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The Acquisition of Derivational Morphology: A cross-linguistic perspective
Edited by Veronika Mattes, Sabine Sommer-Lolei, Katharina Korecky-Kröll and Wolfgang U. Dressler
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 66] 2021
► pp. 21–52

Chapter 2
The development of derivation in early Greek first language acquisition

| University of Cologne

This study is concerned with the development of derivational prefixation and suffixation in early Greek language acquisition and is based on the speech of a monolingual Greek girl from 1;8 to 3;0 years in interaction with her mother (Katis Corpus). The most productive derivational affixes are verbal prefixes while derivational suffixes prevail in adjectives and nouns. Special attention is paid to the development of word families (lexemes sharing a base) and word series (sets of derivatives sharing a derivational affix) in the child’s lexicon and to a comparison with child-directed speech. The study is committed to usage-based approaches to language acquisition according to which “language structure emerges from language use” (Tomasello 2003: 327) and productivity arises within item-based schemas.

Keywords: Greek language acquisition, acquisition of derivation, derivational prefixation, derivational suffixation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Derivational devices of Standard Modern Greek
  • 3.Data
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1The development of derivational prefixes and suffixes in Greek language acquisition
      • 4.1.1The development of derivational prefixes in CS
      • 4.1.2The development of derivational suffixes in CS
    • 4.2The usage of derivational prefixes and suffixes in CDS in comparison with CS
  • 5.Summary and conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.66.02ste
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