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Interfaces Between Linguistic Systems: Evidence From Child Language, Lyle Lustigman

Faculty Publications

Interfaces between grammatical domains have been considered from various perspectives in child language research and in general linguistics. The study aims to provide evidence for interfaces in acquisition of early clause-structure, based on longitudinal data from three Hebrew-acquiring toddlers. Two facets of their early speech output were examined: Usage productivity in verb-inflection, identified by a criterion of contextual appropriateness; and structural transparency/opacity of children’s speech output, with transparent forms being unambiguous in relation to their grammatical targets. These factors yielded two distinct developmental periods for the three children: I – from the onset of verb usage to productive verb inflection, …