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Acquiring diminutive allomorphs: taking item-specific characteristics into account

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2019

Tiffany BOERSMA Open the ORCID record for Tiffany BOERSMA [Opens in a new window] ,
Judith RISPENS ,
Fred WEERMAN  and
Anne BAKER
Tiffany BOERSMA
Affiliation:
ACLC, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Judith RISPENS*
Affiliation:
ACLC, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Fred WEERMAN
Affiliation:
ACLC, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Anne BAKER
Affiliation:
ACLC, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands University of Stellenbosch, South Africa
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: J.E.Rispens@uva.nl
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Abstract

Phonological characteristics and frequencies of stems and allomorphs have been explored as possible factors causing differences in production accuracies between allomorphic forms. However, previous findings are not consistent and the relative contributions of these factors are unclear. This study investigated target and erroneous productions of the Dutch diminutive, which has five allomorphs with varying type frequencies and of which the selection depends on the phonological characteristics of the stems. Typically developing children (N = 115, 5;1–10;3) were tested on their production of real and nonce diminutives. Linear mixed effects modelling was used to analyse the data taking nonverbal IQ into account. Type frequencies of the allomorphs and differences in phonological characteristics of the stems were found to be related to differences in production accuracies between the allomorphs. However, phonological characteristics of the stems appeared to have a bigger impact, mainly due to the phonological complexity of these characteristics.

Keywords

morphophonologyfrequency effectsdiminutive acquisition
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , May 2019 , pp. 567 - 593
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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