Chapter published in:
Nominal Compound Acquisition
Edited by Wolfgang U. Dressler, F. Nihan Ketrez and Marianne Kilani-Schoch
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 61] 2017
► pp. 119–143

Compounding in early Greek language acquisition

| | | University of Cologne | Democritus University of Thrace
| |
The early acquisition of Greek compounds by two monolingual Greek girls aged between 1;8 and 3;0 years is studied in a usage-based framework. Special importance is attached to the morphological structure of Greek compound types occurring in CS and CDS, since Greek nominal compound formation does not just consist in the juxtaposition of words or roots. Major questions addressed are evidence for the transparency of compounds and productive nominal compound formation. Evidence for productivity of nominal compound formation was only found with one of the two girls and was rather limited. In contrast to other languages, neoclassical nominal compounds by far exceed endocentric subordinative ones tokenwise in Greek CS and CDS providing evidence of entrenchment rather than productivity.
Keywords: compounding, Greek language acquisition, Greek child speech, Greek child-directed speech
Published online: 19 December 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.61.06ste
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