Cover not available

In:Nominal Compound Acquisition
Edited by Wolfgang U. Dressler, F. Nihan Ketrez and Marianne Kilani-Schoch
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 61] 2017
► pp. 145–163

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 6
The early production of compounds in Lithuanian

 |  | Vytautas Magnus University
 | 
Published online: 19 December 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.61.07dab
This study analyses Lithuanian children’s ability to produce compounds. The longitudinal data consist of the recordings of four children (1;7–3;11), two boys and two girls and the matching set of child-directed speech (CDS). Despite the fact that compounding is a productive pattern of word formation in Lithuanian, it is not a preferred method for making a noun, in contrast to such languages as German or English. The data analysis reveals that compounds in the children’s speech appear rarely, although they emerge quite early as pure imitations of adult utterances. The production of compounds in later stages of language acquisition, especially when used spontaneously, shows that they are used mostly as lexicalized items.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The structure of Lithuanian noun compounds
  • 3.The data
  • 4.The study
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (30)
References
Ambrazas, V.. (ed.). 1997. Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos gramatika (Grammar of Contemporary Lithuanian), 3rd edn. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidykla (The Science and Encyclopedia Publishers).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. 2009. Children’s acquisition of compounds. In The Handbook of Compounding, R. Lieber & P. Štekauer (eds), 298–322. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berman, R. A. & Clark, E. V. 1989. Learning to use compounds for contrast: Data from Hebrew. First Language 9: 247–270.  Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bittner, D., Dressler, U. W. & Kilani-Schoch, M.. (eds). 2003. Development of Verb Inflection in First Language Acquisition. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.  Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dabašinskienė, I.. 2009. Easy way to language acquisition: Diminutives in Lithuanian child language. Linguistics, Pedagogy, Psychology 1: 11–23.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. Acquisition of compounds in Lithuanian. Baltic Linguistics 1: 25–78.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dabašinskienė, I. & Kamandulytė, L.. 2009. Corpora of spoken Lithuanian. Estonian Papers in Applied Linguistics 5: 67–77.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dressler, W. U. (ed.) 1997. Studies in Pre- and Protomorphology. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dressler, W. U., Lettner, L. A. & Korecky-Kröll, K.. 2010. First language acquisition of compounds. In Cross-Disciplinary Issues in Compounding [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 311], S. Scalise & I. Vogel (eds), 323–344. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kamandulytė-Merfeldienė, L.. 2015. The Acquisition of Lithuanian adjectives: lexical and morphological features. In Semantics and Morphology of Early Adjectives in First Language Acquisition, E. Tribushinina, M. D. Voeikova & S. Noccetti (eds), 313–346. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kamandulytė, L.. 2009. Lietuvių kalbos būdvardžio įsisavinimas: Leksinės ir morfosintaksinės ypatybės (The Acquisition of Lithuanian Adjective: Lexical and Morphosyntactic Features). PhD dissertation, Vytautas Magnus University.
Kamandulytė-Merfeldienė, L. & Godliauskas, P.. 2014. Creating and working with corpus of spoken Lithuanian. In Human Language Technologies – The Baltic Perspective: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference, Baltic HLT 2014, 179–183.
Kamandulytė, L. & Savickienė, I.. 2007. The Corpus of Spoken Lithuanian. In Human Language Technologies: The Third Baltic Conference, Proceedings, 127–133.
Laaha, S. & Gillis, S.. (eds). 2007. Typological Perspectives on the Acquisition of Noun and Verb Morphology [Antwerp Papers in Linguistics 112]. Antwerp: University of Antwerp.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Larsson, J. H. 2002. Nominal compounds in the Baltic languages. Transactions of the Philological Society 100(2): 203–231.  Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lieber, R. & Štekauer, P.. 2009. Introduction: Status and definition of compounding. In The Handbook of Compounding, R. Lieber & P. Štekauer (eds), 3–18. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B.. 2000. The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk. Transcription, Format and Programs. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marchman, V. A. & Bates, E.. 1994. Continuity in lexical and morphological development: A test of the critical mass hypothesis. Journal of Child Language 21: 339–366.  Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Peters, A. M. 1997. Language typology, prosody, and the acquisition of grammatical morphemes. In The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition, Vol. 5, D. I. Slobin (ed.), 136–197. Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Savickienė, I.. 2001.The role of diminutives in Lithuanian child language acquisition. Linguistica Baltica 9: 109–118.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. The Acquisition of Lithuanian Noun Morphology. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Savickienė, I. & Dressler, W. U. (eds). 2007. The Acquisition of Diminutives. A Cross-Linguistic Perspective [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 43]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scalise, S. & Bisetto, A.. 2009. The classification of compounds. In The Handbook of Compounding, R. Lieber & P. Štekauer (eds), 34–54. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. 1985. Cross-linguistic evidence for the language-making capacity. In The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition, Vol. 2, D. I. Slobin (ed.), 1157–1256. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stundžia, B. & Mikulėnienė, D.. 1989. Dūrinių kirčiavimo dėsningumai (The Accentuation Patterns of Compounds). Kalbotyra (Linguistics) XL(1): 83–90.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stundžia, B.. 2014. Bendrinės lietuvių kalbos akcentologija (Accentology of the Lithuanian Language). Vilnius: Vilniaus universitetas.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Urbutis, V.. 2009. Žodžių darybos teorija (Theory of Word Formation). Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas (The Science and Encyclopedia Publishing Centre).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wójcik, P.. 2000. The Acquisition of Lithuanian Verb Morphology: A Case Study. Kraków: Quartis.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. Early verb inflection in Lithuanian. In Development of Verb Inflection in First Language Acquisition [Studies in Language Acquisition 21], D. Bittner, M. Kilani-Schoch & W. U. Dressler (eds), 401–419. Mouton: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Kamandulytė-Merfeldienė, Laura
2021. The Acquisition of Adjective Gradation in Lithuanian Children with Developmental Language Disorder at Preschool and Pre-primary School Age. Taikomoji kalbotyra 16 ► pp. 76 ff. DOI logo
Kamandulytė-Merfeldienė, Laura, Ingrida Balčiūnienė & Ineta Dabašinskienė
2021. The acquisition of the Lithuanian derivational system. In The Acquisition of Derivational Morphology [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 66], ► pp. 197 ff. DOI logo
Dressler, Wolfgang U., Sabine Sommer-Lolei, Katharina Korecky-Kröll, Reili Argus, Ineta Dabašinskienė, Laura Kamandulytė-Merfeldienė, Johanna Johansen Ijäs, Victoria V. Kazakovskaya, Klaus Laalo & Evangelia Thomadaki
2019. First-language acquisition of synthetic compounds in Estonian, Finnish, German, Greek, Lithuanian, Russian and Saami. Morphology 29:3 ► pp. 409 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue