Inflection and agreement in child language : a case study

Abstract

In this dissertation, I research the area of early language acquisition of Maltese. I explore the various theoretical approaches to language acquisition, from the behavioural to the mentalist and to the interactive approach and after a brief description of Maltese, I illustrate the grammatical aspects of Maltese that are related to the area of study. I then report on my observations of a boy, Dylan, which lasted for a period of one year and five months. These observations were recorded by a video camera and a tape recorder, and were then transcribed. I analyse Dylan's linguistic progress, looking for patterns in the acquisition of inflection and agreement. At the end of the dissertation, I explore Dylan's linguistic acquisition in the perspective of theories of language acquisition. This study shows that in the early stages of the development of inflection and agreement, grammatical marking of these categories are infrequent. At later stages, these markers appear in the child's repertoire but are not always used correctly.