Plural Allomorphs Research Articles

Nominal plurals in Sign Language of the Netherlands: Accounting for allomorphy and variation

In both signed and spoken languages, reduplication is a common process in the formation of morphologically complex structures, expressing, e.g., plurality and certain aspectual meanings. A framework in which spoken language reduplication has been formalized frequently is Optimality Theory (OT). While an important attribute of OT-constraints is their universality, to date, the question to what extent such constraints are modality-independent, and thus work for sign language reduplication as well, remains largely unanswered. In the present study, we offer the first OT-formalization of plural reduplication in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). The NGT-data reveal that this language features different plural allomorphs, the choice of which depends on phonological properties of the base noun. However, we also identify variation, e.g., all noun types allow for zero marking.In our formalization, we aim to introduce constraints that are maximally modality-independent, using constraint types that have previously been proposed for spoken language reduplication. Our formalization is the first to take into account base-reduplicant faithfulness for a sign language, and also the first to account for variation in sign language data by employing stochastic OT, whereby some noise is added to the ranking value of each constraint at evaluation time. Evaluating the modality-(in)dependence of our proposed account suggests that the types of constraints we employ as well as the evaluation in the spirit of stochastic OT are not specific to a modality, while the featural implementation is inevitably modality-dependent.

Preschoolers’ developing comprehension of the plural: The effects of number and allomorphic variation

Previous intermodal preferential looking (IPL) studies have found that children learning English acquire knowledge of plural allomorphs incrementally. The segmental plural /-s/ (e.g., cats) is understood at 24 months of age, whereas the syllabic plural /-əz/ (e.g., buses) is not comprehended until 36 months. Production studies also show ongoing challenges with the syllabic plural /-əz/, suggesting a prolonged weaker representation for this allomorph. IPL studies also suggest that children do not understand the singular, which has no overt marking, until 36 months of age. However, the status of children’s developing representations of the singular has been largely unstudied. The current study, therefore explored 116 3- and 4-year-olds’ developing comprehension of novel singular and plural words, where the plurals were inflected with segmental and syllabic plural allomorphs. Results found that children were equally proficient at identifying novel plurals of both allomorph types, increasing accuracy with age. However, children’s accuracy with novel singulars did not increase with age, raising questions about the representation of null morphology. Children’s equal accuracy across plural allomorphs is more consistent with rule-based models of morphological representation than those proposing morphology as an emergent property of the lexicon. However, neither model completely accounts for the developmental differences found between singular and plural.

Exponence, allomorphy and haplology in the number and State morphology of Modern Hebrew

This paper provides an account of the regularities of plural exponence in Modern Hebrew. There are two genders in Modern Hebrew, each with its specific plural marker. Nouns can appear in the Construct or Free states, and the State of a noun also has an effect on the plural marking, though only in the case of masculine nouns. Finally, in nouns with possessive suffixes and in newly-formed dual nouns, plural number seems to be marked twice in the feminine noun, but only once in the masculine noun. The analysis first formalizes the distribution of the plural allomorphs of gender and State in the language using the Vocabulary Items of Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993). It is then claimed that the morpho-syntactic structures of N+possessive and of new duals involve two number projections, and therefore two plural exponents are expected in both constructions. However, in the masculine case the vocabulary Items provided in the paper result in the repetition of two overly similar exponents, creating an OCP violation. The repair is to delete one of the two, and so the double marking does not survive in the phonetic form. In the feminine case the two markers are not similar, and so there is no OCP violation, and double marking is surface-true.

Factors considered and ignored in plural acquisition: Frequency rules?

abstractSeveral models of regularities behind plural overgeneralization patterns of four-year-old monolingual Germans and bi-/multilingual children acquiring German were empirically examined within the framework of single- and dual-route models. The factors taken into account were frequency, cue validity, productivity, and iconicity of plural allomorphs. In this large-scale cross-sectional study, the results of 893 children tested with a modified, validated version of the speech and language screeningMSSand of 476 children tested with a validated language testSETK 3-5were analyzed. For all overgeneralization models, paired groups of expected and not expected answers were compared in the Wilcoxon test. At the early stages of plural acquisition the frequency of plural allomorphs and the simplest phonetic–phonologically based regularities seem to be the crucial factors recognized by children acquiring German. Gender-based plural allomorph frequency was associated with advanced German skills. These findings support the single-route theory with its emphasis on the influence of input characteristics on children’s error patterns. No evidence was found for a default status of -sor any other plural marker, and hence for the dual-route theory.

Los clíticos de primera persona del plural en las lenguas peninsulares: una visión dialectal

The main objective of this paper is the analysis of the different first person plural allomorphs existing in the Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula, given the absence of studies of this pronominal form. Our conclusions are based on data obtained from the Linguistic Atlas of the Iberian Peninsula (ALPI) and other later 20th century atlases such as ALEA, ALEANR, ALGA and ALEC-MAN. The results show a wide diversity of non-standard forms to express a first person plural. Some of them are indeed influenced by other phenomena attested in the second person plural. Interestingly, while Castilian variants have suffered a regression, the Portuguese language has developed an innovation which has removed the current normative pronoun.

Acquisition of German pluralization rules in monolingual and multilingual children

Existing studies on plural acquisition in German have relied on small samples and thus hardly deliver generalizable and differentiated results. Here, overgeneralizations of certain plural allomorphs and other tendencies in the acquisition of German plural markers are described on the basis of test data from 7,394 3- to 5-yearold monolingual German and bi/multilingual immigrant children tested with a modified, validated version of the Marburger Sprachscreening (MSS) language test and 476 children tested with the SETK 3-5 language test. Classified correct and wrong answers to MSS and SETK 3-5 plural items were compared. The acquisition patterns of immigrants corresponded to those of younger German children. Both monolingual German and immigrant children demonstrated generally the same universal frequency and phonetically/phonologically based error patterns, irrespective of their linguistic background, but with different tendencies such as overgeneralization of -s by German children only.

Pluralerwerb im Deutschen bei ­russisch- und türkischsprachigen Kindern im Vergleich mit anderen Migranten und monolingualen Muttersprachlern

Abstract The article focuses on the differences and common characteristics of the plural acquisition in German by children with Russian and Turkish mother tongues, compared with other immigrant children and Germans. Although not absolutely identical, the overgeneralization patterns of all groups appear to be very similar and obviously dependent only on the proficiency in German, without clear influences of the foreign linguistic background, the only exception being e-overgeneralizations in Russian children. Whereas immigrant children tend to account mostly for the frequency of the plural allomorphs in the input when choosing a plural marker, German children have already internalized the gender based distribution of some plural allomorphs.

Canonical and Epenthetic Plural Marking in Spanish-Speaking Children with Specific Language Impairment

In this study, we investigate whether specific language impairment (SLI) manifests itself grammatically in the same way in Spanish and English with respect to nominal plural marking. English-speaking children with SLI are very proficient at marking plural on nouns. Spanish has two main nominal plural allomorphs: /s/ and /es/. The /es/ allomorph has received multiple theoretical treatments, including one (e.g., Harris (1991)) which argues that in singular-plural pairs such as flor-flores, the /e/ is epenthetic, while other accounts (e.g., Colina (2003)) argue that synchronically there is an underlying /e/ in the singular form (e.g., flore) which gets deleted by apocope. Child Spanish speakers with SLI in the United States have shown mixed results in their abilities to learn plural marking. They have shown low proficiency on an elicited production task, but have shown high proficiency in spontaneous production data. We show, using a new elicited production task in Mexico with a group of children diagnosed with SLI and two control groups, that performance is close to the high levels previously shown in spontaneous production studies. Further, we show that all children's performance with the epenthetic allomorph /es/ is worse than their performance with the canonical allomorph /s/. Our results suggest that plural marking is not an axis of cross-linguistic variation between Spanish and English among children with SLI. On the basis of the absence of child errors of the flore type and presence of errors of the flors type, our data appear to support the epenthesis account of Harris (1991).

An ERP-study of German ‘irregular’ morphology

The plural morphology of German is characterised by five different plural allomorphs (-(e)n, -e, -er, -s, zero), partly combined with changes in the vowel (umlaut). While in former studies the - s plural allomorph is identified as the regular plural, the remaining forms are categorised as irregular. These observations have been discussed within the framework of the dual mechanism model. One component contains a rule for regular inflection; it provides the default. The second component is designed as a network and hosts irregular plural forms. However, as noted by several linguists, the so-called irregular component of German plural morphology is more structured and contains more predictable plural forms than the dual mechanism model predicts to be the case. Therefore, some plural forms should be less dependent on a network system. Using the technique of event-related potentials, cognitive processing of different irregular German plural allomorphs is investigated in this study. Comparisons include irregular allomorphs with low and high predictability, i.e. true irregulars were compared to subregularities. Indeed, the plural forms identified as subregulars showed a difference in processing by inducing a reduced N400 over right posterior medial electrodes. Up to date, the dual mechanism model treats different so-called irregular forms alike. But in light of these new findings, the network component of the dual mechanism model needs to be refined.

The influence of reward on comprehension testing of 2-year-old children

A procedure was devised in which a reward was hidden under the stimulus picture representing the correct answer to a comprehension task. Both accuracy and test-retest reliability of the responses of 34 2-yr-old children were measured. Eight items tested comprehension of plural allomorphs /s/ and /z/, and eight evaluated the comprehension of word order in reversible subject-verb-object active sentences. The effects of the rewarded search procedure varied, depending on sex and the language structure that was tested. In those cases where the procedure significantly affected responses, the difference was in the direction of improved accuracy and reliability.

STEM ENDINGS AND THE ACQUISITION OF INFLECTIONS

This study attempted to determine if the stem ending to which an inflection is affixed influenced the acquisition of the plural allomorphs by young children. The materials consisted of forty‐six nonsense monosyllables, two examples for each possible, final, single consonant in English. Using the technique developed by Berko, the researcher discovered that children do significantly better inflecting some stems requiring a particular allomorph than inflecting other stems requiring the same allomorph. In other words, the stem ending does influence the acquisition of the plural allomorphs. Children's rules for plural inflections are also discussed briefly.

REINFORCEMENT AND GENERALIZATION OF PRODUCTIVE PLURAL ALLOMORPHS IN TWO RETARDED CHILDREN1

Morphological dictates of English usage call for the unvoiced allomorph /-s/ to form the plural of singular nouns with unvoiced endings (e.g., cups). Conversely, the voiced allomorph /-z/ is required to form the plural of nouns with voiced endings (e.g., tree). The study sought to determine the extent to which differential reinforcement could control the acquisition of plural allomorphs in two retarded subjects. In Condition 1, one subject was trained with reinforcement procedures on a list of words calling for the /-s/ allomorph. She was then given unreinforced probe items to determine the extent of generalization to words calling for the /-z/ allomorph. In Condition 2, the procedures were reversed and this subject was trained on a /-z/ list and probed for generalization of /-z/ to words calling for /-s/. A second subject was exposed to the same conditions in the opposite order. The results for the two subjects lent unequivocal support for the hypothesis of generalized training effects. It was concluded that appropriate usage of the linguistic response class "plurals" is susceptible to generalized training effects of differential reinforcement.

The Child's Learning of English Morphology

In this study we set out to discover what is learned by children exposed to English morphology. To test for knowledge of morphological rules, we use nonsense materials. We know that if the subject can supply the correct plural ending, for instance, to a noun we have made up, he has internalized a working system of the plural allomorphs in English, and is able to generalize to new cases and select the right form. If a child knows that the plural of witch is witches, he may simply have memorized the plural form. If, however, he tells us that the plural of * gutch is * gutches, we have evidence that he actually knows, albeit unconsciously, one of those rules which the descriptive linguist, too, would set forth in his grammar. And if children do have knowledge of morphological rules, how does this knowledge evolve? Is there a progression from simple, regular rules to the more irregular and qualified rules that are adequate fully to describe English? In very general terms, we undertake to discover the psychological status of a certain kind of linguistic description. It is evident that the acquisition of language is more than the storing up of rehearsed utterances, since we are all able to say what we have not practiced and what we have never before heard. In bringing descriptive linguistics to the study of language acquisition, we hope to gain knowledge of the systems and patterns used by the speaker. In order to test for children's knowledge of this sort, it was necessary to begin with an examination of their actual vocabulary. Accordingly, the 1000 most frequent words in the first-grader's vocabulary were selected from Rinsland's listing. This listing