency of use characteristics of adjectives explain in a better way the speakers’ judgements about their compositionality. In order to achieve these objectives we have carried out three studies. The first one is focused on the analysis of lexical diversity, lexical density, word length and productivity of verbs, and the influence of the corpus independent variables. The second one is focused on describing the use of adjectives according to schooling level, discourse genre and mode of production, analysing the amount, frequency of use and word-internal morphological structure of adjectives. And the third one is aimed to find out how speakers access to their morphological knowledge when judging the compositionality of the adjectives extracted from the GRERLI-CAT1 corpus. The results of the first study show that word length is the best diagnosis for lexical development, as well as genre and mode differentiation. The lexical diversity and density are also good evolutionary indicators. The first measurement is used to differentiate between modes of production and the second one is useful to differentiate discourse genres. However, productivity of verbs is not appropriate for our objective. The results of the second study show that the use of adjectives expands throughout school years, as it increases with school level. An effect of discourse genre and mode of production has also been detected. The analysed four text types present a complexity cline, from written expository texts to spoken narratives through spoken expository texts and written narratives. The results of the third study reveal that the speakers judge adjectives’ compositionality not in dichotomous terms – simple vs. complex adjectives – but in a continuum. The strongest compositionality predictors are adjective length, the number of morphemes counted from a synchronic point of view, the presence of a productive prefix and the relative frequency, that is, when the base is more frequent than the derived adjective. To sum up, the quantitative analysis of the lexicon shows that, as subjects move on through the different school levels, they use a more complex lexicon in expository texts and in the written mode. The analysis of the adjective usage allowed us to obtain an evolutionary vision of the lexical richness and the way how vocabulary is adapted to each text type. The study about the compositionality of adjectives indicates that the morphological complexity affects lexical usage, although it is an implicit knowledge of the speakers. So the present study provides the academic community with an accurate description of the use of adjectives throughout later Catalan language development.

Disertacijoje aprašomo tyrimo tikslas – išanalizuoti leksines ir morfosintaksines lietuvių kalbos būdvardžio įsisavinimo ypatybes. Tyrimui pasirinktas didelės apimties šaltinis – keturių vaikų kalbos tekstynas (~ 400 000 žodžių), sukauptas ilgalaikio stebėjimo metodu. Tyrimas atliktas taikant ir derinant kelis metodus: ilgalaikio stebėjimo, tekstynų lingvistikos, klaidų analizės ir lyginamąjį. Atlikus tyrimą darbe pagrindžiami šie ginamieji teiginiai: 1. Vaikams sudėtinga įsisavinti būdvardžio leksines ypatybes: dažnai painiojami vienos leksinės semantinės grupės būdvardžiai, daroma daug klaidų. 2. Vaikai lengvai įsisavina morfosintaksines būdvardžio ypatybes: klaidų nėra daug, dažniau klystama tik retų paradigmų būdvardžius derinant su daiktavardžiais. 3. Būdvardžio leksinės ir morfosintaksinės ypatybės įsisavinamos drauge. Būdvardžio reikšmė suvokiama tik pradėjus vartoti keliažodžius pasakymus, įsisavinus gramatines ypatybes. 4. Būdvardžio įsisavinimas susijęs su individualia vaiko kalbos raida. Ankstyvajai ir vėlyvajai kalbos raidai būdinga didesnė būdvardžių leksinė įvairovė nei įprastai kalbos raidai, o vaikams, kurių kalbos raida vėlyva, nesudėtinga įsisavinti būdvardžio morfosintaksinius požymius. 5. Būdvardžio įsisavinimą veikia ne tik aplinkos veiksniai (vaikiškoji kalba), bet ir kalbos sistema. Kaip ir įsisavinant kitas kalbos dalis, vaikų kalboje vyrauja vaikiškojoje kalboje dažniausiai vartojamos būdvardžio leksemos ir gramatinės kategorijos. Kalbos sistema... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]<br>The main objective of the study is to define the acquisition of lexical and morphosyntactic features of Lithuanian adjective. The analysis is based on the large quantity of linguistic data (~ 400 000 words), which is the corpus of four children compiled according the method of longitudinal observation. The study has interchangeably applied several methods of analysis: longitudinal observation, corpus linguistics, error analysis and comparative method. Statements to be Defended 1. Lexical features of adjectives are acquired by children with difficulties: they often confuse adjectives of a single semantic group and make many errors. 2. Children easily acquire morphosyntactic features of adjectives: they do not make many errors. Some errors may be observed only in cases, when adjective paradigms do not coincide with noun paradigms. 3. Lexical and morphosyntactic features of adjectives are acquired simultaneously. The meaning of adjective is realised only when multi-word combinations and morphosyntactic features have been acquired. 4. The acquisition of adjectives correlates with the individual language development. Bigger lexical variety of adjectives is more characteristic to children with early and late language development, if compared to children with typical language development. Morphosyntactic features of adjectives do not pose problems to children with late language development. 5. The acquisition of adjective is influenced by the input, as well as by the linguistic... [to full text]

Compound word formation is examined from the twin perspectives of comparative grammar and child language acquisition. Points of cross-linguistic variation addressed include the availability of bare-stem endocentric compounding as a “creative” process, head modifier order, the distribution of linking elements in Swedish and German compounds, the possibility of recursion, and the availability of synthetic compounding of the -ER (English dish washer) and bare-stem (French lave-vaisselle) types. Proposals discussed at length include Beard’s Generalization (which links head modifier order in compounds to the position of attributive adjectives), Snyder’s Compounding Parameter (linking syntactic availability of verb-particle constructions and adjectival resultatives to availability of creative endocentric compounding), and Gordon’s acquisitional studies of Kiparsky’s Generalization (concerning restrictions on regular plural-marking within compounds).

Making errors while learning a language is nothing else than part of the learning process itself. The transfer of the mother tongue (L1) into a second language (L2) acquisition process is inevitable and mainly noticeable in the initial learning levels. The results of an Error Analysis (EA) in the written discourse become an advantage in the teaching of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) since it provides a clear image of what should be reinforced in the classroom. The aim of this study is to identify the most common errors made by EFL beginning level Ecuadorian college students in their written discourse. The researchers elaborated a linguistic corpus from writing samples provided by a group of forty-five students from three public universities in Ecuador. The EA process yields a high percentage of errors related to Word Missing; Form Spelling; Lexical Single; Lexico-Grammar, Verbs, Complementation; Style, Grammar, Verbs, Number; Grammar Articles; and, Grammar – Adjective Order. Errors in the analyzed samples mainly occur due to the interference and negative transfer resulting from the L1 (Spanish) over the L2 (English). Poor lexical and grammar knowledge are also causatives of the errors found in the study.