ACQUISITION OF MORPHOLOGY

Acquisition of Morphology

Table of Contents

Table of Contentsii

Introduction1

Discussion3

Regular and Irregular Inflection3

Development of Regular Inflectional Morphology3

Stages of Inflectional Morphology4

Over-Regularization5

Irregularization5

Brown's Framework of Language Development6

Dual Mechanism Model for Regular and Irregular Inflection7

Level Ordering and Development of Morphology8

Level 18

Level 29

Level 39

Development of Irregular Inflectional Morphology10

Acquisition Theory11

Single Route Theory12

The Connectionist Model13

The Words and Rules (WR) Theory16

Developmental Stages of Inflectional Morphology17

Conclusion17

References19

Acquisition of Morphology

Introduction

Morphology is a linguistic process that describes and analyses, a language's linguistic units and morphemes. This process is initiated after identification within a language, morphemes (units) such as: parts of speech, affixes, implied context, stress/intonation and root words. As such identification of morphology covers inflection, composition and derivation. All these three considerations are vital in the process of acquiring morphology. The prime focus of this paper would be in context to inflectional morphology and its acquisition.

There are various theories on acquisition of morphology. One of the most prominent ones is 'Relational Frame Theory', articulated by Hayes in 2001. This theory gives importance to principles of Skinnerian Behaviour. This principle dictates that language is acquired by children by making interaction with the environment. The theory focuses on the concept of functional conceptualism and importance of making predictions and psychological influences through behaviour, feelings and thoughts; by the children. Children are able to learn languages through innate reinforcements.

Morphological rules are acquired through inflectional or derivational methods. Inflectional morphology is a process employed to change the word form in order to provide more information regarding the definition. Importance is placed on inflectional morphology because of some factors. The first factor is that the different languages spoken in the world differ from each other, mainly on their use of inflectional affixes and the typological class of inflectional systems they use. These inflectional systems vary, and include: fusional systems, polysynthetic systems and agglutinative systems. The second important factor of emphasis on inflectional morphology is due to its importance in major linguistic areas. These areas include phonology, syntax and morphology itself. The process of inflection essentially creates word forms of grammar. The grammar dictates effects on elements in the structure of sentences and as such syntax as a whole in any language (Goodluck, 1991, p.25).

Chomsky (1965) stated that people have innate knowledge regarding the rules and different principles of grammar. This phenomenon is termed 'Universal Grammar'. It states that children have a natural ability to understand grammar of a specific language (Penke, 2012). There are various domain specific structures allowing the children to identify and implement the grammatical principle in a given language. Inflectional morphology is employed to change the word form in order to provide more information regarding the definition. The past tenses in the English verbs have regular and irregular forms of use, for example “-ed” can be added to the verb, “stem”, but past tense of “stand” is “stood”. The plural inflection of English in the verbs and the verbs past tense is differentiated by the U-shaped outline of the development. At the initial level, past tense is learned by the children with higher ...