Acquisition of Albanian as a first language from the perspective of natural order hypothesis
Acquisition of Albanian as a first language from the perspective of natural order hypothesis

Summary/Abstract: This study deals with the natural order hypothesis in language acquisition, which posits that there is an order in which grammatical morphemes are acquired in the first, but also second language acquisition. There have been numerous studies addressing the order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes for major international languages. There have been no such studies for Albanian language, which could serve to improve acquisition of Albanian as mother tongue, improvement of the language curricula in schools, or to facilitate acquisition of Albanian as a second language. This research involved over 100 junior researchers in a cross-sectional research observing more than 200 children of age 0-11 organised in four age-groups over a period of two weeks. The observation collected naturalist non-experimental data to find out whether there is a natural order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes and structures in Albanian as a first language. The existence of an order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes ranked by difficulty level was clearly established. An unplanned finding of the study was the significant role of dialect and vernacular in the process of acquisition of Albanian. The study however did not succeed in clearly establishing the role of school and environment in the process of acquiring Albanian as mother tongue.

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