The presentation will provide insights into the PhD project Pleonastic constructions in child (directed) speech. Pleonastic constructions are a specific type of construction for complex Path encoding in German where the local resp. directional information of a prepositional phrase is repeated in an adverbial expression (e.g., ins Haus rein). Earlier research suggests that pleonastic constructions take a supporting role in children's acquisition of spatial language. However, concrete figures on their actual frequency in natural language are missing up to now. The current PhD study aims at filling this gap by analyzing longitudinal data from German child-adult interaction. Among others, the following questions which will be addressed in the presentation : How frequent are pleonastic constructions in child language and the input ? How does children's use of pleonastic constructions relate to the use of 'simple' prepositional or particle constructions over time ? Do we find a preference for pleonastic constructions in particular usage events ? The talk will present the methodological approach, discuss preliminary results and outline the steps to be taken in the further course of the research project.

Vers le site du SeSLa.