| Summary: | Inflection beyond word class boundaries (englanti)1/2002 (106)INFLECTION BEYOND WORD CLASS BOUNDARIES The article presents a linguistic analysis of the special features of one child's early inflectional morphology. The child lives in the North Karelian dialect area of Eastern Finland, the same area in which she was born. The model for her language development has therefore been the language spoken in the region. During the initial stages in the development of the child's inflectional morphology (after the end of the two-syllable stage), at the age of 2;42;7, she used a -va/v suffix of her own in inflectional forms of adult language that end in a long wovel. The suffix appeared especially in the partitive (1a), present 3rd person singular (1b) and 1st infinitive (1c), but also randomly in certain other inflected forms with long vowels.(1) Alina's language Adult language a. 2;5 kirja-va book+PART kirja-a 2;6 kala-va fish+PART ka(l)la-a b. 2;6 anta-va give+3SG anta-a 2;6 neulo-va knit+3SG neulo-o c. 2;6 aja-va drive+INF a(j)ja-a 2;6 luke-va read+INF lu(k)ke-eThe model for the suffix was probably the dialectal inflection of contracted verbs in which a transition sound -v- appears in the word stem in 3rd person singular forms before the lengthening of the vowel (2a, cf. 1st and 2nd person singular in 2b), and from which the child has taken the syllable -vaa/v and restructured it into a suffix. The new suffix spread quickly beyond word class boundaries to replace the lengthened vowel of adult language. Its use is explained by the tendency towards transparency and the overly explicit marking of the inflectional form. In the partitive, the distribution of the -va/v suffix correlates with the frequency of long vowels in each stem type: there were most suffixes in those nominals in which the dialect has a long vowel, and least in those nominals in which the dialect has a vowel cluster. This demonstrates that any linguistic analysis of child language must also take the variation in adult language into careful consideration, as this can also be reflected in the child's solutions.(2) North Karelian dialect Standard language a. putovva-a fall+3SG putoa-a rupevva-a begin+3SG rupea-a b. puttoo-n fall+1SG putoa-n ruppee-t begin+2SG rupea-tThe suffix appears in both verbal and nominal inflection. This seems to support the assumption of protomorphology theory that in the early stages of morphological development the morphological subsystems are still not fully differentiated.The spread of the suffix to certain other inflected forms with long vowels also supports the assumption presented in the research literature that the long-vowel morphological groups in Finnish (in both nominal and verbal inflection) are linked to each other in a child's grammar.Helka Riionheimo helka.riionheimo@joensuu.fi
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