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Noun grammaticalization and determiner use in French children's speech: A gradual development with prosodic and lexical influences*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2008

DOMINIQUE BASSANO ,
ISABELLE MAILLOCHON  and
SYLVAIN MOTTET
DOMINIQUE BASSANO*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire Structures formelles du Langage, CNRS – UniversitéParis 8
ISABELLE MAILLOCHON
Affiliation:
Laboratoire Structures formelles du Langage, CNRS – UniversitéParis 8
SYLVAIN MOTTET
Affiliation:
Laboratoire Cognition et Comportement, CNRS – UniversitéParis 5
*
Address for correspondence: Dominique Bassano, Centre CNRS Pouchet, 59 rue Pouchet, 75849 Paris cedex 17, France. e-mail: dominique.bassano@sfl.cnrs.fr
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Abstract

This study investigates when and how French-learning children acquire the main grammatical constraint on the noun category, i.e. the obligatory use of a preceding determiner. Spontaneous speech samples coming from the corpora of twenty children in each of three age groups, 1 ; 8, 2 ; 6, 3 ; 3, were transcribed and coded with respect to morphosyntactic, lexical and length properties of nouns. Results indicate that noun grammaticalization is a gradual process which involves early transitional procedures, as well as an increasing diversity in the content and contexts of determiner use. In support of prosodic hypotheses, noun length effects (in favor of monosyllabic nouns) mostly occurred at 1 ; 8. Animacy effects supporting the lexical hypothesis (in favor of inanimate nouns) occurred at 2 ; 6 and 3 ; 3. We suggest that noun grammaticalization is influenced by both prosodic and lexical factors. Prosodic influences predominate in the first steps of the developmental process, while lexical influences emerge in later steps.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , May 2008 , pp. 403 - 438
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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Footnotes

*

We are grateful to all the children and parents who took part in our study. We would also like to thank the students and collaborators who contributed to the data collection and transcription. Parts of the data were presented at the IASCL 2005 Congress (Berlin) and at the ELA 2005 Congress (Lyon).

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