The acquisition of verb morphology
Hilke Elsen · Open access LMU (Ludwid Maxmilian's Universitat Munchen) · 2000
In this paper, some predictions of connectionist models are investigated using data from a continuous diary study of a German girl.Several findings on the acquisition of German verbs are reported, e.g., the acquisition of verbs shows a sudden non-linear increase, the composition of the verbal lexicon undergoes changes, the first overregularizations are found when structural and quantitative changes in the verb vocabulary appear.For the production of overregularizations a wave-like development is found, that is, times of high and low production of overregularized forms alternate.The formation of participles shows various patterns, for example irregularizations.The data presented here suggest a relationship between lexical and morphosyntactic development and the use of one associative learning mechanism for both regular and irregular inflection.