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Part of
Nominal Compound Acquisition
Edited by Wolfgang U. Dressler, F. Nihan Ketrez and Marianne Kilani-Schoch
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 61] 2017
► pp. 19–37

Chapter 1
Emergence and early development of German compounds

| | University of Vienna
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The West Germanic language German is particularly rich and productive in nominal compounding, especially of noun-noun compounds. This chapter presents and analyzes the longitudinal data of three Viennese children up to 3;0 and the transversal data of 28 children at 3;0 and 3;3 (14 low, 14 high socio-economic status). The analysis focuses on amalgams vs. compounds, order of emergence of word classes of their modifiers from nouns over verbs to adjectives etc., from interfixless to interfixed compounds (of several subtypes), on the facilitating impact of input frequency, productivity and transparency. Finally, it accounts for the rise of complexity and a blind-alley development and their evidence for morphology and acquisition theory.

Keywords: amalgams, blind-alley development, interfixes, morphological complexity, socio-economic status
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Nominal compounding in adult Austrian German
  • 3.A brief history of research
  • 4.Acquisition data
  • 5.Amalgams
  • 6.Phrases vs. compounds?
  • 7.Emergence of compounding
  • 8.Order of emergence of compounds with and without interfixes
  • 9.A blind-alley development
  • 10.Productivity and emergence of compound patterns
  • 11.The impact of transparency
  • 12.Recursivity
  • 13.Discussion and outlook
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.61.02kor
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