Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1985, Page 57

Language Shift in an Icelandic Child
55
Slobin points out, that in those languages which are inflected, inflec-
tions are one of the earliest grammatical markers to emerge in child’s
speech (1973:180). This is particularly the case when the inflections are
suffixed, that is when they are postpositional. He says:
.. . accusative and dative inflections are very early acquisitions in
inflected languages like Russian, Polish, Serbo-Kroatian, Latvian,
Finnish, Hungarian, and Turkish — where they are realized as
noun suffixes. But these inflections are relatively late in the acqui-
sition of German . . ., where they are realized as forms of pre-
nominal articles. English articles are also lacking at early stages of
development. It is not the semantic nature of articles which ac-
ccu.its for the omissions in German and English, because the Bul-
ganan article, which is a noun suffix, appears early in child speech
(Slobin 1973:191).
The claim that post-verbal and post-nominal markers are acquired
with more ease (earlier) is supported by that, for example, the end of
words seems to be perceptually salient for children. That is small
children often imitate only the last part of a word (Slobin 1973:189),
and furthermore prepositions and the cases formed with prepositions
are acquired later than those which are not formed with prepositions
(Ruke-Dravina 1973:257).
Other factors can also be seen to affect the order of acquisition. For
example, linguistic complexity of the language in question and also the
frequency of occurrence of a particular item, can affect its speed of ac-
quisition. Studies of bilingual children have made explicit the effects
linguistic complexity has on language acquisition. Slobin tells about a
child acquiring Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian. When the child speaks
Hungarian she is able to use directional and positional locative inflec-
tions appropriately, but fails grammatically to express the same notions
when speaking Serbo-Croatian. The main reason for this is that Serbo-
Croatian is more complex. Every preposition govems a noun inflection,
which sometimes is meaningful and sometimes redundant. The Hun-
garian means of locative expressions is simpler. The locative marker is
always at the end of the noun only, always unambiguously and consis-
tently (Slobin 1973:188). The regularity and consistency of the Hun-
garian marker makes it easier to leam.
The Icelandic inflectional system is complicated and inconsistent.