Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1983, Blaðsíða 120

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Randa Mulford
4.2 Language-specific factors
I argued above that we may be able to attribute one aspect of these
data, that is, the unusually high proportion of -erj-ari forms used in
children’s noun productions, in part to the specific data collection tech-
nique. There are, however, other aspects of the results which may
depend more directly on properties of the two languages involved.
English and Icelandic are both Germanic languages and closely re-
semble each other in many ways where formation of novel agent and
instrument nouns is concemed. In both languages a single derivational
morpheme, -er or -ari, can be suffixed to a verb base to create either
an instrument or agent noun. This contrasts with a language like
Hebrew, for example, which uses distinct affixes for forming agent
and instrument noun from the same verbal root (Berman, Hecht and
Clark 1982).4 Both Germanic languages also allow formation of agent
and instrument nouns through a variety of compounding processes
and through application of a limited set of other derivational suffixes.
To the extent that the morphological characteristics of the two lan-
guages are similar, we can also expect developmental patterns to be
much alike.
A point on which English and Icelandic may differ is the relative
productivity of the various derivational devices in the adult languages.
Clark and Hecht predicted that more productive derivational devices
for expressing a given meaning such agency would be learned before
less productive ones. They were unable to evaluate this prediction
for their data from English-speaking children, however, due to the
possible methodological biases discussed above. If it could demon-
strated that equivalent derivational devices (e.g. equivalent suffixes)
are significantly more or less productive in Icelandic than in English,
it might be possible to use relative productivity as a partial explanation
for observed differences in the acquisition patterns of the two langua-
ges. For example, the fact that English-speaking children in age group
II used -er to form instrument nouns much more often than Icelandic-
4 Hebrew verb roots are typically identified as triconsonantal patterns, which are
then modified by a wide variety of derivational processes. For example, the verb root
k-t-b — ‘write’ (CrC2-C3) can serve as the basis for nouns with different meanings
by combining whit specific patterns of affixes, e.g. maCtC2eC3a (instrumental pattern)
+ k-t-b —> maxteva ‘writing machine’ or CtaC2C2an (agentive pattern) + k-t-b —» katvan
‘typist’. See further Berman 1980, 1982.