Peer-reviewed article
Inflectional Morphology Development and Its Association With Parental Input: Evidence From Kannada-Speaking Preschool Children.
Megha K Nakshathri, Sunila John, Gopee Krishnan, Shivani Tiwari ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how Kannada-speaking preschool children develop inflectional morphology (grammar structures) in their language and how parental speech influences this development. Researchers analyzed speech from 214 children and their parents using a story retelling task. The findings show that children's use of grammatical structures increases significantly during the preschool years, and the variety of structures parents use predicts children's language development better than how often parents use them.
Key points
- Children showed developmental increases in both types and tokens of inflectional morphemes across preschool ages
- Parental inflectional production remained relatively stable across age groups
- The variety of parental inflections significantly predicted children's output, emphasizing input richness over frequency
- Children produced high functional load markers (dative case, tense, and person-number-gender agreement) more frequently than optional or irregular forms
- Findings support usage-based theories of language development with educational and clinical relevance
Limitations
The study used only one elicited task (story retelling) to measure inflectional morphology, and the authors note that findings warrant future validation across other naturalistic tasks. The research was conducted only with Kannada speakers, so generalizability to other language groups is unclear.
Abstract
Morphological development is a crucial component of early language acquisition. This study examined developmental changes in types and tokens of inflectional morphemes produced among 214 typically developing Kannada-speaking preschool children and their parents. Inflectional use was elicited through a story retelling task and analyzed in child's and parental speech. Results showed developmental increase in both types and tokens of inflectional morphology production in children, indicating that preschool years constitute an important phase of inflectional systems in Kannada, an agglutinative language. Parental inflectional production remained relatively stable across age groups, while only the variety of parental inflections significantly predicted children's output, emphasizing the role of input richness over frequency. Children produced high functional load markers (namely dative case, tense, and person-number-gender agreement), more frequently than optional or irregular forms. Overall, findings support usage-based theories with educational and clinical relevance. These findings, however, warrant future validation across other naturalistic tasks.