Acquiring syntactic variability: The production of wh-questions in children and adults speaking Akan.
Paul Omane Okyere
Postdam University
ABSTRACT
Previous research on the acquisition of wh-questions suggests that children are constrained in the derivation of wh-questions as a result of (complex) syntactic movement operations. Therefore, in languages that offer optionality to its speakers (e.g., French), children may opt for a less complex structure that is present in their input. Indeed, previous spontaneous speech analyses and experimental studies in French have shown that children acquiring French prefer the use of in-situ wh-questions whereas wh-questions that involve inversions and overt movement are initially absent, suggesting children’s preference for less complex in-situ wh-question structure over the more complex ex-situ structure. These findings provide support for the Derivational Complexity Hypothesis (DCH) and the Derivational Complexity Metric (DCM) which assumes that: (1) merging αi n times gives rise to a less complex derivation than merging αi (n+1) times, (2) internal merging of α gives rise to a less complex derivation than internal merge of α+β. We tested the predictions of the DCH and the DCM by studying the acquisition of wh-questions in 4- and 5-year-old Akan speaking children in an experimental approach using an elicited production and an elicited imitation task. Our results show adults preference for wh-ex-situ questions over wh-in-situ questions. Our data show that children have the two question structures in their linguistic repertoire. However, their preferences for one question structure or the other varies with age. Our results suggest a developmental change in wh-question preferences in Akan-learning children between 4 and 5 years of age with a so far unobserved u-shaped developmental pattern. When repairing ungrammatical ex-situ questions, a switch to grammatical in-situ questions were hardly observed. Children preferred to keep to the ex-situ structure by inserting the missing morphemes. Our findings provide only partial support for the Derivational Complexity Hypothesis.