On the role of morphological richness in the early development of noun and verb inflection

TLDR

The study introduces a new methodology to assess how child‑directed speech influences early language acquisition, specifically examining the link between its morphological richness and the pace of children’s noun and verb development. The method defines morphological richness and developmental speed using mean size of paradigm (MSP) and estimates them from longitudinal spontaneous speech corpora of nine children and their caretakers, covering ages 1.3 to 3.0 across nine morphologically diverse languages. Results show that greater morphological richness in child‑directed speech is positively associated with faster development of noun and verb paradigms in child speech.

Abstract

This study proposes a new methodology for determining the relationship between child-directed speech and child speech in early acquisition. It illustrates the use of this methodology in investigating the relationship between the morphological richness of child-directed speech and the speed of morphological development in child speech. Both variables are defined in terms of mean size of paradigm (MSP) and estimated in a set of longitudinal spontaneous speech corpora of nine children and their caretakers. The children are aged 1;3–3;0, acquiring nine different languages that vary in terms of morphological richness. The main result is that the degree of morphological richness in child-directed speech is positively related to the speed of development of noun and verb paradigms in child speech.