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The Early Acquisition of Morphology in Agglutinating Languages: The Case of Hungarian

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A Life in Cognition

Part of the book series: Language, Cognition, and Mind ((LCAM,volume 11))

Abstract

The present work reviews the first steps towards a better understanding of the acquisition of morphology in an agglutinating language, Hungarian. The acquisition of Hungarian received considerable attention from the early years of language acquisition research, but mainly production from toddlers and preschool children has been investigated. The beginning of the acquisition of morphology, in particular how infants may start to learn to decompose word forms in Hungarian, is only now starting to be explored. The current paper reviews the most recent results on this issue, and discusses its implications for language acquisition theory in general. The reviewed evidence suggests that Hungarian-learning infants are sensitive to vowel harmony by 13 months and are able to decompose morphologically complex words at 15 months. This knowledge is crucial both for word learning and for the acquisition of grammar. Indeed, agglutinating languages provide strong evidence that the sequential view of language acquisition needs to be abandoned in favor of a more integrated view where the different domains of language develop synergistically.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    From a theoretical linguistic point of view, it needs to be noted that while many of the Hungarian suffixes are truly agglutinating in the sense that they encode a single linguistic feature only (e.g. -t the accusative case marker), some show a more fusional character, encoding multiple features (e.g. -i possessive plural marker encoding both a 3rd person possessor and the plural nature of the possessee). From the perceptive of language acquisition, it will be interesting in the future to test whether the latter types of suffixes are more challenging for infants to learn. However, in the current review, we focus mainly on suffixes that are truly agglutinating in nature, because the empirical work reported investigates these. For a detailed discussion of the linguistic questions involved, see Rebrus (2005).

  2. 2.

    Despite its highly regular nature and its relevance for the question of word segmentation, the role of lexical stress has not been experimentally investigated yet in Hungarian infants. The question will thus not be pursued further here, but it is a promising avenue for further research.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Innovative Training Network (ITN) (SEP-210134423) “PredictAble” and the ERC Consolidator Grant nr. 773202 “BabyRhythm” to J.G.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialization, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Judit Gervain

  2. Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center, CNRS and University of Paris, Paris, France

    Judit Gervain

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  1. Judit Gervain
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Correspondence to Judit Gervain .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS, Paris, France

    Judit Gervain

  2. Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

    Gergely Csibra

  3. ELTE Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary

    Kristóf Kovács

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Gervain, J. (2022). The Early Acquisition of Morphology in Agglutinating Languages: The Case of Hungarian. In: Gervain, J., Csibra, G., Kovács, K. (eds) A Life in Cognition. Language, Cognition, and Mind, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66175-5_9

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