Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1985, Page 59

Language Shift in an Icelandic Child
57
tions but in the more rapid completion of acquisition. That is, the ac-
quisition of inflections in Turkish spans a shorter oeriod than it does in
the Indo-European languages.
In general, inflections start to appear towards the end of the second
year, when general language development is already quite advanced
(Ruke-Dravina 1973:254). One of the earliest semantic relations to be
formally marked in child speech is the verb-object. Slobin points out
that in those languages which provide an inflection for marking the
object af action (accusative) this inflection emerges very early
(1973:180). That is, very often the first inflection appears with the se-
paration between nominative and accusative. The sequence of acqui-
sition of inflections depends to a certain extent on the character of the
individual language in question. But in general the nominative accu-
sative contrast is acquired very early and those cases which are ex-
pressed by prepositions later (Ruke-Dravina 1973:266). A common ac-
quisitional sequence is similar to the following which Ruke-Dravina
observed in her study of a Latvian boy. First the cases of the singular
were acquired in the sequence: nominative, accusative, locative,
genitive and dative. Then the separation of number occurred. In the
plural, the cases appeared in the sequence: nominative, accusative,
dative, locative, and genitive. Moreover, all the cases, with the excep-
tion of the vocative and instrumental, had emerged in the child’s lan-
guage at the end of the second year (Ruke-Dravina 1973:256).
Konráðsson (1982) suggested, from his study of three Icelandic chil-
dren, the following sequence of appearance of the Icelandic cases. First
occurs the separation between nominative and accusative, then dative
appears and last the genitive. The dative appeared to be more difficult
for the children, in particular the dative singular of strong masculine
nouns. According to Konráðsson’s study, Icelandic children aged 2
years 2 months to 2 years and 9 months can have a good command of
the nominative and accusative but still have some problems with the
dative, particularly the dative of strong masculine nouns. The genitive
case was never used by these children, it never occurred in the data. Ac-
cording to this it can be suggested that at the time Baldur moved to Eng-
land, at 3 years of age, he probably had considerable command of the
nominative accusative distinction but might have had some problems
with the dative and genitive.
Based on what has been said before in this chapter, it can be expected