Clark and Hecht’s paper examines the acquisition of affixes
in agents and instrument nouns. Children have the ability, as do adults, to
come up with new words through the use of compounding. This is exemplified
through the idea of adding ‘-er’ as a suffix to a word to make it an agent or instrument
noun.
An interesting element of the research is the finding that
the acquisition of the ability to construct new words in this fashion is preceded
by a period of sporadic and inconsistent uses of the agent. This clearly
indicated the gradual acquisition of language through trial and error.
The conclusion finds that children acquire language by
constructing new word forms that follow certain principles/rules. These include
the principles of semantic transparency, productivity and conventionality.
An extremely interesting area which I would be curious to
explore more would be the idea of other languages. This is briefly touched on
in the paper, and there is a discussion of how German equivalents of these
agents are instrument nouns are generally attained at a younger age by German
children. I would be curious to see the effects of having English be a child’s
second language on their ability to acquire these language skills. Furthermore,
I think the comparison between children and adults learning English as a second
language would be a very interesting topic to explore further.
Hey Kais,
ReplyDeleteWhat you talk about in your last paragraph is exactly what interested me about this week's reading. How would the rate of error for an adult's usage of a new language feature compare to that of a child. I think it's obvious that we expect there to be a difference, but what I am curious to know is why this difference would appear, because I think that opens up an entirely knew question: where do we as adults go wrong in learning a foreign language and what can we change to acquire new linguistic features specific to the language in the optimal way. Is it trial and error? Or do we expedite the process and assume that the models we have constructed or assumed are correct. Is it because children are (1) so malleable and (2) more often than not surrounded by native adult speakers that they are able to rely on these consistent editions to their repertoire of linguistic devices? All interesting questions.