The comprehension of derivational morphemes in early childhood: An experimental study for Lithuanian

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an experiment that explores children's tolerance for word form variation, specifically, it compares preschool-age children's tolerance of word form variants, such as suffixes and prefixes in Lithuanian. The stimuli used in this study were pictures of familiar and unfamiliar animals. It appears that Lithuanian children show great tolerance of word form variation, in particular, children are more tolerant of variation in word endings than onsets. This fact suggests that exposure to a richly inflected language, such as Lithuanian, impacts on children's word-learning strategies.