Filologija, No. 81, 2023.
Review article
https://doi.org/10.21857/m16wjcwo29
On linguistic characteristics of early Croatian language acquisition
Lucija Razum
orcid.org/0009-0007-5879-7920
Katarina Aladrović Slovaček
orcid.org/0000-0002-0706-9436
Abstract
The process of Croatian language acquisition is described based on the analysis of three children, whose speech is recorded in the world data base of children's language CHILDES. Considering the fact that various factors determine the language acquisiton process, primarily the linguistic ones depending on the properties of language that is being acquired, grammatical and lexical development is in research described from various perspectives (Kuvač Kraljević and Palmović 2007; Jelaska 2007; Cvikić et al. 2007; Pavličević-Franić 2011; Hržica et al. 2019). The mentioned research showed that, on the phonological level, children most often omit certain sounds, replace them with the ones they find easier to pronounce or pronounce them incorrectly. On the morphological level there is generalisation of the acquired rules and on the syntactic level there is telegraphic speech, in which prepositions and conjunctions are omitted as well as unstressed forms of pronouns. On the lexical level, children use neologisms that they form themselves and semantemes as words that differ in at least one of their components from the meaning that the word has in adults' vocabulary. Since language development is influenced by extralinguistic elements as well, such as environment and social situation, parents' education and media, it was our goal to examine whether the characteristics had changed regarding previous research and, in accordance with that goal, a three-month research was conducted in three kindergartens in nursery groups. The research showed that, on the phonological level, sounds are omitted, replaced or mispronounced, whereas on the morphological level, there are generalisations or replication of suffixes which are typical for a certain dialect (Kajkavian). On the lexical level there are often wordsnames, neologisms and semantemes, and on the syntactic level there are sentences in which closed-class words are omitted as well as unstressed forms of verbs and pronouns.
Keywords
language acquisition, grammatical development, lexical development, kindergarten age
Hrčak ID:
315500
URI
Publication date:
26.3.2024.
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