When is a preposition a linking element?ilingual children's acquisition of French compound nouns

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Nicoladis, E.

• French is traditionally considered a non-compounding language because Speakers prefer to use lexical forms such äs NPN instead of N-N compounds. However, the preposition in these French NPNs shares similarities with meaningless linking elements in compounds in other languages. It is therefore hypothesized that children will consider the prepositions in NPNs to add no meaning to the construction and will treat N-N compounds äs they do NPNs. To test this possibility, French-English bilingual children's ordering of complex lexical items with and without prepositions was compared in French and English. A group of same-age monolingual English children acted äs a control group. The results showed that the bilingual children misordered French compounds equally often when they included or did not include a preposition. In contrast, the use of an English preposition in English expressions improved their correct ordering. One possible Interpretation of these results is that bilingual children do not consider French prepositions äs meaningful elements within NPNs. If so, the prepositions in French NPN are in an intermediate state between prepositions and linking elements.

• Date created

  2001-01-01

• Subjects / Keywords

  • English
  • Language

• Type of Item

  Article (Published)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3M32NP9D

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International