Lexical creativity in French-speaking children

Journal/Book: Cah Psychol Cognitive. 1998; 17: C N R S-C R N C, 31, Chemin Joseph Alguier, 13402 Marseille Cedex 20, France. Adrsc-Assoc Diffusion Recherch es Sciences Cognitives. 513-530.

Abstract: When children lack words for what they wish to talk about, they can stretch the words they have or they can coin new ones. The coinages children produce reveal what they know at different stages about the structure of words and the meanings associated with affixes and with word-formation patterns. French-speaking children begin to coin words in their third year, but at first use only a handful of suffixes. By age 4;0 to 5;0, they produce a large range of different affixes (prefixes as well as suffixes) in their coinages, but they make virtually no use of compounding. Their coinages reveal that French-speaking children are sensitive to productive patterns in the formation of derived nouns, but they make certain consistent errors in their choices of verb-stems in their word-formation.

Note: Article Clark EV, Stanford Univ, Dept Linguist, Stanford,CA 94305 USA

Keyword(s): lexical acquisition; word-formation; creativity; VERBS; NOUNS

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