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Nominal Compound Acquisition
Edited by Wolfgang U. Dressler, F. Nihan Ketrez and Marianne Kilani-Schoch
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 61] 2017
► pp. 145–163

Chapter 6
The early production of compounds in Lithuanian

| | Vytautas Magnus University
|
This study analyses Lithuanian children’s ability to produce compounds. The longitudinal data consist of the recordings of four children (1;7–3;11), two boys and two girls and the matching set of child-directed speech (CDS). Despite the fact that compounding is a productive pattern of word formation in Lithuanian, it is not a preferred method for making a noun, in contrast to such languages as German or English. The data analysis reveals that compounds in the children’s speech appear rarely, although they emerge quite early as pure imitations of adult utterances. The production of compounds in later stages of language acquisition, especially when used spontaneously, shows that they are used mostly as lexicalized items.
Keywords: child language acquisition, compounds, endocentric, Lithuanian, subordinate.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The structure of Lithuanian noun compounds
  • 3.The data
  • 4.The study
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 19 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.61.07dab
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