Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T13:09:08.143Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Verbal inflection in the acquisition of Kuwaiti Arabic*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2009

KHAWLA ALJENAIE
KHAWLA ALJENAIE*
Affiliation:
Kuwait University
*
Address for correspondence: Department of Communication Science and Languages, College for Women, Kuwait University, PO Box 5969, Al-Safat 13060, Kuwait. tel: (00965) 4983105, (00965) 4983157. e-mail: khawla.aljenaie@ku.edu.kw, k.aljenaie@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper investigates the distribution of imperfective and perfective verb inflections in Kuwaiti Arabic. Spontaneous speech of three children (1 ; 8–3 ; 1) was analyzed for accuracy and error types. The results showed that the verbal inflections appeared correct almost all the time (89–97% of the time). Agreement errors appeared 3–11% of the time. The children did not inflect the verb in obligatory contexts in describing ongoing action 2–12% of the time. It is predicted that children acquiring Arabic would select a default form in place of fully inflected forms. The children used a non-finite form which is identical to the imperfective verbal bare stem to describe ongoing action, which is consistent with Benmamoun's argument (1999, 2000) that the imperfective bare verb is the default form in Arabic. The findings of the study are discussed in the light of the Optional Infinitive (OI) stage argued by Wexler (1994, 1996, 1998). The fact that the non-finite is non-tensed makes this type of behavior consistent with the OI.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , September 2010 , pp. 841 - 863
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

I would like to express my thanks to the Office Of Vice-Rector For Research at Kuwait University for supporting this project under grant number AE04/03. I am extremely thankful to the families who participated in the longitudinal study for their patience and diligence, and to Al-Islah nursery for allowing us to conduct the study in their nursery. Their participation and cooperation made this research possible. I am grateful to Abbas Benmamoun, Nina Hyams and William Snyder for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article.

References

REFERENCES

Abdalla, F. (2002). Specific language impairment in Arabic-speaking children: deficits in morphosyntax. Unpublished PhD thesis, McGill University, Canada.Google Scholar
Bakalla, M. (1979). The morphological and phonological components of the Arabic verb, Meccan dialect. London: Longman Group Limited.Google Scholar
Bar-Shalom, E. & Snyder, W. (1997). Optional infinitives in Russian and their implications for the pro-drop debate. In Lindseth, Martina and Franks, Steven (eds), Formal approaches to Slavic linguistics: The Indiana meeting 1996, 38–47. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications.Google Scholar
Bar-Shalom, E. & Snyder, W. (2001). Descriptive imperative in child Russian and in early correct use of verbal morphology. Proceedings of the BU Conference on Language Development 25, 692–703. Cambridge, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Beeston, A. F. L. (1970). The Arabic language today. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Benmamoun, E. (1999). Arabic morphology: the central role of the imperfective. Lingua 108, 175–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benmamoun, E. (2000). The feature structure of functional categories: a comparative study of Arabic dialects. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berman, R. (1985). The acquisition of Hebrew. In Slobin, D. (ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, 255–63. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: the early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bulos, A. (1965). The Arabic triliteral verb: a comparative study of grammatical concepts and progress. Beirut: KHAYATS.Google Scholar
Chiat, S. (1986). Personal pronouns. In Fletcher, P. & Garman, M. (eds), Language acquisition: studies in first language development, 339–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erickson, J. (1967). The establishment of a verbal base form for Arabic. In Rauch, I. & Scott, C. (eds), Approaches in linguistic methodology, 27–31. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Erwin, W. (1963). A short reference grammar of Iraqi Arabic. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Garman, M., Schelletter, C. & Sinka, I. (1997). Tense, agreement and optional infinitives: bilingual evidence from English, German, and Latvian. University of Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 3, 41–69.Google Scholar
Harris, T. & Wexler, K. (1996). The optional–infinitival stage in child English. In Clahsen, H. (ed.), Generative perspective on language acquisition, 1–42. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Hoekstra, T. & Hyams, N. (1998). Aspect of root infinitives. Lingua 106, 81–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holes, C. (1986). Colloquial Arabic of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Hyams, N. (1986). Language acquisition and the theory of parameters. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyams, N. (2005). Child non-finite clauses and the mood–aspect connection: evidence from child Greek. In Kempchinsky, P. and Slabakova, R. (eds), Aspectual inquiries, 293–315. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, Y. (1983). It's frogs all the way down. Cognition 15, 75–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MECAS (Middle East Center for Arab Studies) (1965). MECAS Grammar of Modern Literary Arabic. Beirut: KHAYATS.Google Scholar
Miller, J. & Chapman, R. (1993). Systematic analysis of language transcripts. Wisconsin: University of Madison–Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Mohammad, I. & Ouhalla, J. (1995). Negation and modality in early child Arabic. In Eid, M. (ed.), Perspective on Arabic linguistics, VII, 69–92. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Omar, M. (1973). The acquisition of Egyptian Arabic as a native language. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ouhalla, J. (1993). Negation, focus and tense: the Arabic maa and laa. Rivisita di Linguistica 5(2), 275–300.Google Scholar
Palmer, F. R. (1986). Mood and modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Peters, A. M. (1995). Strategies in the acquisition of syntax. In Fletcher, P. & MacWhinney, B. (eds), The handbook of child language, 462–82. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Rice, M., Wexler, K. & Cleave, P. (1995). Specific language impairment as a period of extended optional infinitive. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 38, 850–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rizzi, L. (1994). Some notes on linguistic theory and language development: the case of root infinitves, Language Acquisition 3, 371–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salustri, M. & Hyams, N. (2003). Is there an analogue to the RI stage in the null subject languages? In Beachley, B., Brown, A. & Conlin, F. (eds), Proceedings of the BU Conference on Language Development 27, 692–703. Cambridge, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Sano, T. (1997). The comparative morpho-syntax of root infinitives in child language. In Agbayani, B. & Tang, S.-Z. (eds), Proceedings of the fifteenth west coast conference on formal linguistics, 457–71. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.Google Scholar
Schaeffer, J. & Ben-Shalom, D. (2004). On root infinitives in child Hebrew. Language Acquisition 12(1), 83–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1966). The acquisition of Russian as a native language. In Smith, F. & Miller, G. (eds), The genesis of language: a psycholinguistic approach, 129–48. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1973). Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar. In Ferguson, C. & Slobin, D. (eds), Studies of child language development, 175–208. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Sigurjónsdóttir, S. (1999). Root infinitive and null subjects in early Icelandic. In Greenhill, A., Littlefield, H. & Tano, C. (eds), Proceedings of the 23 annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 630–41. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Wexler, K. (1994). Optional infinitive, head movement and economy of derivation. In Lightfoot, D. & Hornstein, N. (eds), Verb movement, 305–363. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wexler, K. (1996). The development of inflections in a biologically based theory of language acquisition. In Rice, M. (ed.), Toward a genetics of language, 113–44. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Wexler, K. (1998). Very early parameter setting and a unique checking constraint: a new explanation of the optional infinitive stage. Lingua 106, 23–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar