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KCI 등재

영국과 미국 아동의 동사파생 합성어 습득: 형태통사적 효과 연구

Effects of morpho-syntax on British and American children's acquisition of deverbal compounds

영어학
약어 : -
2014 vol.14, no.2, pp.169 - 197
DOI : 10.15738/kjell.14.2.201406.169
발행기관 : 한국영어학회
연구분야 : 영어와문학
Copyright © 한국영어학회
400 회 열람

In this paper, we aim to figure out crucial factors that influence English-speaking children's acquisition of deverbal compounds like truck-driver and sailing-boat. Earlier studies on the acquisition of deverbal compounds have focused on how language learners produce such patterns as OV (car-stop), VO (stop-car), V-ingO (stopping-car), OV-er (car-stopper), V-erO (stopper-car), etc. Notice, however, that these patterns can be further classified into sub-groups with reference to the kinds of suffix, i.e. -ing and -er, and the internal word order, i.e. OV and VO. Analyzing possible patterns of English deverbal compounds may shed light on how the principles of morpho-syntax interact for English-speaking children's acquisition of the compounds derived from verbs. Besides the kinds of suffix and the internal word order, we wanted to examine possible effects of children's age, differences between American and British English, and caretakers' input frequency. For this end, we examined both American and British English corpora in the CHILDES database, and analyzed the cross-tabulation defined by Speaker (childern/caretaker), Nationality (US/UK), Suffix (∅/-ing/-er), and Internal Word Order(VO/OV) using log-linear models. Our finding indicates that the internal word order of deverbal compounds was solely decided by suffix, and that there was a significant difference in children's choice of suffix depending on their nationality. Therefore, we conclude that the crucial morpho-syntactic factor for English-speaking children's acquisition of deverbal compounds is not the internal word order, but the suffix acquisition, and that socio-linguistic factors like American vs. British English also play a significant role in the acquisition process of grammar. (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Cyber Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)

deverbal compound, CHILDES, log-linear analysis, American English, British English