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Morphological priming in child German*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2013

HARALD CLAHSEN  and
ELISABETH FLEISCHHAUER
HARALD CLAHSEN*
Affiliation:
Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism (PRIM), University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
ELISABETH FLEISCHHAUER
Affiliation:
Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism (PRIM), University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
*
Address for correspondence: Harald Clahsen, University of Potsdam, Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism, Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse 24–25, 14476 Potsdam, Germany. tel.: +49 (0)331/ 977-2751; +49 (0)331/ 977-2687; e-mail: harald.clahsen@uni-potsdam.de
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Abstract

Regular and irregular inflection in children's production has been examined in many previous studies. Yet, little is known about the processes involved in children's recognition of inflected words. To gain insight into how children process inflected words, the current study examines regular -t and irregular -n participles of German using the cross-modal priming technique testing 108 monolingual German-speaking children in two age groups (group I, mean age: 8;4, group II, mean age: 9;9) and a control group of 72 adults. Although both age groups of children had the same full priming effect as adults for -t forms, only children of age group II showed an adult-like (partial) priming effect for -n participles. We argue that children (within the age range tested) employ the same mechanisms for regular inflection as adults but that the lexical retrieval processes required for irregular forms become more efficient when children get older.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 41 , Issue 6 , November 2014 , pp. 1305 - 1333
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

[*]

The research reported here was supported by an Alexander-von-Humboldt-Professorship to HC and a Cusanuswerk postgraduate studentship to EF. We are grateful to the members of the Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism, particularly João Veríssimo, Gunnar Jacob, and Christiane Wotschack, for detailed and helpful comments on the present work.

References

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