NOUN AND VERB CATEGORIES IN THE ACQUISITION OF FRENCH
27
BoyG
60% τ
50% -
40% -
30% -
20% -
10% +
0%
о
о
Age de Fenfant
—A— % of N- and V-words preceded by PAEs
—■— % of N- and V-words preceded by PwfGMs
Figure 1. Proportion of noun-words and verb-words preceded by PAEs and by phonologically well-
formed grammatical morphemes (PwfGMs)
GirlC
—A— % of N- and V-words preceded by PAEs
—■— % of N- and V-words preceded by PwfGMs
4. Fillers or Prefixed Additional Elements (PAEs)
Fillers, more neutrally referred to here as Prefixed Additional Elements, in
short PAEs (Veneziano, 1999, 2001b; Veneziano & Sinclair, 2000), make their
appearance in the corpora of our two subjects in a rather sudden way, around 1;7
for the girl, and 1;9 for the boy. Figure 1 shows the proportion of noun-words and
verb-words5 preceded by PAEs. It presents also the proportion of these same words
that are preceded by phonologically well-formed grammatical morphemes (for
example, le in /lə'bɛ/ ‘the bath’, which in French corresponds to the singular mas-
culine definite article).
At this time children start to produce sequences like /e,pik/ (pique ‘sting(s)’),
/a'gry/ (grue, ‘crane’) and /ə'ʃð/ (bouchon, ‘cork’), where respectively the sounds /e/,
/a/ and /ə/, are PAEs. Are thus considered PAEs syllabic sounds, usually vocalic or
nasalized, produced in prelexical position, and that are absent from the target word (as
in /a'gry/ for /'gry/) or are clearly different from the sound(s) of the non-reproduced
parts of the target (as the /ə/ in /ə'ʃð/ for /'bu'ʃð/, where the non reproduced part is the
syllable /bu/). By this definition, initial vocalic sounds /e/ and /a/ in productions like
/e'be/ for /'be'be/, ‘baby’, /a'po/ for /ʃa'po/, ‘hat’ and /a'ty:r/ for /'vwa'tyr/, ‘car’, have
5 Words that are nouns and verbs in the language are referred to as noun-words and verb-words, without
anyjudgment on the status of these words in the children’s language.