The Acquisition of Dutch

457 Pages·1998·45.67 MB·English

by  Steven Gillis (ed.)

THE ACQUISITION OF DUTCH
Pragmatics & Beyond
New Series
Editor:
Andreas H. Jucker
(Justus Liebig University, Giessen)
Associate Editors:
Jacob L. Mey
(Odense University)
Herman Parret
(Belgian National Science Foundation, Universities of Louvain and Antwerp)
Jef Verschueren
(Belgian National Science Foundation, University of Antwerp)
Editorial Address:
Justus Liebig University Giessen, English Department
Otto-Behaghel-Strasse 10, D-35394 Giessen, Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
Editorial Board:
Shoshana Blum-Kulka (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Chris Butler (University College of Ripon and York)
Jean Caron (Université de Poitiers); Robyn Carston (University College London)
Bruce Fraser (Boston University); John Heritage (University of California at Los Angeles)
David Holdcroft (University of Leeds); Sachiko Ide (Japan Women’s University)
Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (University of Lyon 2)
Claudia de Lemos (University of Campinas, Brasil); Marina Sbisà (University of Trieste)
Emanuel Schegloff (University of California at Los Angeles)
Paul O. Takahara (Kobe City University of Foreign Studies)
Sandra Thompson (University of California at Santa Barbara)
Teun A. Van Dijk (University of Amsterdam); Richard Watts (University of Bern)
52
Steven Gillis and Annick De Houwer (eds)
The Acquisition of Dutch
THE ACQUISITION
OF DUTCH
Edited by
STEVEN GILLIS
ANNICK DE HOUWER
University of Antwerp (UIA)
Foundation for Scientific Research (FWO)
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of Ameri-
8 can National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The acquisition of Dutch / edited by Steven Gillis, Annick De Houwer.
p. cm. -- (Pragmatics & beyond, ISSN 0922-842X ; new ser. 52)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Dutch language--Acquisition. 2. Children--Language. 3. Language acquisition. I. Gillis, S.
II. De Houwer, Annick. III. Series.
PF74.85.A27 1998
401’.93--dc21 98-14823
ISBN 90 272 5065 0 (Eur.) / 1 55619 814 0 (US) (Hb. alk. paper)
ISBN 90 272 5113 4 (Eur.) / 1 58811 127 X (US) (Pb. alk. paper) CIP
© Copyright 1998 - John Benjamins B.V.
Paperback edition 2001.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 36224 • 1020 ME Amsterdam • The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA
Contents
Contents v
Preface ix
Catherine Snow
Introduction xiii
Annick De Houwer and Steven Gillis
Dutch child language: An overview 1
Annick De Houwer and Steven Gillis
1. Introduction 1
2. Phonetic and phonological development 4
3. Morphosyntactic development 27
4. Lexical development 49
5. The development of discourse 65
6. Input to young children acquiring Dutch 70
7. Tests for assessing young children's language development 79
8. Dutch child language corpora 80
9. Conclusion 86
Notes 90
Appendix 1 : Overview of Dutch child language corpora
in the CHILDES database 94
Appendix 2: Overview of Dutch child language corpora referred to
in this volume (not included in the CHILDES database) 99
VI THE ACQUISITION OF DUTCH
Early speech development in children acquiring Dutch: 101
Mastering general basic elements
Florien Koopmans-van Beinum and Jeannette van der Stelt
1. Introduction 101
2. Historical overview 102
3. Directions in Dutch speech development research 104
4. Developing an adequate description system for infant
sound productions 111
5. Sensori-motor stages in speech development 122
6. Applying the sensori-motor classification system in actual research 128
7. Conclusion 161
The acquisition of Dutch phonology 163
Paula Fikkert
1. Introduction 163
2. The acquisition of segmental phonology 165
3. The acquisition of prosodie structure 178
4. Conclusion 218
Notes 219
The acquisition of Dutch syntax 223
Frank Wijnen and Maaike Verrips
1. Introduction 223
2. Word order and sentence structure 226
3. Missing arguments 254
4. Argument structure 264
5. The interpretation of anaphors 279
6. Conclusion 291
Notes 295
CONTENTS vii
Acquiring the lexicon 301
Loekie Eibers and Anita van Loon-Vervoorn
1. Introduction 301
2. Adult lexical organization 303
3. Two routes to the acquisition of the lexicon 310
4. Acquiring the lexical network 318
5. Acquiring the semantic network 324
6. Topics in the development of complex and innovative words 354
7. Conclusion 370
Notes 371
References 379
Index 425
About the authors 435

Preface
Catherine Snow
Harvard University
The appearance of a book, written in English and intended for an international
audience, devoted to the topic of how children acquire Dutch constitutes a
marker of a new moment in child language research, and a new moment in the
relation of the study of language acquisition to the study of language.
Throughout the seventies and the eighties books have been published,
purporting to describe how children acquire language, based almost entirely on
research conducted with English-speaking children, with little or no
recognition of the degree to which the particularities of English limited the
generalizability of the conclusions. Those books reflect the presumption and
presumptuousness that only speakers of English can permit themselves in this
particular historical period. The current volume instantiates, with rich data and
important analyses, the fact that children do not learn language, they learn a
language.
Of course, many have argued that cross-linguistic studies are necessary to
a full understanding of language acquisition, and many have labored in the
vineyards to make such cross-linguistic analyses possible. Slobin's two major
projects, one focused on generating comparable descriptions of acquisition
across typologically distinct languages (Slobin 1985a, 1985b, 1992), and the
second focused on specific comparisons of narrative productions across five
languages and several ages (Berman and Slobin 1994) have been invaluable in
broadening our understanding of the dimensions on which languages differ and