Matches and mismatches in nominal morphology and agreement: Learning from the acquisition of Eegimaa

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Theoretical accounts of the strategies used by children to learn the structures of words and grammatical features of languages differ considerably, but our knowledge of what is possible is limited by the existing focus on a relatively small number of languages associated with industrialized nations. Here, we will investigate grammatical features and structures that may be expressed in a variety of different ways. Examples of grammatical features include number, e.g. the distinction between singular and plural, or gender, e.g. distinguishing masculine and feminine in languages like French, features expressed within the shape of the word and associated items. Grammatical structure may be manifested in agreement across the separate words of a noun phrase (e.g. The cat purrs, where the -s on 'purrs' shows agreement with cat, indicating that there is only one cat.) This project investigates the acquisition of inflectional morphology, i.e., grammatical features and structures as reflected in the word forms and associated agreement, in Gújjolaay Eegimaa, a language of the Atlantic family of the Niger Congo phylum spoken in Southern Senegal. This language has a gender system of the type traditionally known as a noun class system. Noun class systems with complex gender agreement are characteristic of the Niger-Congo languages.In Eegimaa nouns use prefixes to form singular and plural. For example ba- is the singular marker for ba-ginh 'chest', but its plural marker is u- as in u-ginh 'chests'. Nouns which have the same singular prefix, e.g. ba-, can form their plural with a different marker (e.g., bá-jur 'young woman', plural sú-jur 'young women'). Eegimaa has a complex morphological system of gender and number marking which is also reflected in its agreement system. Current knowledge as to how children acquire gender/noun class marking and agreement is based entirely on the Bantu languages of the Niger Congo family. There are no studies available of Atlantic languages, which, though similar to Bantu in some ways, also have important differences.Here we will investigate the influence of the three factors found to affect children's acquisition of noun class morphology and agreement, namely:i) Input frequency, according to which the forms that children hear the most will tend to be acquired firstii) Perceptual salience, according to which more salient forms such as stressed syllables will tend to be acquired first, and iii) Morphological transparency, according to which forms whose meanings are easily determined will tend to be acquired more easily than those whose meanings are more obscure.Our study will build on findings on the acquisition of Bantu noun class systems, and will aim to answer questions such as the following. What strategies do children rely on to learn complex language structure? What is the role of adult input language in the acquisition of morphology and agreement in Eegimaa? How do children cope with variation in language input from their caregivers? In what order do they learn the different noun class markers?We will carry out a longitudinal study in which we will observe over three years the interactions of five children aged from about 2 to 4 years with their caregivers. Among Eegimaa speakers, caregivers include children's parents, older siblings and other members of the community. Children's daytime activities mostly take place outside their homes. We will record children's output speech on audio and video and compare the data with child-directed speech from adults and with adult-directed speech (interactions between adults), collected as part of a previous project. We will also carry out a cross-sectional study by twice observing the speech of ten additional children at two points, at ages 3 and 4 years. These studies together will provide both an in-depth look and a broader overview of the acquisition process in this under-investigated area.