Elicited production of case-marking in Russian and Serbian children: are diminutive nouns easier to inflect

Vera Kempe; Nada Ševa; Patricia J. Brooks; Natalija Mironova; Angelina Pershukova; Olga Fedorova

doi:10.1177/0142723708092441

Elicited production of case-marking in Russian and Serbian children: are diminutive nouns easier to inflect

Vera Kempe, Nada Ševa, Patricia J. Brooks, Natalija Mironova, Angelina Pershukova, Olga Fedorova

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Two experiments used an elicited speech-production paradigm to explore children's acquisition of noun case-marking inflections. Russian (N = 24, 2;10— 4;6 years) and Serbian children (N = 24, 2;10—4;11) were asked to produce prepositional phrases requiring genitive or dative inflections of masculine and feminine, familiar and novel, simplex (vaza [Ru/Se: vase]) and diminutive (Ru: vazochka, Se: vazica) nouns. Across languages, children produced fewer case-marking errors with familiar compared to novel nouns, and diminutive compared to simplex nouns. The diminutive advantage occurred despite a markedly lower frequency of diminutive usage in Serbian than Russian child-directed speech. This suggests that in acquiring richly inflected languages, children most readily construct low-level generalizations of inflectional changes applying to morpho-phonologically homogeneous clusters of words like diminutives.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	147-165
Number of pages	19
Journal	First Language
Volume	29
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/0142723708092441
Publication status	Published - May 2009

Access to Document

10.1177/0142723708092441

Fingerprint Dive into the research topics of 'Elicited production of case-marking in Russian and Serbian children: are diminutive nouns easier to inflect'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this

Kempe, V., Ševa, N., Brooks, P. J., Mironova, N., Pershukova, A., & Fedorova, O. (2009). Elicited production of case-marking in Russian and Serbian children: are diminutive nouns easier to inflect. First Language, 29(2), 147-165. https://doi.org/10.1177/0142723708092441

@article{34909d6a89b24e27bb63a4969ec96544,

title = "Elicited production of case-marking in Russian and Serbian children: are diminutive nouns easier to inflect",

abstract = "Two experiments used an elicited speech-production paradigm to explore children's acquisition of noun case-marking inflections. Russian (N = 24, 2;10— 4;6 years) and Serbian children (N = 24, 2;10—4;11) were asked to produce prepositional phrases requiring genitive or dative inflections of masculine and feminine, familiar and novel, simplex (vaza [Ru/Se: vase]) and diminutive (Ru: vazochka, Se: vazica) nouns. Across languages, children produced fewer case-marking errors with familiar compared to novel nouns, and diminutive compared to simplex nouns. The diminutive advantage occurred despite a markedly lower frequency of diminutive usage in Serbian than Russian child-directed speech. This suggests that in acquiring richly inflected languages, children most readily construct low-level generalizations of inflectional changes applying to morpho-phonologically homogeneous clusters of words like diminutives.",

author = "Vera Kempe and Nada {\v S}eva and Brooks, {Patricia J.} and Natalija Mironova and Angelina Pershukova and Olga Fedorova",

year = "2009",

month = may,

doi = "10.1177/0142723708092441",

language = "English",

volume = "29",

pages = "147--165",

journal = "First Language",

issn = "0142-7237",

publisher = "SAGE Publications Ltd",

number = "2",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - Elicited production of case-marking in Russian and Serbian children

T2 - are diminutive nouns easier to inflect

AU - Kempe, Vera

AU - Ševa, Nada

AU - Brooks, Patricia J.

AU - Mironova, Natalija

AU - Pershukova, Angelina

AU - Fedorova, Olga

PY - 2009/5

Y1 - 2009/5

N2 - Two experiments used an elicited speech-production paradigm to explore children's acquisition of noun case-marking inflections. Russian (N = 24, 2;10— 4;6 years) and Serbian children (N = 24, 2;10—4;11) were asked to produce prepositional phrases requiring genitive or dative inflections of masculine and feminine, familiar and novel, simplex (vaza [Ru/Se: vase]) and diminutive (Ru: vazochka, Se: vazica) nouns. Across languages, children produced fewer case-marking errors with familiar compared to novel nouns, and diminutive compared to simplex nouns. The diminutive advantage occurred despite a markedly lower frequency of diminutive usage in Serbian than Russian child-directed speech. This suggests that in acquiring richly inflected languages, children most readily construct low-level generalizations of inflectional changes applying to morpho-phonologically homogeneous clusters of words like diminutives.

AB - Two experiments used an elicited speech-production paradigm to explore children's acquisition of noun case-marking inflections. Russian (N = 24, 2;10— 4;6 years) and Serbian children (N = 24, 2;10—4;11) were asked to produce prepositional phrases requiring genitive or dative inflections of masculine and feminine, familiar and novel, simplex (vaza [Ru/Se: vase]) and diminutive (Ru: vazochka, Se: vazica) nouns. Across languages, children produced fewer case-marking errors with familiar compared to novel nouns, and diminutive compared to simplex nouns. The diminutive advantage occurred despite a markedly lower frequency of diminutive usage in Serbian than Russian child-directed speech. This suggests that in acquiring richly inflected languages, children most readily construct low-level generalizations of inflectional changes applying to morpho-phonologically homogeneous clusters of words like diminutives.

U2 - 10.1177/0142723708092441

DO - 10.1177/0142723708092441

M3 - Article

VL - 29

SP - 147

EP - 165

JO - First Language

JF - First Language

SN - 0142-7237

IS - 2

ER -