Acquisition Of Number And Case From A Typological

Description:
This book is about the acquisition of the grammar of the noun in children's second and third years of life. The early development of fundamental linguistic distinctions in the universal category of the noun, namely singular vs. plural and nominative vs. accusative as well as other cases, is studied in monolingual children acquiring fourteen languages belonging to eight different language families found within and outside Europe: Germanic, Romance, Slavic/Baltic, Greek, Finnic, Turc, Semitic, and Indian American. One of the main findings of this cross-linguistic study is that children are highly sensitive to the morphological richness of their mother tongue already in the 'proto-morphological' stage of development.

Table of Contents:
IntroductionUrsula Stephany and Maria D. Voeikova Early development of number in the Spanish nounCarmen Aguirre and Victoria Marrero The early development of Case and Number in EstonianReili Argus Early phases in the development of Greek noun inflectionAnastasia Christofidou and Ursula Stephany Early development of number in the Italian nounAnna de Marco and Sabrina Noccetti Early development of noun inflection in RussianNatalia Gagarina and Maria D. Voeikova Early nominal morphology in Turkish: Emergence of case and numberNihan Ketrez and Ayhan Aksu-Koc The early development of noun inflection in PolishDorota Kiebzak-Mandera Relations between noun and verb plural development in two French-speaking childrenMarianne Kilani-Schoch The acquisition of number and case in Austrian German nounsKatharina Korecky-Kroll and Wolfgang U. Dressler The acquisition of case, number and gender in CroatianMelita Kovacevi& No. 7689;, Marijan Palmovi? and Gordana Hr& No. 382;ica The acquisition of case and plural in FinnishKlaus Laalo The early development of number in Yucatec MayaBarbara Pfeiler The early development of number in Palestinian ArabicDorit Ravid Personal pronouns and other forms of address in Lithuanian language acquisitionIneta Savickiene.

Author Biography:
Ursula Stephany, University of Cologne, Germany; Maria Voeikova, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia.