Research Group: Language Development and Language Development Disorders

The Grammaticalisation of Possession: Comparing the Acquistion of Possessive Constructions in German- and Italian-speaking children Claudia Ruff Issue: How do children acquire a language? Which cognitive mechanisms are used and which role does the linguistic input play? In their Theory of Convergency Stern and Stern (1921) claim that children build up their own grammar before equalizing it with the adults´ rules.

In GrKK since 4/97 as Phd.Student

Goal: I want to explore the individual strategies children use to decipher a grammatical system. Therefore, I will compare the acquistion of possessives in two different target languages (German & Italian). Possessives are interesting because they show the switch from nominal to pronominal forms. And: For every child it is quite important to master possessives in daily life.

Method: The child, together with his or her mother, looks at photographies of everyday´s objects such as toys, dresses or glasses, which belong to the child or to the parents. The mother asks two standard questions: What is this? and: To whom does it belong?

Problems: The experimental situation is kept as natural as possible. However, the mothers have to be trained not to name the objects themselves. This can lead to a non natural behavior in the beginning.

Results (so far): Seven German children have been videotaped 6 to 13 times in intervals of about two weeks. Individual development, own rules invented by the children themselves and learning mechanisms can be found in the data. Italian children will be examined from January to June ´98.