Lehenengo hitzak eta morfologia-markak haur euskaldunengan: elebakarrengan eta elebidunengan

Abstract

This research is based on data regarding Basque from 1,392 monolingual and bilingual children between the ages of 8 to 30 months, who have developed this language as their first language, sometimes together with Spanish or French. The data has been provided by parents who have filled out questionnaires of the document Communicative Development Inventories translated into Basque as (Komunikazio Garapena Neurtzeko Zerrenda): Palabras y signos (Words and signs) (Hitzak eta keinuak), for children between the ages of 8 to 15 months, and Palabras y frases (Words and phrases) (Hitzak eta esaldiak), for children between the ages of 16 to 30 months. The objectives of this research are: to analyze the internal structure of the lexicon of the children who learn Basque, from the very beginning of language development; to study the relationships between the development of the vocabulary and grammar, that is, to note the initial relationships between the size of the lexicon and the development of the morphology; and to verify whether the cited objectives occur similarly in both monolingual and bilingual children. To this end, numerous linguistic data is submitted, according to the ages of the children and the exposure time there of to Basque. The data demonstrates that the percentage of the names is clearly greater to that of the rest of the lexical categories at the beginning of the linguistic development, and the morphological elements are those that develope later. Moreover, it is also noted that from the age of 26 months the exposition time to Basque is a significant factor in the development of the language.