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. 165–189

Acquisition of noun compounds in Estonian

| | Tallinn University
The main objective of the chapter is to identify the relevant factors in the acquisition of Estonian noun compounds on the basis of a corpus study of three monolingual Estonian children between 1;3 and 3;1. The results indicate that Estonian children acquire noun compounds early, starting with the most transparent and productive patterns. The importance of productivity can be seen in the recurrence of compounds and their members as independent words, as well as in the coining of novel compounds which occurred with relative frequency.
Keywords: Estonian noun compounds, word formation, early acquisition, novel words
Published online: 19 December 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.61.08arg
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