Language Acquisition and Second Language Acquisition

This week’s article investigates the course of acquisition of the suffix –er in coining agent and instrument nouns in English by children. This study’s results manifests that children between three and six years old could understand verb and suffix. But when it comes to production, simple compounds are used to represent agents (i.e. build-man for builder) while words that has been acquired are used to represent instruments (i.e. scissor for cutter) among the youngest children. Suffix –er is not used consistently at this stage. At a later stage, consistent used of Suffix –er appears among slightly older children, but these words are only used as agents. After age five, children acquire the difference between agentive –er and instrumental –er.  

Three principles are proposed to explain this sequence of acquisition. They are principles of semantic transparency, productivity, and conventionality. First, the principle of semantic transparency leads children to use acquired words to coin new words. Second, the principle of productivity helps children to form new word-formation devices to express their ideas. Third, the principle of conventionality enables children to choose the conventional form over other forms. Clark (1982) maintains that these three principles have an effect on each other and help us to draw a clear picture of the sequence of the acquisition of the suffix –er.

 After I read this article, I was wondering which principle might be more crucial in determining the order of the acquisition of these word formation processes. Another study (O’Grady: 1997: P475) shows that productivity might be the most important principle. Because compounds and nouns consisted of a verb-base and the suffix --er for agents are both a most common forms in English, they emerge firstly in the process of the acquisition. Suffix –y (Adjectival –y: wordy) and –ly (Adverbial –ly: quickly), which can only attach a certain root, appear among much older children.  In other words, the productivity of “Adjectival –y ” and “Adverbial –ly” is poorer than that of compounds and “verb-er”, therefore, the latter form is easier to acquire. But I think, semantic transparency might be the first factor influencing children’s acquisition. At the first stage, children only can comprehend simple compound words, thus they rely on this word formation to construct new words. At a later stage, they come to understand one usage of the suffix –er, then they produce many new words with this new word formation device.  

I also wonder whether these results could apply to the sequence of second language acquisition of the suffix “-er”, “-y”, “-ly”, etc by adult learners. In my opinions, adult learners have developed strong ability of reasoning and generalizing.  Once told or seeing enough examples, they would easily understand the usages of suffixes. Semantic transparency might not be the most crucial factor affecting adult learners’ acquisition. For adult learners, the principle of productivity might be the most essential one. A high productivity might indicate a high frequency. With more exposure to the new form, adult learners might master it more quickly. I wish to conduct a study to testify my assumption in the future.