Early verb development in Croatian. SE aus Psycho-/Patholinguistik Tijana Radisavljevic, 12.01.

2012

Croatian is a pro- drop lang. As a typical Slavic language, Croatian is a highly inflecting language. The finite verb agrees with subject in regard to person and number. In analytic tenses (in perfect for example) also AGR in gender, because in Croatian the participles are marked also for gender. Aspect (perfective and imperfective) is expressed derivationally, by suffixes and prefixes. Ex. pre-gled-a-ti/ pregled-av-a-ti

Analyzed corpus for Croatian: Antonijas Corpus (ANT)- The analyses include recordings from the age of 1;6.15-2;0, they are made in her home in spontaneous interactions with her mother. The period of about one month, between 1;7 and 1;9, is missing due to family reasons. Transcriptions follow the norms of CHILDES. Emergency of verb forms (general): From the moment on when verbs emerge in ANTs production, their rate is high (a slow decrease at 1;7 before verb usage in general increases). A pick appears in 1;9-connected with a development in ANTs verbal system. The next pick at 2;0-at this point the childs verbal lexicon and inventory of verb forms has expanded. Verb forms and categories 1;6-1;7.Premorphology First verb forms in most cases in this period are present 3rd persons, and imperative 2nd p (the 3rd p sg. correspond in Croatian to the base form- the least marked form: gled-a1-ti/ gleda.). In the present 1st person marking was observed only with 3 verbs: bacim- I throw/ nisam-I am not/necu- I dont want. Plural is found only with formulaic expressions 2 times and only 1 analytic form appeared (perfect). There are also instances where the pronominal subject is overt, but the realized verb does not agree in number and person: ja prima- I receive (3rd p.sg. present). Generally: suffixes marking person and number-replaced by 3rs sg.present-which is the default form. Infinitives and participles are very rare and strictly context-bound. 3rd forms of present are used also for impearatives: exemple cita-cekaj 1;9-2;0 Protomorphology phase Antonija produces more and new subcategories, multiword utterances. Also the rate of the copula is relatively high. From the age of 1;9- in addition to 3rd p.sg, Antonija uses also other persons, especially 1st sg, even in imperatives: (1;7,2: cita/ 1;10, 10: citaj). Pl forms remain still rare (few times only with imperatives). First analogical errors appear in this period: hocem instead of hocu. At the age of 1;10.30- 3rd p pl present marking appears with the most frequent suffix ju (there are also:-u/e), which results in the erroneous forms: ljubiju instead of the target form ljube. All analytic forms with infinitives (future I) and participles (Future II and perfect) are used spontaneously. Inf and part without corresponding fin verbs are very rare in her production (only as elliptic answers, also used by adults). Participles are marked for person, number and gender. Generally, no gender or number errors have been detected. In Ants data, the gender marking on participles are in most cases fem, presumably because the girl refers to herself or to fem subject (her mother). So- in this Phase, ANT shows new verb categories and erroneously regularized verb forms. Category substitutions and
1

a-is taken to be either a thematic vowel or a part of the person/number suffix

agreement errors totally disappear- at the age 1;9 the child has entered the protomorphological phase. Early verb development in Croatian. SE aus Psycho-/Patholinguistik Tijana Radisavljevic, .. sa toshibe Finiteness in language acquisition - English: verbs with and without -s in adult 3rd singular contexts - German: finite verb and root infinitives in adult finite contexts - Croatian: finite verbs from the beginning-no root infinitives phase ZDK Dialect characteristics: only perfect as past forms/Future II=Future I/overt pronouns without emphatic interpretation. Dressler et al. (1996) established 4 major marcoclasses with productive microclasses, 1 recessive class with root inflection and many irregularities: 4a-the most frequent, homogeneous, transparent and productive microclass Verb classes: In ANTs production, there is a dominance of 2 classes: 1) suppletive and isolated paradigms 2) 2 most transparent and homogeneous classes: 4/a (29% of all tokens) and 3/1/a (7% of all tokens). The preference of morphotactically opaque suppletive and irr verbs (54% of all tokens) is connected with the extensive use of grammatical verbs, which have high token frequency in the target lang, e.x copula and modal or aux htjeti-want. After the age 1;10 the verbal lexicon expands and the amount of verbs belonging to other micro classes grows. Syntactic usage: 1;6- 1;7.2: first verb forms appear as one-element utterances (gram. verbs: copula and aux (35%) 1;7.15-1;7.27: ANT has both one- and two-element utterances. 1;5.15-1;7.27:in cases with an overt pronoun and non-agreeing verb the syntactic context also shows that 3rd sg present as a base form, replace other categories (ex. 1;7.1-ja prima- I grasp (instead of primam) 1;9.15- ANTs production shows striking syntactic development: utterances with more than 3 elements occur. She produces very often pronominal subjects (although Croatian is a pro drop lang) Except from the session 1;10.21- with 3 agreement errors, from 1;9.15 onwards, generally all fin verbs show person and number agreement, and gender (by participles).The use of grammatical verbs increases-53% grammatical verbs. Adverbs, indirect object pronouns and analytic tense forms emerge: Fut I Necu tebi dati- I wont give you. 1;10: constructions with modals and infinitives and the first coordinate clause appear. 2;0: first relative and subordinated clauses. Qualitative analysis The emergence of mini -paradigms2 is taken to be an indicator for the fact that the child has identified morphology.

They have to show up in contrastive contexts and have a clear category specification, i.e. three-types of the same lemma.

at 1;7 ANT shows variations of the same lemma (bacim, bacis, bacimo, and the root bac-)- as a precursors of mini-paradigms. At 1;9-true mini-paradigms (good table p.255). In using erroneously the form hocem instead of hocu, ANT shows that she has identified form and meaning relations of particular suffixes and that she can use it creatively. Finally, at 2;0, ANT shows 5 verb lemmas from class 4/a and 3/1 which have two and three-form oppositions. Categories involved in oppositions are indicative sg or imperative. Morphological substitutions Category substitutions- is the most frequent type of substitutions in ANTs data: verbs in their base forms (=3rd pres. Sg) .Typical for the premorphological period. Analogy After omitting the 1st p. suffix (1;6.15-1;7.27), she starts marking the present in analogy to all verbs with the suffix m (hocem instead of hocu). At 1;10.30 , first 3rd p present forms appear with verbs from class 3/1/a, which require changing of the thematic vowel i and addition of the suffix e: nositi, nosim, nose. Verbs in 3rd p pl present, she adds by analogy the suffix: -ju and treats them like verbs belonging to more transparent classes (4/1, ex. gledati, gledam, gledaju), or ljube-ljubiju, rade-radiju. The copula in child language Adult English, German, and Croatian: copula obligatory - child English and German: predication structures without a copula - child Croatian: no predication structures without a copula > Some languages allow primary predication without an overt copula: ex. in Russian non-existential predication cases, the copula byt is not expressed in the present tense: Direktor v otpuske. boss on holiday The boss is on holiday. > in contrast to Russian, English and German does not allow copulaless predication. The copula is obligatory except in pragmatically marked circumstances, cf. the exclamatives or headlines. But English and German children produce predication structures without copulas: ex. Mommy busy. From German corpuses (Nico and Paul), the coexistence of copula and copulaless predication structures falls in the same period as the coexistence of finite verbs and root infinitives >The copula is obligatory in Croatian. Generally, copulaless predication structures are rare and stylistically marked in the target language, ex. In an idiom: Sve uzalud -Everything in vain. There are clitic (fixed to the 2nd position), strong (ephatic interpretation) and negated forms of the verbbiti to be /ne biti not to be 1.sg. sam-jesam-nisam /2.sg. si-jesi-nisi...(clitic-strong-negated) Analysis from ANTs corpus: Copula constructions are present from the beginning of the two-word stage. No omissions of the copula at all. Furthermore, ANT corrects herself when she skips the copula, ex: to kajun - to je kajun [: klaun] /that clown - that is-CL clown That is a clown Ant10 (1;9.15) Antonijas usage of the copula conforms to the regularities of the target language (contextual use of clitic, emphatic or negated forms, clitic placement, subject and verb agreement). The dominance of enclitic forms indicates that the child chooses enclitic forms for the neutral (non-emphatic) affirmative contexts.