This chapter presents for the first time an overall description of the development of German derivational morphology. The longitudinal spontaneous speech corpora of three children acquiring Standard Austrian German and their mothers is analysed up to 3;0, with outlooks up to 6;0. The analysis… read more
On the basis of parent-child interaction data of families from different socio-economic status (SES), we discuss the usage of requests in input and output of three-year old monolingual German-speaking children and bilingual children speaking mainly Turkish at home. Whereas high SES parents are… read more
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… read more
This paper is a longitudinal investigation of adjective use by children aged 1;8−2;8, speaking Dutch, German, French, Hebrew, and Turkish, and by their caregivers. Each adjective token in transcripts of spontaneous speech was coded for semantic class. The development of adjective use in each… read more
In many languages, the acquisition of nominal determiners is a central aspect of the emergence of grammar in children. This study compares the development of determiners — between the ages 1–3 — in the spontaneous productions of two children who acquire French and Austrian German respectively.… read more
Early phases of first language acquisition can shed light on general preferences in diminutive formation and compounding, as is demonstrated in this typological characterization of German diminutives and compounds and their acquisition. The role of typology is shown to be similar to that in… read more
In many languages, noun determiner acquisition is a central aspect of the emergence of grammar in children. The study compares the development of determiners — between one and three years of age — in the spontaneous productions of two children who acquire French and Austrian German, respectively.… read more
This chapter discusses early phases of first language acquisition of compounds in German based on longitudinal data of two Austrian children and compares these data to results on compound acquisition in other languages. The first compounds to emerge in German (simultaneously with the emergence of… read more
This paper intends to show how diminutives emerge in the corpus of two children who acquire a language which has productive diminutive formation, but where diminutives play a minor role due to low frequency; they do not serve as triggers or facilitators in the acquisition of German noun morphology.… read more