Diminutivization supports gender acquisition in Russian children

Citation

Kempe V, Brooks PJ, Mironova N & Fedorova O (2003) Diminutivization supports gender acquisition in Russian children. Journal of Child Language, 30 (2), pp. 471-485. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000903005580

Abstract
Gender agreement elicitation was used with Russian children to examine how diminutives common in Russian child-directed speech affect gender learning. Forty-six children (2;9–4;8) were shown pictures of familiar and of novel animals and asked to describe them after hearing their names, which all contained regular morphophonological cues to masculine or feminine gender. Half were presented as simplex (e.g. josh ‘porcupine’) and half as diminutive forms (e.g. jozhik ‘porcupine-DIM’). Children produced fewer agreement errors for diminutive than for simplex nouns, indicating that the regularizing features of diminutives enhance gender categorization. The study demonstrates how features of child-directed speech can facilitate language learning.

Keywords
; Speech perception in children Russian language Case studies; Speech perception Children Case studies

Journal
Journal of Child Language: Volume 30, Issue 2

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