1. STEM ENDINGS AND THE ACQUISITION OF INFLECTIONS
- Author
-
Martha Solomon
- Subjects
Consonant ,Linguistics and Language ,Communication ,business.industry ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Nonsense ,Applied linguistics ,Language and Linguistics ,Linguistics ,Education ,Morpheme ,Inflection ,Statistical analysis ,Allomorph ,business ,Psychology ,Plural ,media_common - Abstract
This study attempted to determine if the stem ending to which an inflection is affixed influenced the acquisition of the plural allomorphs by young children. The materials consisted of forty-six nonsense monosyllables, two examples for each possible, final, single consonant in English. Using the technique developed by Berko, the researcher discovered that children do significantly better inflecting some stems requiring a particular allomorph than inflecting other stems requiring the same allomorph. In other words, the stem ending does influence the acquisition of the plural allomorphs. Children's rules for plural inflections are also discussed briefly.
- Published
- 1972
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