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

K ALJENAIE
masculine forms are considered the unmarked forms in Arabic, in present
and past tense respectively, and these forms persisted during the data
collection period. Interestingly enough, children retain the CCV root
structure. Since finiteness in Arabic is marked by Tense and Agreement, it
is possible to call the masculine imperative and the 3 rd masculine past tense
verb forms non-finite forms, especially since there is no overt tense
marking. However, in this paper the term unmarked is used instead.
It is important to take into account, however, that all the variation
noticed in the four children language was within well-defined limits. The
children did not construct “wild grammars”. Based on the assumption that
children are equipped with innate principles of UG, each “intermediate
grammar” must be constrained with these principles (Hyams, 1986).
Moreover, Grodzinsky (1990) suggests that children’s language cannot be
unacceptable strings according to the adult grammar. Hyams (1987)
proposes a Stem Parameter which is a well-formedness condition on word
formation: ‘a verbal stem does/does not constitute a well formed word’.
Concerning acquisition, children “set” this parameter very early on, so they
learn at a young age what is a well-formed word in their language. Since
Arabic is a highly synthetic language with rich bound morphology, neither
root nor stems (sometimes) can be used as individual entities, it is
reasonable to assume that prior to a more advanced stage of language
processing, children would not treat stems as independent items.
Therefore, in unmarking verb forms, children have two options. They
either leave the form uninflected, or alternatively they choose another
infix. The former option is excluded since stems do not constitute a wellformed
word in their language. The other option is to mark the stem with
another inflection. Both options satisfy the requirement obliged by the
Stem Parameter according to the language, however the second one
violates an agreement rule with the subject.
Hyams (1986) acknowledges that although children in their early
stages of acquisition do not employ inflections in an orderly way, the nonappearance
of class errors implies that they identify which grammatical
inflections belong to which lexical class. It strongly suggests that children
have no problem in identifying morpheme boundaries where grammatical
inflections are used with word stems from quite early which suggests that
both the stem forms and their inflections are evidently psychologically real
units (Slobin, 1966, 1973). The data shows that stem errors where children
use the appropriate inflection with the wrong stem are strikingly rare (cf.
Table 8).
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