Abstract
This paper investigates the predictions of the Derivational Complexity Hypothesis by studying the acquisition of wh-questions in 4- and 5-year-old Akan-speaking children in an experimental approach using an elicited production and an elicited imitation task. Akan has two types of wh-question structures (wh-in-situ and wh-ex-situ questions), which allows an investigation of children’s acquisition of these two question structures and their preferences for one or the other. Our results show that adults prefer to use wh-ex-situ questions over wh-in-situ questions. The results from the children show that both age groups have the two question structures in their linguistic repertoire. However, they differ in their preferences in usage in the elicited production task: while the 5-year-olds preferred the wh-in-situ structure over the wh-ex-situ structure, the 4-year-olds showed a selective preference for the wh-in-situ structure in who-questions. These findings suggest a developmental change in wh-question preferences in Akan-learning children between 4 and 5 years of age with a so far unobserved u-shaped developmental pattern. In the elicited imitation task, all groups showed a strong tendency to maintain the structure of in-situ and ex-situ questions in repeating grammatical questions. When repairing ungrammatical ex-situ questions, structural changes to grammatical in-situ questions were hardly observed but the insertion of missing morphemes while keeping the ex-situ structure. Together, our findings provide only partial support for the Derivational Complexity Hypothesis.
Highlights
One of the essential components of a child’s cognitive and social development is the acquisition of their native language(s)
Akan is a language that shows a large degree of optionality between in-situ and ex-situ questions and is an optimal candidate to further test the predictions of the Derivational Complexity Hypothesis (DCH) and the Derivational Complexity Metric (DCM) as proposed by Jakubowicz (2004), Jakubowicz (2005)
This study tests the prediction that the in-situ and ex-situ wh-questions in Akan do not differ in terms of structural complexity (Saah, 1995) and children learning Akan will not favor one structure over the other on the basis that the in-situ structure is less complex than the ex-situ structure
Summary
One of the essential components of a child’s cognitive and social development is the acquisition of their native language(s). Acquiring a language is a complex phenomenon and research on this has become of great theoretical interest to linguists and developmental psychologists as well as for applications in diagnosis and treatment by speech therapists. This paper deals with a specific aspect of the acquisition of syntax, that is, the acquisition of wh-questions, by taking a cross-linguistic approach to children acquiring Akan—an understudied African language. Cross-linguistic studies in this area are revealing since languages show some variability in the structural properties of wh-questions, this variability seems to be limited by quite strong structural conditions.
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