Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Helping a crocodile to learn German plurals: children’s online judgment of actual, potential and illegal plural forms

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Morphology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

A substantial tradition of linguistic inquiry has framed the knowledge of native speakers in terms of their ability to determine the grammatical acceptability of language forms that they encounter for the first time. In the domain of morphology, the productivity framework of Dressler (CLASNET Working papers 7, 1997) has emphasized the importance of this ability in terms of the graded potentiality of non-existing multimorphemic forms. The goal of this study was to investigate what role the notion of potentiality plays in online lexical well-formedness judgment among children who are native speakers of Austrian German. A total of 114 children between the ages of six and ten and a total of 40 adults between the ages of 18 and 30 (as a comparison group) participated in an online well-formedness judgment task which focused on pluralized German nouns. Concrete, picturable, high frequency German nouns were presented in three pluralized forms: (a) actual existing plural form, (b) morphologically illegal plural form, (c) potential (but not existing) plural form. Participants were shown pictures of the nouns (as a set of three identical items) and simultaneously heard one of three pluralized forms for each noun. Response latency and judgment type served as dependent variables. Results indicate that both children and adults are sensitive to the distinction between illegal and potential forms (neither of which they would have encountered). For all participants, plural frequency (rather than frequency of the singular form) affected responses for both existing and non-existing words. Other factors increasing acceptability were the presence of supplementary umlaut in addition to suffixation and homophony with existing words or word forms.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Aronoff M. (1976) Word formation in generative grammar. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Baayen R. H., Davidson D. J., Bates D. (2008) Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language 59: 390–412

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baayen, R. H., Piepenbrock, R., & van Rijn, H. (1993). The CELEX lexical database (CD-ROM). Philadelphia: Linguistic Data Consortium.

  • Bartke, S. (1998). Experimentelle Studien zur Flexion und Wortbildung. Pluralmorphologie und Komposition im unauffälligen Spracherwerb und im Dysgrammatismus. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

  • Bartke, S., Marcus, G. F., & Clahsen, H. (1995). Acquiring German noun plurals. In D. MacLaughlin & S. McEwen (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th annual Boston University conference on language development (pp. 60–69). Boston: Cascadilla Press.

  • Bartke S., Rösler F., Streb J., Wiese R. (2005) An ERP-study of ‘irregular’ morphology. Journal of Neurolinguistics 18: 29–55

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Behrens, H. (2001). How to learn a minority default: The acquisition of the German –s plural. Ms. (under revision).

  • Behrens H. (2009) Usage-based and emergentist approaches to language acquisition. Linguistics 47: 383–411

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berent I., Pinker S. (2008) Compound formation is constrained by morphology. The Mental Lexicon 3: 176–187

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beretta A., Campbell C., Carr T. H., Huang J., Schmitt L. M., Christianson K., Cao Y. (2003) An ER-fMRI investigation of morphological inflection in German reveals that the brain makes a distinction between regular and irregular forms. Brain and Language 85: 67–92

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berman R. A. (2004) Between emergence and mastery: The long developmental route of language acquisition. In: Berman R. A. (eds) Language development across childhood and adolescence. Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 9–34

    Google Scholar 

  • Bertl, J., Korecky-Kröll, K., & Laaha, S. (2006). The plurality of plurals: A comparison of plural elicitation techniques in first language acquisition. Poster presented at the Workshop “Acquisition and impairments of inflectional morphology”, 12th international morphology meeting, Budapest, May 2006.

  • Bittner, D., & Köpcke, K.-M. (2001). Acquisition of the German plural markings: A case study in natural and cognitive morphology. In C. Schaner-Wolles, J. Rennison, & F. Neubarth (Eds.), Naturally! Linguistic studies in honour of Wolfgang Ulrich Dressler (pp. 47–58). Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.

  • Bloom P., Barss A., Nicol J., Conway L. (1994) Children’s knowledge of binding and coreference: Evidence from Spontaneous Speech. Language 70: 53–71

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bybee J. (2001) Phonology and language use. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Chomsky N. (1986) Knowledge of language. Praeger, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Clahsen H. (1999) Lexical entries and rules of language: A multidisciplinary study of German inflection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22: 991–1060

    Google Scholar 

  • Clahsen H. (2006) Linguistic perspectives on morphological processing. In: Wunderlich D. (eds) Advances in the theory of the lexicon. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, pp 355–388

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Clahsen H., Eisenbeiss S., Sonnenstuhl I. (1997) Morphological structure and the processing of inflected words. Theoretical Linguistics. 23(3): 201–249

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clahsen, H., Marcus, G., Bartke, S., & Wiese, R. (1996). Compounding and inflection in German child language. Yearbook of Morphology, 1995, 115–142.

  • Clahsen H., Rothweiler M., Woest A., Marcus G. F. (1992) Regular and irregular inflection in the acquisition of German noun plurals. Cognition 45: 225–255

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen J. D., MacWhinney B., Flatt M., Provost J. (1993) PsyScope: A new graphic interactive environment for designing psychology experiments. Behavioral Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers 25(2): 257–271

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coseriu, E. (1975). System, Norm und Rede. In: E. Coseriu (Ed.), Sprachtheorie und allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (pp. 11–101). München: Fink.

  • Croft W., Cruse D.A. (2005) Cognitive linguistics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Cunnings I., Clahsen H. (2008) The time-course of morphological constraints. The Mental Lexicon 3: 149–175

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Daugherty K.G., Seidenberg M.S. (1994) Beyond rules and exceptions: A connectionist approach to inflectional morphology. In: Lima S.D., Corrigan R. L., Iverson G.K. (eds) The reality of linguistic rules. Benjamin, Amsterdam, pp 353–388

    Google Scholar 

  • Dorffner G. (1991) Konnektionismus. Teubner, Stuttgart

    Google Scholar 

  • Dressler W. U. (1985) Morphonology. Karoma Press, Ann Arbor

    Google Scholar 

  • Dressler, W. U. (1997). On productivity and potentiality in inflectional morphology. In CLASNET Working Papers 7, Université de Montréal.

  • Dressler, W. U. (2001). Extragrammatical vs. marginal morphology. In U. Doleschal & A. Thornton (Eds.), Extragrammatical and marginal morphology(pp. 1–10). München: Lincom Europa.

  • Dressler W. U. (2003) Degrees of grammatical productivity in inflectional morphology. Italian Journal of Linguistics 15: 31–62

    Google Scholar 

  • Dressler W. U., Ladányi M. (2000) Productivity in word formation (WF): A morphological approach. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 47: 103–144

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eisenbeiß S. (2009) Generative approaches to language learning. Linguistics 47: 273–310

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Elman J. L., Bates E. A., Johnson M. H., Karmiloff-Smith A., Parisi D., Plunkett K. (1996) Rethinking innateness. MIT Press/Bradford Books, Cambridge/London

    Google Scholar 

  • Feldman, N. (2005). Learning and overgeneralization patterns in a connectionist model of the German plural. M.A. thesis, Vienna University.

  • Grimshaw J., Rosen S. T. (1990) The developmental status of the binding theory. Linguistic Inquiry 21: 187–222

    Google Scholar 

  • Hahn U., Nakisa R.C. (2000) German inflection: Single route or dual route? Cognitive Psychology 41: 313–360

    Google Scholar 

  • Karmiloff-Smith A. (1992) Beyond modularity: A developmental perspective on cognitive science. MIT Press/Bradford Books, Cambridge/London

    Google Scholar 

  • Klampfer S., Korecky-Kröll K. (2002) Nouns and verbs at the transition from pre- to protomorphology: A longitudinal case study on Austrian German. In: Voeikova M. D., Dressler W. U. (eds) Pre- and protomorphology: Early phases of morphological development in nouns and verbs. München, Lincom, pp 61–74

    Google Scholar 

  • Klampfer S., Korecky-Kröll K., Dressler W.U. (2001) Morphological potentiality in children’s overgeneralization patterns: Evidence from Austrian German noun plurals. Wiener Linguistische Gazette 67-69: 25–43

    Google Scholar 

  • Ković V., Westermann G., Plunkett K. (2008) Implicit vs. explicit learning in German noun plurals. Psihologia 41: 387–411

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Köpcke K.-M. (1988) Schemas in German plural formation. Lingua 74: 303–335

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Köpcke, K.-M. (1993). Schemata bei der Pluralbildung im Deutschen: Versuch einer kogniti-ven Morphologie. Tübingen: Narr.

  • Köpcke K.-M. (1998) The acquisition of plural marking in English and German revisited: Schemata versus rules. Journal of Child Language 25: 293–319

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Korecky-Kröll K., Dressler W. U. (2009) The acquisition of number and case in Austrian German nouns. In: Stephany U., Voeikova M.D. (eds) Development of nominal inflection in first language acquisition. A cross-linguistic perspective. Berlin, De Gruyter, pp 265–302

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Laaha, S. (2011). Eliciting noun plurals in German: a comparison of children’s productions in a classical elicitation and a playful naming task. 12th Congress of the International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL 2011), Montreal, July 2011.

  • Laaha, S., Levie, R., Bertl, J., Raz, E., Laaha, G., Dressler, W. U., & Ravid, D. (2008). The lotto game. Talk presented at the symposium “Why are noun plurals hard to acquire? A multi-task approach”, 11th international congress for the study of child language, Edinburgh, July 2008.

  • Laaha S., Ravid D., Korecky-Kröll K., Laaha G., Dressler W. U. (2006) Early noun plurals in German: Regularity, productivity or default? Journal of Child Language 33: 271–302

    Google Scholar 

  • Libben G. (2009) Psycholinguistic techniques: Timing the lexicon. In: Eddington D. (eds) Quantitative and experimental linguistics. München, Lincom, pp 197–233

    Google Scholar 

  • Libben G., Jarema G., Dressler W., Stark J., Pons C. (2002) Triangulating the effects of interfixation in the processing of German compounds. Folia Linguistica 36: 23–43

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marchand H. (1960) The categories and types of present-day English word-formation. München, Beck

    Google Scholar 

  • Marcus G. F. (2000) Children’s overregularization and its implications for cognition. In: Broeder P., Murre J. (eds) Models of language acquisition: Inductive and deductive approaches. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 154–176

    Google Scholar 

  • Marcus G. F., Brinkmann U., Clahsen H., Wiese R., Woest A., Pinker S. (1995) German inflection: The exception that proves the rule. Cognitive Psychology 29: 189–256

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Penke M., Krause M. (2002) German noun plurals – A challenge to the dual-mechanism model. Brain and Language 81: 303–311

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pinker S. (1998) Words and rules. Lingua 106: 219–242

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Plaut D.C. (1995) Double dissociations without modularity: Evidence from connectionist neurophysiology. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neurophysiology 17: 291–321

    Google Scholar 

  • Plunkett, K., Marchman, V. A. (1991). U-shaped learning and frequency effects in a multi-layered perceptron: Implications for child language acquisition. Cognition, 38, 43–102 1991

    Google Scholar 

  • Plunkett K., Marchman V. A. (1993) From rote learning to system building: Acquiring verb morphology in children and connectionist nets. Cognition 48: 21–69

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ravid, D. (2008). Methodology. Talk presented at the symposium “Why are noun plurals hard to acquire? A multi-task approach”, 11th international congress for the study of child language, Edinburgh, July 2008.

  • Ravid, D., Dressler, W. U., Nir-Sagiv, B., Korecky-Kröll, K., Souman, A., Rehfeldt, K., Laaha, S., Bertl, J., Basbøll, H., & Gillis, S. (2008). Core morphology in child directed speech. Crosslinguistic corpus analyses of noun plurals. In H. Behrens (Ed.), Corpora in language acquisition research. History, methods, perspectives (pp. 25–60). Amsterdam: Benjamins (=Trends in Language Acquisition Research 6).

  • Rumelhart, D. E., & McClelland, J. L. (1986). On learning the past tenses of English verbs. In D. E. Rumelhart, J. L. McClelland, & PDP Research Group (Eds.) Parallel distributed processing: Exploration in the microstructure of cognition, (pp. 216–271), Bd. II. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  • Schaner-Wolles, C. (2001). On the acquisition of noun plurals in German. In C. Schaner-Wolles, J. Rennison, F. Neubarth (Eds.), Naturally! Linguistic studies in honour of Wolfgang Ulrich Dressler presented on the occasion of his 60th birthday (pp. 451–460). Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.

  • Schultink H. (1961) Produktiviteit als morfologisch fenomeen. Forum der Letteren 2: 110–125

    Google Scholar 

  • Sedlak, M., Klampfer, S., Müller, B., & Dressler, W. U. (1998). The acquisition of number in Austrian German: A case study on the early stages. In S. Gillis (Ed.), Studies in the acquisition of number and diminutive marking. Antwerp Papers in Linguistics, 95, 51–76.

  • Sonnenstuhl-Henning I. (2003) Deutsche Plurale im mentalen Lexikon Experimentelle Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von Speicherung und Dekomposition. Tübingen, Niemeyer

    Google Scholar 

  • Sonnenstuhl I., Huth A. (2002) Processing and representation of German –n Plurals: A dual mechanism approach. Brain and Language 81: 276–290

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spreng B. (2004) Error patterns in the acquisition of German plural morphology: Evidence for the relevance of grammatical gender as a cue. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 23(2): 147–172

    Google Scholar 

  • Szagun G. (2001) Learning different regularities: The acquisition of noun plurals by German-speaking children. First Language 21: 109–141

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Szagun G. (2004) Learning by ear: on the acquisition of case and gender marking by German-speaking children with normal hearing and with cochlear implants. Journal of Child Language 31: 1–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello M. (2003) Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Vollmann R., Sedlak M., Müller B., Vassilakou M. (1997) Early verb inflection and noun plural formation in four Austrian children. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 33: 59–78

    Google Scholar 

  • Wegener, H. (1999). Die Pluralbildung im Deutschen – ein Versuch im Rahmen der Optimalitätstheorie. Linguistik online, 4.

  • Weyerts H., Penke M., Dohrn U., Clahsen H., Münte T. (1997) Brain potentials indicate differences between regular and irregular German plurals. Neuroreport 8(4): 957–962

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wurzel W. U. (1994). Gibt es im Deutschen noch eine einheitliche Substantivflexion? oder: Auf welche Weise ist die deutsche Substantivflexion möglichst angemessen zu erfassen? In K.-M. Köpcke (Ed.), Funktionale Untersuchungen zur deutschen Nominal- und Verbalmorphologie (pp. 29–44). Tübingen: Niemeyer (= Linguistische Arbeiten 319).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics and Communication Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Kegelgasse 27, 1030, Vienna, Austria

    Katharina Korecky-Kröll, Julia Wiesinger, Johannes Bertl & Wolfgang U. Dressler

  2. Brock University, 500 Glenridge Ave., St. Catharines, Ontario, L2S3AI, Canada

    Gary Libben

  3. Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna, Sensengasse 3a, 1090, Vienna, Austria

    Nicole Stempfer, Julia Wiesinger & Wolfgang U. Dressler

  4. Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1, 6525XD, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Eva Reinisch

Authors
  1. Katharina Korecky-Kröll
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Gary Libben
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Nicole Stempfer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Julia Wiesinger
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Eva Reinisch
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Johannes Bertl
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Wolfgang U. Dressler
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Katharina Korecky-Kröll.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Korecky-Kröll, K., Libben, G., Stempfer, N. et al. Helping a crocodile to learn German plurals: children’s online judgment of actual, potential and illegal plural forms. Morphology 22, 35–65 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-011-9191-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-011-9191-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation