Emergence of verb-pattern morphology in young Arabic speakers: morphological and semantic features.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Arabic, a Semitic language, displays a particularly rich derivational morphological system with all verb stems consisting of a semantic root and a prosodic verb-pattern. Such regular and frequently encountered knowledge is expected to be acquired early. The present study presents a developmental perspective on the relative contribution of morphological and semantic complexity to the acquisition of verbs in Spoken Arabic.

Method

Verbs in a spontaneous corpus from 133 typically developing children, 2; 6-6; 0-year-old, were coded for type and token frequency of verbal patterns and root type, and classified according to semantic complexity.

Results

Results support an item-based emergence driven by semantic complexity at the earliest stages of acquisition. A d

SUBMITTER: Tallas-Mahajna N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10213558 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature