MAD Colloquium: Late phenomena in language acquisition and their nature

Abstract

There is a consensus that children are well-equipped for the task of language acquisition. Young children easily solve the linguistic puzzles facing them and by age 3 or 4, have mastered many developmental milestones in their first language. However, not everything is in place by this age. This timing of acquisition is often explained by assumptions about difficulty or complexity: more complex, difficult phenomena are acquired later than less complex ones (e.g., Tsimpli 2014, 2021; Schulz & Grimm, 2019; Pérez-Leroux et al. 2022). 

In my talk, I will first illustrate why determining the linguistic complexity of a phenomenon is not straightforward. Focusing on German, I will then address the unresolved question of why some phenomena are acquired late and evaluate the various existing explanations involving linguistic factors, input frequency, and extralinguistic resources, with the aim of better understanding the nature of lateness in child language acquisition and timing in monolingual acquisition in general. As case studies, I will draw i.a. on our findings on wh-questions (Schulz & Roeper 2011, Schulz 2013, Schulz 2015), passives (Sanfelici & Schulz, 2021), and temporal connectives (Makrodimitris & Schulz 2021, 2024).

Please contact garcia@leibniz-zas.de for Teams link!

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