Uporabno utemeljena teorija usvajanja jezika oprimjerena razvojem padežnogs sustava imenica hrvatskoga jezika
Usage–based Model of Language Acquisition: An Example of the Development of Noun Inflection in the Croatian Language

Summary/Abstract: In this paper theoretical assumptions about the process of first language acquisition created within the usage–based model of first language acquisition (as proposed by M. Tomasello) are exemplified and examined within a research on the development of noun inflection in the speech of a child acquiring the Croatian language. The authors studied changes in case occurrences in the child’s speech from the age of one year and three months to the age of three years and three months. The results are compared to several previous studies of case occurrences in children and adult speech, and then correlated to thoroughly explained theoretical assumptions about the four major types of children’s early constructions (in terms of the nature of the abstractions involved, and how syntactic marking is employed) or the four stages of language acquisition. In the first stage of language acquisition children use holophrases (a single linguistic symbol without any kind of syntactic marking) to communicate their whole intention about a specific experiential scene. Using word combinations (mostly pivot schemas), children divide an experiential scene in at least two components but there is still no syntactic marking within constructions. When it comes to item–based constructions, children use syntactic marking such as word order or grammatical morphology to explicitly indicate participants’ roles in an experiential scene. However, this syntactic marking is specific for every construction. The last stage in the process of language acquisition is the emergence of abstract constructions in which syntactic roles are assigned according to abstract knowledge. In view of the new data that emerged from the authors’ research of the development of noun inflection, as well as some previous studies, further development of this theoretical model is expected.

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