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Productivity and beyond: mastering the Polish genitive inflection.

Ewa Dabrowska¹

¹Department of English Language and Linguistics, University of Sheffield, UK. e.dabrowska@shef.ac.uk

Journal of Child Language

|March 23, 2005

Summary

Children acquire Polish genitive masculine inflection early, showing productivity by age two. However, consistent mastery of this complex grammatical feature develops gradually, reaching adult levels around age ten.

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Area of Science:

Linguistics
Developmental Psychology
Language Acquisition

Background:

The genitive masculine inflection in Polish is a complex and irregular aspect of its case-marking system.
Understanding the developmental trajectory of acquiring such grammatical features is crucial for language acquisition research.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the developmental stages of the genitive masculine inflection in Polish children.
To examine children's ability to produce correct genitive forms and their sensitivity to semantic factors.

Main Methods:

A nonce word production experiment was conducted with 72 Polish children aged 2;3 to 10;8.
Participants were tested on their ability to supply the genitive form of novel words and their sensitivity to semantic cues.

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Main Results:

Productivity, or the ability to inflect nonce words, emerged early, with 78% of two-year-olds demonstrating this skill.
Consistent mastery of the correct genitive ending developed much later, with adultlike performance not observed until approximately age 10;0.

Conclusions:

Early productivity in inflectional morphology is evident in young Polish children.
The acquisition of complex inflectional rules, like the genitive masculine, is a protracted process requiring significant developmental time to achieve mastery.