2006 in Folia Linguistica XL, 115-134

Case before gender in the acquisition of German

Dagmar Bittner abstract The paper discusses the acquisition of pronominal forms in German-speaking children. Main emphasis lies on the development of the form paradigms of definite pronouns and articles which are formally identical in German (except of the genitive forms which are not acquired in the early phase) and the functional content of the contrasting definite forms in early child grammar. On the base of an analysis of various types of overgeneralizations, it is argued here that children first acquire the lexico-semantic content related to definiteness, then functional features related to case distinctions and only later on functional features related to gender distinctions. On the contrary to previous investigations, the derived hypothesis is that a uniform case paradigm is the starting point in the acquisition of the paradigmatic relations. Gender, as a productive component of paradigm structure is realized by the child only later on. In general, the observed developments confirm assumptions of Natural Morphology and other functional theoretical concepts on the principles of paradigm organization. 1. Natural morphology and language acquisition One of the main goals of Natural Morphology is to detect the constitutive features of inflectional systems and it’s core element – the inflectional classes. Previous research showed that complexity with respect to the number of inflectional classes in a certain domain of grammar (nouns, verbs etc.) is at the same time superfluous but mostly well motivated. Formal complexity is superfluous with respect to universal structural and functional principles, especially the principles of uniformity and transparency, which demand an unambiguous assignment of morphological categories. Formal complexity is well motivated, instead of being arbitrary, by a strong tendency towards extra-morphological implication of distinct inflectional behaviour. Wurzel (1984) hypothesized that the organisation of inflectional systems is determined by system-defining structural properties including the general parameters for implicative relations, the interrelation in the assignment of different morphological categories and, all in all, the base of markedness judgments for single forms, paradigms, classes and so on.

This hypothesis has been confirmed by the fact that general lines of language change become predictable on the base of the naturalness (or markedness or prefence) principles proposed in the concept of Natural Morphology. Further touchstones are considered to be language loss and language acquisition as well as slips of the tongue and some other domains. One of these domains, the acquisition of inflectional classes, shall be highlighted in this paper. I will analyse and discuss the acquisition of German pronominal inflection. The central question is, how children cope with the polyfunctionality of pronominal forms and the motivation of different inflectional classes. Finally, the predictability of the order of acquisition by naturalness principles will be discussed. 2. Polyfunctionality and language acquisition In German, the morphological properties of the noun phrase are mainly realized on the co-constituents of the noun instead of on the noun itself. The relevant nominal categories are gender, case, and number. Whereas number is overtly symbolized on the noun by plural

2suffixes, gender is never overtly symbolized on the noun. Case is overtly symbolized on the noun only in two specific contexts, in the genitive singular of masculines and neuters (des Haus-es/Hund-es ‘of the house-/dog-GEN., but der Blume ‘of the flower’) and in the dative plural of noun forms which do not end in /n/ or /s/ in the plural (den Häus-er-n/Hund-e-n/Händ-e-n ‘the houses-/dogs-/hands-DAT.PL’ but den Blum-en/Auto-s ‘the flowers/cars’). Gender and case are primarily realised by the co-constituents of a noun phrase.1 Thus, German exhibits an obligatory pronominal inflection in noun phrases.

However, gender and case are not the only functional features carried by co-constituents. Each of these types, i.e. demonstrative pronoun (diese ‘this/that’), definite article (der ‘the’), indefinite article (ein ‘a’), negative article (kein ‘none’), quantifier (viele ‘many’), adjective (schön ‘nice’) and so on, bears a certain lexical-functional content. Thus, the functional load of co-constituents is threefold: they carry a) lexical-functional, b) gender, and c) case information. As a result, the respective forms are grammatically complex.

Research on language acquisition has shown that grammatical complexity is acquired in a stepwise process. Children start with easily perceivable lexical-semantic features and proceed towards the more abstract grammatical features (which are of semantic nature too). Within the domain of grammar, children start with the more general oppositions and proceed towards subspecifications within the previously identified domains.

Considering the polyfunctionality of German pronominals, it is quite expected that children will acquire their lexical-functional features first, i.e. the features which distinguish personal pronouns from demonstrative pronouns, definite pronouns and so on. However, it is not so easy to postulate a hypothesis regarding the order of acquisition of gender and case. If one assumes that the lexical-functional features are acquired first, the further acquisition process can follow one out of three logical possibilities:

(1) lexical-functional features > gender features > case features

(2) lexical-functional features > case features > gender features

(3) lexical functional features > case features = gender features

Assuming a stepwise acquisition process, possibility (3) is least expected. However, at first sight there seem to be good arguments for both remaining possibilities.

Let’s first consider possibility (1), the acquisition of gender before case. In contrast to the other categories, gender features are inherent features of the noun itself, i.e. so called lexical properties. A noun cannot change its gender in any type of context. This allows for the hypothesis that the gender feature is acquired together with the noun. A further argument concerns the early case contexts in child language. Initially, children produce almost only utterances containing nominative and accusative positions, i.e. case contexts in which gender features are fully differentiated in the target system (nominative: der-MSC, die-FEM, das-NTR; accusative: den-MSC, die-FEM, das-NTR)2. Under the assumption that nominative is the starting point for the implication of the case paradigm, gender distinctions should be learned first, i.e. before case distinctions are acquired.

Arguments for possibility (2), that case is acquired prior to gender, concern the semantic load of both categories. In contrast to gender, case can be connected to a semantic, i.e. perceptual differentiation. Case distinctions include the distinction between thematic roles, i.e. agents, patients, goals etc. Although no one-to-one correspondence exists, the correlations bear prototypical relations. Communication with and among children is characterized by canonical and non-complex structures. Prototypical correspondences between thematic roles and case positions are especially present in the early dialogues. Thus, the child can discover a semantic motivation for case distinctions, whereas she cannot do so for gender distinctions. Gender does not provide systematic alternations in the structural presentation of one and the

3same referent. The question arises as to what purpose gender has and, furthermore, what the basis can be on which the child recognizes the relevance of gender distinctions.

To conclude: it seems quite clear that the first form-function mapping concerns the general reference function of the pronominal type, i.e. the lexical-functional features. However, it is an open question whether gender or case assignment becomes productive next. The present paper aims at contributing to a solution to this question. As an example for the acquisition of pronominal inflection, I will focus on the definite article in its pronominal and adnominal use. It is quite reasonable that the acquisition of other pronominal types follows the same general lines. Focussing on the definite article has the advantages of high comparability with previous studies and of choosing an early acquired pronominal type that bears a considerable set of distinct forms. In the section 3, I will briefly summarize previous findings on the acquisition of case and gender in German. In section 4, method, data, and analyses of the non-target use of definite articles by one German girl are reported. Section 5 presents the hypotheses that can be drawn from the findings in section 4. Finally, in section 6, I will discuss empirical and theoretical conclusions with respect to language acquisition theory and functional theory of grammar, especially Natural Morphology. 3. Previous research on the acquisition of case and gender in German 3.1. The acquisition of gender Although gender is one of the categories which have to be acquired in order to construct the pro/nominal paradigms, surprisingly little research has been conducted on its acquisition so far. In the early diary studies on language acquisition from the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, only few considerations concerning the acquisition of gender can be found (cf. Scupin/Scupin 1907, Preyer 1882, Stern/Stern 1909). The first and only study on the topic that is based on longitudinal and elicited experimental data is Mills (1986). In the last decade, studies have been conducted on gender acquisition in German/French bilingual children (Müller 1990, 1994, and Koehn 1994) and in children learning German as their second language (Wegener 2000). The main aim of these later studies was to find out whether children acquire the gender assignment rules for German nouns as proposed by Köpcke (1982) and Köpcke/Zubin (1983).

The only possibility to detect children’s hypotheses regarding structural regularities on the base of longitudinal data arises from their use of non-target forms, i.e. from so-called overgeneralizations. With respect to the definite article it has been found that non-target use is very rare. However, all authors agree that the children acquire the following gender assignment rules:

(4) natural gender rule: nouns denoting female persons are connected with die, nouns denoting male persons are connected with der (Mills 1986: 99; Müller 1990: 212; Koehn 1994: 45; Wegener 2000: 531)

(5) nouns ending in –e are connected with die (Mills 1986: 85; Müller 1994: 72; Wegener 2000: 534-5)

(6) monosyllabic nouns strongly tend to be connected with der and den (Müller 1990: 227, 1994: 72, Wegener 2000: 534, Mills 1986)

Single authors suggest the acquisition of some other rules, e.g., that nouns referring to animate beings tend to be connected with die (Müller 1994: 59).

Further observations are: The greatest difficulties appear with neuter nouns which are generally combined with die and der in the early period and with the masculine forms der and

4den later on. Müller (1994: 71) concludes that “until after age 3;0, neuter gender does not represent a separate noun class in the children’s lexicon, but instead, a subgender (cf. Corbett 1989)” and that “the child seems to hypothesize that German has two noun-classes, a masculine and a feminine class” (Müller 1990: 219). Mills reports that the article form die is the most frequent in overgeneralizations. This fits with Müller’s observation that “the form die is used regardless of the gender of the noun in … [accusative and dative] contexts.” (1990: 214). 3.2. The acquisition of case Investigations regarding the acquisition of case inflection have focussed on the use of determiners in the accusative of masculine singular and in the dative, cf. Clahsen (1984), Meisel (1986), Tracy (1986), Clahsen et al. (1994). The main aim of these studies was to detect the order of acquisition of the different types of case as borne out on determiners and the acquisition of the case categories themselves. All authors agree that the order of acquisition of case is:

(7) nominative > accusative > dative > genitive

According to their findings, the stepwise acquisition of cases and case forms reveals itself through overgeneralizations of nominative forms in accusative contexts (only possible with masculines: der instead of den) and the overgeneralization of accusative forms in dative contexts (die instead of der with feminines and der/das instead of dem with masculines/neuters). Although the authors say nothing about gender acquisition explicitly, their statements indicate that gender is assumed to be acquired prior to case.

However, studies on gender acquisition resulted in contradictory findings. Overgeneralization of pronominal forms does not only occur within gender classes but also across them, cf. nom. der maus ‘the mouse’ – der-MSC+Maus-FEM, dat. den frau ‘the woman’ – den-ACC.MSC+frau-FEM.

With respect to second language data, Wegener (2000) found another type of overgeneralization: “…-r forms [der] are overgeneralized for subjects, -s forms [das] for direct objects and -e forms [die] are used in plural NPs” (ib.: 524). Wegener suggests that during an early stage “these [syntactic] distinctions are well established,” whereas “gender as grammatical category, however, is not yet recognized.” (ib.: 531). 3.3. Summary Previous studies suggest a) that children between the ages of 2 and 4 acquire certain formal and semantic gender assignment rules which are part of the adult grammar, and b) that case is acquired in the order nom. > acc. > dat. > gen. As to the question whether gender is acquired prior to case or vice versa, only Wegener gives an explicit statement. At least children learning German as their second language seem to map the distinct pronominal forms onto distinct syntactic functions first and only later onto gender classes. Müller too hints at syntactic differences in the distribution of overgeneralized definite articles, but gender is assumed to have its own, separable structural domain: ”In German, gender marking is restricted to functors expressing nominative case.” (1990: 219). On the contrary, Mills (1986: 64) states that “Gender can not be separated from case. An error in case may not necessarily imply an error in gender, but it is often impossible to distinguish one from the other.” However, she did not discuss the relationship of case and gender in the acquisition process.

5Much more than in the studies on gender there is an implicit division of a gender and case

domain in the studies on case acquisition. Nominative and accusative are considered to be the domain of gender. That’s why the development of these positions is not in the focus of case analyses.

In the following, I will show that there is a greater interrelation in the acquisition of case and gender than has been assumed in previous research. I will concentrate on the functional interpretation of the definite article. The acquisition of gender assignment rules will not be addressed in this paper. However, it should be mentioned that the data analysed here does not confirm the acquisition of any of the gender assignment rules cited in section 3.1. and of any rule at all (cf. Bewer 2004, Bittner in prep.). 4. Case study: Non-target use of definite articles 4.1. The data The following analyses are based on the Simone-corpus which is the largest and most extensive corpus of longitudinal data of a German child available in the CHILDES database. Simone has been recorded from the age of 1;9 to 4;0. Approximately two-third of the data has been analysed for the present study.

In the acquisition of definite articles, four phases can be distinguished. Table 1 presents the period of time covered by each of the four phases as well as the number of analyzable child utterances for each phase. All utterances of Simone which did not include at least one recognizable lexical element,3 which are immediate and completely identical repetitions of her own utterances and those which are answers to elicitation questions like Heißt das geschlafen oder geschlaft? ‘Does one say has slept or sleeped?’ are excluded from counting. Table 1. phases in non-target use of definite articles4

phase age number of analyzed utterances I 1;9 – 2;4 2353 II 2;5 – 2;11 4329 III 3;0 – 3;5 2176 IV 3;7 – 4;0 1804 Criteria for the division of the four phases are the emergence of new developmental processes in non-target use of definite articles. Thus, the proposed phases do not represent general developmental phases of Simone’s acquisition process but describe developmental steps in form-function mapping of definite articles. 4.2. The acquisition of lexical-functional features The German noun phrase does not allow for the use of more than one determiner form (only combinations of determiners and quantifiers are possible). It has been found that children follow this rule from the very beginning of determiner use. Furthermore, wrong use of determiners in contexts where other types of determiners would be target-like, is rarely observed (cf. Wegener 2000). These findings are confirmed by the data of Simone.

Obviously, children only start to use determiners (and pronominal forms in general) when they have acquired the lexical-functional content of the respective type. The phonologically reduced forms often produced in the very beginning, e.g. e, en, or ne for the indefinite article and de for the definite article, reveal the “reduction” to this single function. Thus, the

6hypothesis that the first step in the acquisition of pronominal forms is the acquisition of their lexical-functional features appears to be confirmed. The lexical functional feature of the definite article is mainly identified as [+definite] in grammatical theory. 4.3. The syntactic contexts of non-target use of definite articles In order to examine whether there are case-specific patterns of overgeneralization, each case category has been analysed separately. Table 2 shows the distribution of non-target forms over case contexts. Numbers in bold emphasize relevant frequencies of overgeneralizations.5 Table 2. non-target-like use of definite articles according to type, phase, and case position phase NOM ACC DAT der die den das der die den das der die den das I 19 1 2 3 1 II 13 12 5 3 10 7 1 2 13 10 2 III 9 10 2 4 8 6 3 4 2 11 1 IV 4 4 2 3 1 1 3 2 1 8 1 The following order of emergence of overgeneralizations appears:

phase I: Non-target use of definite articles is more or less restricted to the article form der.6

phase II: Now also die, den, and das forms occur in non-target use. Die is the most frequent.

phase III: All four forms are used erroneously. The frequency of die decreases.

phase IV: All four forms are used erroneously. The preponderance of die overgeneralization has disappeared.

Non-target das is rare from the onset of article use until the end of observation. It appears considerably later than der and die in adnominal use. The form seems to be specified merely as a deictic pronoun for a long time.

With dem, which is regularly produced by Simone since age 2;7, only two instances of uncertainty are documented: dem/die Mama in dative context at 2;10 and dem/der Maxe in nominative context at 3;1. This means, in contrast to the other forms, dem is hardly ever overgeneralized.

Table 2 also reveals certain correlations of form and case context:

der: is the most frequent in nominative contexts throughout all four phases. In phase I, der is virtually the only form which is overgeneralized. Nearly all of the early overgeneralizations appear in nominative context. The strong correlation of der with nominative context becomes weaker in the last two phases, but does not disappear.

die: is equally spread over all case contexts in phase II. In phase III, die starts to disappear from dative contexts and in phase IV it also disappears from accusative contexts.

den: is restricted to accusative and dative contexts. It never appears in nominative context. In the last phase, den seemingly disappears from non-target use in accusative contexts.

das: remains marginal in non-target use over the whole period of investigation. The data suggest that it is more frequent in nominative contexts first and in accusative contexts later on. However, the small amount of non-target use does not allow for clear statements regarding this form.

7It thus appears that there is considerable regularity in the overgeneralization of definite articles. Table 3 summarizes the correlation of forms and case contexts over the four phases. Table 3. resulting distribution of overgeneralized forms phase Nom. Acc. Dat. I der II der - die die - den die – den III der – die die - den den IV der – die (der – das) den

The main result of the syntactic analysis is: there is a strong correlation of der in nominative contexts as well as of den in accusative/dative contexts over the whole period of investigation. In contrast, die occurs in all case contexts in the beginning and gradually disappears from object contexts later on. Finally, dem is hardly ever overgeneralized. 4.4. The gender property of nouns with non-target article forms In order to find out whether there are gender specific overgeneralization patterns, a gender analysis of the nouns affected by article overgeneralization has been performed. Tables 4–6 present the results. Columns containing the form–case correlations which emerged as overgeneralization patterns in the above syntactic analysis are given in bold letters. Table 4. nominative contexts phase DER DIE DAS ntr. fem. msc. ntr. msc. fem. I 10 9 1 II 5 8 10 2 2 3 III 4 5 9 1 2 IV 1 3 2 2 1 1 Table 5. accusative contexts phase

DER DIE DEN DAS

msc. ntr. fem. msc. ntr. ntr. fem. msc. fem. I 2 3 II 2 1 8 2 5 2 1 III 1 3 7 1 6 1 1 IV 2 1 1 1 3 Table 6. dative contexts phase DER DIE DEN msc. ntr. msc. ntr. fem. msc. ntr. fem.I 1 II 2 3 10 5 5 III 2 2 1 1 7 3 1 IV 2 1 7

8 Most revealing are the empty cells. Obviously, overgeneralization is the most restricted in dative context: den hardly ever appears with feminines and die hardly ever with masculines from phase II on. After phase II, overgeneralization of die is overall rare in dative contexts. In accusative contexts, patterns of restriction emerge from phase III on; die disappears from overgeneralizations with neuter first and later with masculines; den disappears from overgeneralizations with feminines first and later with neuters. In nominative contexts, no such strong development can be observed. The strongest decrease emerges for die with masculines in phase IV. Additionally, the data for das show a tendency of overgeneralization with masculines but not with feminines.

It can be concluded that gender-specific tendencies of overgeneralization occur first in the dative: After the emergence of dative contexts in the child’s speech during phase II, masculines are only affected by der-, den- overgeneralizations and feminines only by die-overgeneralizations. In contrast, neuters are affected by der-, die-, and den-overgeneralizations. Although the production of accusative contexts starts some months earlier than that of dative contexts, comparable tendencies only occur at phase III here: Overgeneralizations with feminines start to decrease in phase III. Neuters are only combined with den and masculines with die at this point . In nominative contexts, on the other hand, all types of overgeneralization observed in phase II are still observed in phase IV. 5. Results The data allow for at least three hypotheses:7

(A) The child first interprets the different article forms as symbolizations of different structural arguments. S/he establishes a uniform “case” paradigm of the forms die, der, den and dem.

(B) The formation of article paradigms based on gender starts after the acquisition of dem, which is hardly ever overgeneralized.

(C) The formation of different article paradigms proceeds step by step as dissociation of the uniform case paradigm starting in dative position.

In the following I will present the relevant facts in detail. As already mentioned, all article forms symbolize the lexical-functional feature [+definite]

(cf. section 4.2.). While die is not further specified, der and den are related to specific argument positions.8 It becomes very clear from table 3 that the first hypothesis of the child on specific functions of article forms concerns the form der which is interpreted as an assignment of the subject (or agent/topic) phrase right after the onset of article use. Only some time later, in phase II, hypotheses on the function of die and den are established. The form den is mapped onto object (patient/goal/focus) assignment. The form die, however, remains unspecified for a certain case position. Thus, a uniform “case” paradigm emerges during phase II, i.e. after the age of 2;6 with Simone. (8) die +definite der +definite +subject (agent/topic) den +definite +object (patient/focus)

At age 2;7, Simone starts to productively use the form dem which is hardly ever overgeneralized. This means that she adds a fourth form to the above paradigm, which is not

9only more strongly specified with respect to argument assignment but also with respect to noun class. The lack of overgeneralization implies that dem is specified for masculine and neuter, i.e. non-feminines, from the onset of production.

(9) die +definite der +definite +subject den +definite +object dem +definite +object +indirect +non-feminine

The acquisition of dem starts with prepositional phrases extracted as unanalysed holophrases from the input, cf. auf (de)m arm ‘at the arm’, mit dem zug ‘with the train’, aus dem fenster ‘out of the window’. However, as the use of dative arguments increases, the opposition between phrases like mit dem papa ‘with the daddy’ vs. mit der mama ‘with the mommy’ or auf dem weg ‘at the path’ vs. auf der straße ‘at the street’ becomes obvious and the first gender related distinction starts to play a role in the child’s productions. It is thus likely that, at the end of phase II, the first step towards a gender based differentiation of the uniform “case” paradigm emerges. (10) dissociation of the uniform “case” paradigm at the end of phase II

+definite die +definite +subject der +definite +object den +definite +object +indirect den/dem (die) non-feminines feminines Table 6 reveals that gender differentiation emerges not only through the restricted use of dem but also through a strong tendency to not overgeneralize den with feminines and die with masculines.

To summarize: The first gender-related distinction the child acquires is the opposition of +feminine and -feminine in dative contexts.

The further development is characterized by the disappearance of die from overgeneralizations. First, die disappears from dative contexts in phase III (cf. table 2). It is the only remarkable reduction of overgeneralizations in that phase and eliminates the last commonality between non-feminines and feminines in the dative (cf. table 6). Additionally, den starts to disappear from overgeneralizations with feminines in the accusative (cf. table 5). Thus, the first step towards gender distinction in accusative contexts emerges. (11) dissociation of the uniform case paradigm in phase III

+definite die +definite +subject der +definite +object den die +definite +object +indirect den/dem der non-feminines feminines In phase IV, die and den almost completely disappear from overgeneralization in accusative contexts (cf. table 2). Furthermore, den also disappears from overgeneralization to neuters in dative contexts (cf. table 6). Thus, in phase IV, the dissociation of masculines and neuters starts.

10(12) dissociation of the non-feminine case paradigm in phase IV

+definite die +definite +subject der +definite +object den das die +definite +object +indirect den/dem dem der masc. ntr. fem. A consequence of the development described above is the restriction of overgeneralization of die to nominative contexts. However, this does not mean that die is now specified for subject arguments, but rather that the child has learned to use specific article forms for specific types of object arguments.

At the end of the observed period, i.e. at age 4, no pattern of gender dissociation is to be detected in nominative contexts, merely a decrease in the amount of overgeneralization (cf. table 4). 6. Discussion 6.1. The acquisition of case and gender in German The development regarding the overgeneralization of definite articles in the data of Simone (as well as in two other children, cf. footnote 7) convincingly demonstrates that case or case-related features are acquired prior to gender features in the acquisition of article forms. The different functional features of pronominal forms are acquired in the following order: lexical-functional features > case features > gender features. Interestingly, this result corresponds to what Wegener (2000) has found for children learning German as their second language. However, the children’s construction of a uniform “case” paradigm right after the acquisition of different article forms is the most important finding. It confirms and explains single observations of argument–article correlations reported in previous studies (cf. quotations in section 3.1). Furthermore, it explains why die is the most frequent in overgeneralizations in the early phases: die is not merely the most frequent article form in the input but the only form underspecified with respect to case/argument features and thus fitting to all case contexts. In Bittner (2002), I argued that also in adult language, die is left unspecified for case, gender, and number features. It appears in those nominal classes and syntactic positions where further specifications are not necessary because of unmarked category classes (e.g. nom./acc.sg.fem) or where the relevant grammatical features are specified in other structural domains (e.g. nom./acc.pl). In language acquisition, the first form-function-mapping with respect to die is therefore target-like. Overgeneralization to non-target contexts is caused by the lack of readily accessible forms specified for category features required by these contexts in adult language.

One may ask why der and not die is specified for nominative position. In adult German, die appears in the nominative of two classes (feminines and plural) but der in the nominative of masculines only. Furthermore, die occurs in nominative and accusative positions, i.e. in those two cases which count as the unmarked cases. Der, on the other hand, occurs in the nominative of masculines, as well as in the genitive (feminines and plural) and in the dative (feminines), i.e. in marked cases. One might summarize that die is more preferred for the nominative position than der. However, the data not only show a clear correspondence of the nominative position with der in overgeneralizations, but der is also the determiner that Simone first uses. More than 90% of the forms she overgeneralized in phase I are der in nominative position. there is a quite simple structural explanation of these findings. In general, but especially in child speech, subjects typically contain agent arguments. Agent

11arguments are typically animates and animates typically belong to the masculine class. The latter holds for children and adults equally, cf. table 7 for children’s vocabulary and for adults see Krifka (this volume). Table 7. gender of noun tokens for animates in two children child9 total of tokens Fem. Msc. Neut. Anna 1;8 – 2;10

2238 (all nouns)

169 32,6%

280 53,9%

70 13,5%

A. (boy) 1;11 – 4;0

40071 (200 most frequent

nouns)

2050 36,3%

2596 45,9%

1008 17,8%

As a consequence, the prototypical candidate for the subject/nominative phrase is a masculine noun denoting an animate being. This prototypical relation leads the child to the hypothesis that der occurs with subject arguments. Although die is the more frequent and more salient article form in the input, der might appear prior to die in the child’s productions. This is caused by two facts: First, subjects are more frequent than objects. In German, each finite utterance demands an overt subject but not necessarily an overt object. Second, definiteness is far more often given in subjects than in objects. This is because they typically include already specified/individualised referents functioning as the topic of the utterance (Dressler 1994).

The specification of den and dem for object position is less surprising. Children never hear these forms in other than accusative and dative contexts. An open question remains with respect to how children learn that dem only occurs with non-feminines. Rote-learning seems to be one possible explanation. However, the relative low frequency of dative phrases in the input and their relatively high structural variation in the child’s speech make such an assumption unlikely. With Simone, 9 distinct prepositions are documented in dative phrases from the age of 2;5 to 3;0. Additionally, dative object phrases are produced. All in all, 68 different nouns occur in these phrases, 46 of them are always used with the right pronominal form. In my opinion, rote-learning only accounts for the very early phase in the production of dative phrases, i.e. in Simone’s case up to 2;7. An alternative assumption would be that productive use of dative phrases and increasing knowledge or automatisation of gender features go hand in hand. Two facts might support this assumption. In dative contexts, not only dem but also den is (nearly) never overgeneralized to feminines and die is never overgeneralized to masculines. In order to further examine this assumption, the course of overgeneralization in nominative contexts has to be statistically analysed. Overgeneralizations in these contexts should decrease significantly in relation to correct assignments when dative phrases become productive.

The second important result of the study concerns the structural position in which gender features emerge for the first time. Contrary to the assumption that gender is especially prominent in nominative and accusative contexts (cf. section 3.1. and 3.2.), gender first shows up as a relevant grammatical feature in dative contexts. This seems especially surprising because dative is the functionally most complex or marked case category. However, the further process of dissociation of the gender classes confirms this observation: gender distinction develops from dative to accusative and only then reaches the nominative. Nevertheless, there is no answer h o w children acquire gender features. It has been mentioned in section 3.3. that none of the gender assignment rules proposed by previous studies were found in the data of Simone.10 For the time being, only rote-learning seems plausible. At least for certain categories, the child has to figure out which pronominal forms fit with a certain noun.

12The order in the emergence of gender distinctions suggests that form-form-relations play

the main role in the acquisition of gender classes. Gender as a grammatical feature becomes established when the child learns to organise the pronominal forms in paradigms. The base form for the implicational relations remains unidentified for the moment. As suggested above, rote learning of article forms and detection of gender classes may go hand in hand, cf. also Wegener (2000: 533): “The children presumably process gender assignment … to a high degree through rote learning. They are assisted by their increasing knowledge of the oblique forms of the functors, … , so that they can implicitly derive gender from all forms occurring in the input … .”

The results of the present study as well as of Wegener (2000) require a modification of previous assumptions on the acquisition of case (cf. section 3.2.). Acquisition of case starts much earlier than suggested so far, namely right after the acquisition of distinct article forms. The nominative is not merely a domain of gender but should be considered to have a certain argument position marked by a certain article form. Case acquisition starts with the opposition of a form unspecified for case (die) and a form specified for nominative context (der). The main source of overgeneralization is the child’s assumption of a uniform case paradigm, but not the overextension of the unmarked case forms to more marked cases. This is only a later development. The gender property of the noun or, more likely, certain form-form-relations of articles come into play in dative phrases which become productive about 6 months after the emergence of the first case related opposition. Further doubt about the assumption that gender features are already in place when case starts to be acquired arises because it would imply that masculines are significantly stronger affected by within-gender overgeneralizations than feminines and neuters, which is not the case (cf. table 6).

To conclude the above considerations, I argue that it is not simply the fact that case features are acquired prior to gender features but rather that acquisition of gender as a grammatical feature is a by-product of the acquisition of case. 6.2. Natural Morphology and the acquisition of inflectional classes The order of acquisition of the three functional dimensions of definite articles, lexical-functional features > case features > gender features, is in line with the assumption that lexical-semantic features are easier to access than grammatical-semantic features. With respect to case, the development proceeds from the unmarked cases to the more marked cases: nominative > accusative > dative > genitive. This is what Natural Morphology predicts. With respect to gender, development starts with an opposition of [+feminine] vs. [–feminine]. Then, within the [–feminine] domain, the forms of the masculine develop first or faster than the neuter ones. Neuter is fully discriminated from masculine only at a later point in development. Thus, the order of acquisition of gender is: feminine > masculine > neuter. This contradicts common assumptions about the markedness values of the gender categories. Commonly, masculine is considered to be the unmarked gender. Do children start gender acquisition with a marked category? Most likely this is not the case. In the previously mentioned analyses of grammatical features symbolized by the definite articles in adult German (Bittner 2002), the feminine turned out to be the unmarked gender class. The child language data are in line with the result of this study. The definite articles die and der symbolize fewer grammatical features than the remaining forms, they create the feminine paradigm and emerge first in language acquisition. Finally, the assumption that grammatical development proceeds from the unmarked towards the marked categories is confirmed by the acquisition of the gender classes too.

13However, some problems remain concerning the emergence of inflectional classes and

the paradigm system as a whole. Wurzel (since 1984) has shown that there is a strong tendency towards extra-morphological motivation of inflectional classes. For a range of inflectional systems traditionally regarded as arbitrarily organized, a highly systematic implicational structure has been detected. Moreover, stability and productivity of inflectional classes strongly depend on extra-morphological motivation of at least parts of the inflectional paradigm. One should expect that the acquisition of competing inflectional forms is based on the detection of such extra-morphological features. Indeed, this has been found for plural inflection in German as well as for case inflection in languages where gender classes are related to certain phonological features of the noun, e.g. Russian and Bulgarian. Extra-morphological motivation starts from lexical properties of the lexeme and, thus, typically from its form in unmarked categories. Pronominal forms are governed by the noun that they are connected with or that they replace. Thus, the choice of a (nominative) form would be expected to depend on the lexical features of the noun.

However, the lack of gender assignment rules in the early acquisition periods refutes the existence of an extra-morphological motivation of pronominal inflection. Moreover, since gender distinction lacks functional load, one cannot assume that the child is really aware of a certain category ‘gender’. Additionally, the first emergence of gender distinction in the dative contradicts the assumption that further specification or subspecification of domains appears in unmarked categories first.

It appears that the acquisition of pronominal inflection of German is a challenge to learning mechanism theories as well as to Natural Morphology. Clearly, the following aspects demand further investigation: A) The role of extra-morphological motivation of inflectional classes Are there differences in the construction of inflectional classes in which the inflected item is a lexical form vs. a functional form? Pronominal paradigms are based on gender. Thus, the gender feature has to be known in order to generate the pronominal forms. However, the gender feature is not at place in early acquisition.

One possible hypothesis is that learning of inflectional classes proceeds on the basis of form-form-correlations. Instead of abstract gender features ([+feminine], [+masculine], or [+neuter]), a certain pronominal form is stored in the lexical entry from which the implicative generation of the pronominal paradigm starts. Hence, there would exist inflectional classes which are stable (and productive?) although they are not extra-morphologically motivated. This might be reasonable for child grammar. However, gender lacks functional load also in adult grammar. Is it reasonable to assume a lack of extra-morphological motivation here too? B) The stronger subspecification of unmarked than marked categories According to this claim one would expect that gender distinctions first emerge in the nominative but not in the dative. Is the acquisition of gender distinctions a special case? C) The role of language acquisition in language change Although gender lacks functional load in modern German, children master the distinctions given by this category around their fourth birthday. This again (cf. Bittner 2000) shows that language change does not depend on language acquisition as heavily as it is proposed in Natural Morphology. This is not to say that there is no influence at all. For instance, the difficulties in the discrimination of neuters are in line with the tendency of transforming neuters into masculines, cf. der wachs/salz instead of das wachs/salz, der genus/agens etc. instead of das genus/agens. D) The implicational structure of pronominal inflection For the time being, the following paradigm structure conditions might be assumed.

14

(13) [die] ⊃ [die/acc., der/dat., gen.] BUT [die/pl.] ⊃ [den/dat.] [der] ⊃ [den/acc., dem/dat., des/gen.] [das] ⊃ [das/acc., dem/dat., des/gen.]

or (14) [+Fem.] ⊃ [die/acc., der/dat., der/gen.]

[+Plural] ⊃ [die/acc., den/dat., der/gen.] [–Fem] ⊃ [den/acc., dem/dat., des/gen.] BUT [+Ntr.] ⊃ [das/acc.]

Both versions have the disadvantage that identical form–category combinations appear in two different structure conditions. In (13) these are [dem/dat., des/gen.] and in (14) it is [der/gen.].

Summing up, the investigation has provided new insights into the course of the acquisition of case and gender in German. In general, the observed developments confirm assumptions of Natural Morphology and functional theoretical concepts. However, the question arose whether there exist some special processes in the construction of inflectional classes which affect functional instead of lexical items. This question concerns grammatical theory as well as acquisition theory. Notes

1. In the following, I will consider number as a category that is realized on the noun and is underspecified in pronominal inflection. For an argumentation cf. Bittner (2002).

2. In dative and genitive, masculine and neuter forms are identical, cf. dat.sg der-FEM, dem-MSC/NTR; gen.sg der-FEM, des MSC/NTR.

3. Utterances which only consist of ja ‘yes’ and nein ‚no’ or its variants were also excluded from the analyses. 4. There are some gaps in the data. No recordings has been made at the age of 2;3, 3;6, 3;8, 3;10, and 3;11. 5. Two aspects are worth mentioning: a) It has been found that genitive forms appear very late in

development. This is confirmed by the Simone data; no definite articles in the genitive are documented. For this reason, the genitive does not occur in the tables. b) Although the termini for the target cases are used in the table, it is not assumed that the child possesses knowledge about case from the very beginning. Rather she correlates the different positions with underlying thematic roles (agent, patient, and benefactive etc.) at early points in development. However, the dissociation of thematic roles and the grammatical case system will not be discussed here.

6. The three instances of non-target use of den (den uhr ‘that clock’, 2x den (papierschlange) ‘that (sneak out of paper)’) are reflections of or belong to the early deictic use of den as a pronoun in parallel to das.

7. The investigation of two other but considerably smaller child corpora in the age range of 1;8 to 2;10 suggest that the findings with Simone hold for other children too. Therefore, I formulate my hypotheses as hypotheses on the acquisition process in general.

8. The concrete functional or grammatical features of each form will be left unspecified for the moment. Investigations in the development of argument structure and the representation of nominal categories are necessary to clarify this point in detail. However, it is quite clear that the features are case-related.

9. The Anna data are my own data, the data of the boy A. are extracted from a list of his 200 most frequent nouns in Behrens (forthcoming).

10. The same result has been found for six 2;0-2;10 year olds from the Lex-Lern-Corpus, cf. the report on the DFG-project ‘Erwerb flexionsmorphologischer Strukturen’ (Go 625/2-1-2-4).

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