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The acquisition of agglutinating languages: converging evidence from Tamil*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Parimala Raghavendra  and
Laurence B. Leonard
Parimala Raghavendra
Affiliation:
Purdue University
Laurence B. Leonard*
Affiliation:
Purdue University
*
Department of Audiology & Speech Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA.
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Abstract

The acquisition of verb inflections in Tamil, an agglutinating language, was investigated in three 2-year-old children. The findings revealed a high percentage use of verb inflections indicating tense, aspect, modality, person, number and gender by all three children. Explanations for this early, almost error-free acquisition are discussed in terms of the facilitating properties of agglutinating languages.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , June 1989 , pp. 313 - 322
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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Footnotes

*

The authors would like to thank M. S. Thirumalai for his valuable suggestions. Special thanks are extended to the three children and their families for their participation in the study. We would also like to thank Richard Schwartz and Jack Gandour for their comments.

References

REFERENCES

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