Child acquisition of sociolinguistic variation: adults, children and (regional) standard Dutch two-verb clusters in one community

TY - CHAP

T1 - Child acquisition of sociolinguistic variation

T2 - adults, children and (regional) standard Dutch two-verb clusters in one community

AU - Cornips, L.

PY - 2017/10/5

Y1 - 2017/10/5

N2 - The main questions of this paper are whether children acquire adults’ variable V1-V2/V2-V1 word order in the perfective two-verb cluster simultaneously with a rigid V1-V2 word order in the modal two-verb cluster from start of the acquisition process. The experimental results show that children acquire variable word orders following rigid ones confirming Labov’s (1989) expectation that children have to acquire grammatical properties before acquiring stylistic and sociolinguistic constraints. It is, however, not possible to disentangle whether the struggle with the variable word orders in the perfective cluster is due to grammatical reasons only or due to the fact that this type of variation reveals no significant social stratification among the adults.

AB - The main questions of this paper are whether children acquire adults’ variable V1-V2/V2-V1 word order in the perfective two-verb cluster simultaneously with a rigid V1-V2 word order in the modal two-verb cluster from start of the acquisition process. The experimental results show that children acquire variable word orders following rigid ones confirming Labov’s (1989) expectation that children have to acquire grammatical properties before acquiring stylistic and sociolinguistic constraints. It is, however, not possible to disentangle whether the struggle with the variable word orders in the perfective cluster is due to grammatical reasons only or due to the fact that this type of variation reveals no significant social stratification among the adults.

M3 - Chapter

SP - 91

EP - 116

BT - Acquiring sociolinguistic variation

A2 - De Vogelaer, Gunther

A2 - Katerbow, Matthias

PB - John Benjamins Publishing

ER -