Chapter 8. Acquisition of compound nouns in Finnish
Klaus Laalo · Language acquisition & language disorders · 2017
This study first presents a general overview of compounding in Finnish and analyzes the compounds in child speech and child-directed speech in the recordings of two Finnish-speaking children from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. The development of compound production is compared with the development of inflectional morphology. The first compounds are used at the same age as the language development proceeds to a new phase in grammatical development characterized by active use of suffixes (protomorphology). The compound neologisms of the two children are examined in the light of both the recordings and diary data. The first neologisms are based on transparent CDS models; later the children produce diversified innovative compounds which are transparent and thus easily understood.