engleski

Investigating the acquisition of Croatian morphonotactics vs. phonotactics

Previous work on Croatian morphonotactics focused on the acquisition of Croatian morphonotactic vs. phonotactic word-initial consonant clusters before the age of 3 (Kelić & Dressler, 2019). It showed that morphonotactic clusters are usually mastered earlier than phonotactic clusters and that they usually comprise less preferred cluster combinations. Croatian is particularly interesting in the context of the Strong Morphonotactic Hypothesis (SMH ; Sommer-Lolei et al., 2019) because morphological complexity in Croatian is not accompanied with complexity in the phonological system. In this study, we focused on word-medial consonant clusters. We analyzed the distribution of word- medial clusters in the early acquiring lexicon (Croatian Child Corpus) and tested cluster preferability (in terms of NAD) in relation to cluster type (phonotactic and morphonotactic) and age of appearance. Our results showed that the data (at least partially) corroborated the SMH. There were a greater number of phonotactic clusters in all three subcorpora, but when morphonotactic clusters and clusters classified as both were observed together, their number exceeded the number of purely phonotactic clusters. Early emerging phonotactic clusters were mostly preferred, with their preferability decreasing as new clusters emerged in the later periods of acquisition. Early morphonotactic clusters included less preferred combinations, with their preference gradually increasing over time. Considerable individual differences among the three children indicate that the children employ different paths to acquire and master their L1.

Morphonotactics ; Strong Morphonotactic Hypothesis ; Early Language Acquisition

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