Placement of infinitives in successive child language acquisition

Sopata, Aldona

doi:10.1075/hsm.11.06sop

In:The Development of Grammar: Language acquisition and diachronic change
Edited by Esther Rinke and Tanja Kupisch
[Hamburg Studies on Multilingualism 11] 2011
► pp. 105–121

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Placement of infinitives in successive child language acquisition

Aldona Sopata

Published online: 25 May 2011

https://doi.org/10.1075/hsm.11.06sop

In recent work on child second language acquisition (cL2) a number of different age ranges for the onset of this acquisition type have been proposed (Schwartz 2004; Meisel 2008; Nicholas & Lightbown 2008). This paper aims at showing at which age noticeable differences as compared to first language acquisition (L1) emerge in the placement of infinitives in German. The study is also concerned with the acquisition of subject verb agreement as a turning point in the developmental sequence of German. The data of the children studied are shown to be consistent with the hypothesis of Meisel (2008) assuming the onset of cL2 between the ages 3 and 4.

Keywords: German acquisition, infinitives, subject verb agreement, successive child language acquisition

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