The Role of diminutives in Lithuanian child language acquisition

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Deminutyvai; Diminutyvai; Lietuvių vaikų kalba; Linksniuotės; Psicholingvistika; Tekstynų lingvistika; Vaiko kalba; Vaikų kalbos raida; Vaikų kalbos ugdymas; Child language; Child language acquisition; Child language development; Corpora based linguistics; Diminutive; Diminutives; Lithuanian child language; Paradigm patterns; Psycholinguistics.

ENThe paper deals with the early stage of the acquisition of diminutives in Lithuanian. It is based on data of a monolingual Lithuanian girl Rūta, whose speech was tape-recorded from the age of 1;7 till 2;6. Specifically, quantitative analysis of the acquisition of diminutives is presented and discussed. Diminutives in Lithuanian present an interesting case not only from a morphopragmatic perspective (a feature which is shared by Lithuanian with other languages), but also from a language-specific point of view. We therefore suggest that the girl’s frequent choice of diminutives is due to the fact that it allows her to avoid phonologically complex stem alternations and it facilitates the acquisition of declensional noun endings by restricting the number of paradigm patterns to 3 instead of 12. [From the publication]