Ritið : tímarit Hugvísindastofnunar - 01.10.2008, Síða 53

ABSTRACT
“Which do you want doll?”
Variation in child language acquisition
The article outlines both the uniformity and variability of the language acquisi-
tion process. The first part of the article focuses on common fea.tures in the first
language acquisition of young Icelandic children. Child language is rule govemed
and children frequently overgeneralize the most common rules of their native
language. Some examples of such over-regularizations in Icelandic language
acquisition are discussed. However, despite the uniformity of this process varia-
tion exists. Not all children follow exactly the same path and there is variation in
the errors that children make when building up the grammar of their language.
The second part of the article discusses a rare variety in tri-question formation in
the language of a three year old Icelandic girl, Fía. Most children immediately
know that they have to move the whole trlí-phrase, and not only the wh-word,
when forming a tr^-question, i.e. [How many horses] doyou have _? and not *How do
you have [_ many horses]? Fía, however, went through a stage where she formed
exactly such illegimate tr^-questions. This finding is hnked to a property of adult
Icelandic which allows violations of the Left Branch Condition, first discussed by
Ross (1967). It is suggested that when Fía moves only the œ^-word, and not the
whole trl)-phrase, she is overgeneralizing exceptions of the Left Branch Condition
to all u»Ií-questions, only some of which allow violations of this constraint in the
adult language. Finally, it is pointed out that not all variation in child language can
be explained by properties of the surrounding adult language. Grammatical rules
that characterize some languages, but are not part of the language that the child is
acquiring, can nevertheless show up in the grammar of the child during the acqui-
sition process.
Kejwords: First language acquisition, uniformity, variation, 7i>I)-movement, Left
Branch Condition
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