Agents, Instruments, and that Pesky English -er

In this week’s readings, Clark and Hecht present their findings about young children’s use of the affix –er in agents and instruments. Several previous studies indicated that children learned such words only around the ages of 5 to 7; however, Clark and Hecht demonstrate that these words comprise a significant part of many children’s vocabulary at even earlier ages, though often in simpler forms. With the three principles of semantic transparency, productivity, and conventionality in mind, they demonstrate that children initially use some form of compounding to create new words spontaneously, eventually transitioning to using the suffix –er after observing common patterns in the spoken language.

English is a very widespread language, albeit not an intuitive one. Without knowledge of the affix –er, I feel that words ending in –er certainly would be less instinctive than compounded words formed from smaller, meaningful parts. I would imagine that there are many simpler languages which use compounding to assemble new words. I think it would be interesting to see how English itself has grown as a language; instead of just observing its use in the present, it would be thought-provoking to trace the introduction of the affix –er in earlier predecessors of English. Was it meant to distinguish English from more “primitive” languages (after all, even 3-year-old children can use compounded words!), or was it merely implemented to simplify the conversion of verbs to nouns?

In addition, I’m interested how these results translate from young children to older individuals learning English as a second language. Though I would expect somewhat similar results, I think that there generally would be a shorter transition from using compounding to using –er when creating new words. On a related note, I am a native English speaker, but I can converse in Mandarin Chinese at a reasonable level. However, there are many words that I can’t describe succinctly due to my relatively small vocabulary, and instead of using conventional names, I end up using many known words together to describe these objects. Essentially, I demonstrate the compounding behavior as described by Clark and Hecht, and I’d imagine that this is a common trend among many language learners.

Relating this back to linguistic stereotypes, I wonder if there have been any studies regarding the social impacts of the use of compounded words as opposed to their conventional forms. Several weeks ago, Rickford discussed how the use of AAVE resulted in disadvantages in a society dominated by Standard English speakers, while Professor Sumner discussed how speech serves as a revealing linguistic and social agent. Similarly, I’m curious how native speakers of languages react to unconventional, “contrived” words (ie. those formed using compounding). Interestingly, these stereotypes also would be influenced by age; for instance, hearing such words from a 6-year-old might lead to thoughts of immaturity, while the same words from a 40-year-old might generate labels of “second language” or even “uneducated.” What other patterns could be discovered in studies that address the use of such words?