Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

K ALJENAIE
confirming Hyams (1986) and Meisel (1994) findings who attribute this to
the constraints imposed by the situation of data collection where we
usually had person-to-person conversation.
4.2 Developmental Order
The following tables provide a summary of Sara and Osama’s realization
of the present and past inflections during the observation period as well as
the progress of verb types and verb tokens. First the present tense paradigm
shows more similarities than differences, with unintelligible exceptions in
the single appearance of the 2 nd feminine grammatical inflection. Overall,
the data shows increased use of the inflections over time. The 1 st singular
appears to be produced more frequently than the other markers. The
differences can be noticed in the late appearance of the 3 rd masculine in
Osama’s production data. Looking at the tables below, it is clear that the
two children have the same developmental order within the paradigm. The
1 st singular appeared first, 3 rd persons second and the 1 st plural came last.
Masculine appeared before feminine and singular before plural.
Table 10 Sara’s realization of the present tense inflection a
SN
Present
Type Token 1s 1p 2f 3m 3f 3p
1 4 6 5 1
2 7 13 10 1 2
3 4 5 2 1 1
4 5 6 3 2 2
5 3 4 2 2
6 6 7 4 2 1
7 7 17 10 1 2 4
8 8 18 3 12 1 2
9 10 39 14 18 2 5
10 11 21 11 1 8 1
11 10 28 9 1 11 1 6
12 13 35 20 2 3 6 4
Total 93 3 1 62 15 25
a
SN= sample number; 1= 1 st person; 2= 2 nd person; 3= 3 rd person; m=
masculine; f= feminine; s= singular; p= plural.
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