Local and global characteristics in the development of morphosyntax by French children

Abstract

Statistical analysis of morphosyntax acquisition in French children aged two to four can be conducted at two levels. At the local level, regularities in the immediate lexical context of a word are evaluated by computing the proportion of pairs of consecutive words (e.g., such as) produced by children which are also produced in the same order by adults. At the global level, regularities in collected samples of children's language production are evaluated by computing the correlation between child distribution and adult distribution of open-class lexical categories in language production samples. Data from child language production show that irregularities evolve at the global level and tend to disappear over time. In contrast, local regularities already present at the age of two remain stable during maturation. To account for these findings, it is suggested that: (a) local regularities are a consequence of the reproduction of the adult's morphosyntax, and global irregularities a consequence of the randomness of a child's cognition and understanding of the world; and (b) high-level syntax - as opposed to morphosyntax - appears only later, as a development of local-level rules, and global regularities are a consequence of high-level syntax.