Lexical Innovation in Child Language Acquisition

Evidence from Dholuo
1. Auflage 2009
ISBN: 978-3-631-59315-8
Verlag: Peter Lang

Buch, Englisch, Band 17, 266 Seiten, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 210 mm, Gewicht: 510 g

Reihe: Schriften zur Afrikanistik / Research in African Studies

Lexical innovations represent unconventional forms resulting from unsuccessful rule application by children as they unpack regular patterns in their language and develop a set of guidelines that govern their early word use. They are novel words, coined specifically to refer to an object, process or event, for which the child has not learnt the conventional form. The study used an ethnographic approach to investigate how Luo children, acquiring their native language, Dholuo, engaged in the production of lexical innovations in an effort to bridge the lexical gaps in their mental lexicons, resulting from their failure to retrieve or learn the conventional forms. It reports that children manipulated word-formation paradigms of Dholuo to create lexical innovations which, in turn, were related Dholuo derivational morphology.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Orwenjo, Daniel Ochieng

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Soziolinguistik
• Sozialwissenschaften Pädagogik Lehrerausbildung, Unterricht & Didaktik Allgemeine Didaktik Literatur, Deutsch, Fremdsprachen (Unterricht & Didaktik)
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Fremdsprachenerwerb und -didaktik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Sprachwissenschaft Spracherwerb, Sprachentwicklung

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents: Methodology – Taxonomy of innovations – Generative lexicon and lexical access account of innovative denominal verbs – Innovative deverbal nouns, adjectives and compound nominals – Socio-demographic and contextual factors in lexical innovations.

Über Autor(innen)

The Author: Daniel Ochieng Orwenjo is a lecturer in the Department of English and Linguistics at Kenyatta University (Kenya). He holds B.Ed. (Arts) and M.A. (Applied Linguistics) degrees from Kenyatta University and a Ph.D. from the University of Frankfurt am Main.