Paweł Wójcik. „The Acquisition of Lithuanian Verb Morphology“

ACTA LINGUISTICA LITHUANICA XLIV (2001), 251-258 RECENZIJOS Reviews PAWEL WOICIK, THE ACQUISITION OF LITHUANIAN VERB MORPHOLOGY. A CASE STUDY. Krakow: Universitas, 2000, 152 pp. Young researcher Pawetas Wéjcikas published the monograph The Acquisition of Lithuanian Verb Morphology. A Case Study' based on a doctoral dissertation prepared at the Department of General Linguistics and Baltic Studies of the University of Warsaw (thesis defended in 1998). The main difference from the dissertation monograph is the restructured structure, which has become more coherent, but too much fragmented into small chapters. The work of P. Węjcik in Lithuanian studies is undoubtedly pioneering. This is the first attempt to describe the acquisition of verb morphology by a Lithuanian child (girl, named Rūta) from 1;7 to 2;5 years; at the same time it is the first book about Lithuanian children’s language. By the way, the morphology of the noun of the same girl has also been studied — in 1999 Ineta Savickienė defended her doctoral dissertation “Morphology of Lithuanian child noun” at Vytautas Magnus University. Thus, from both studies it will be possible to form a fairly detailed picture of how the Lithuanian girl masters the system of morphology. P. Węjcik’s monograph consists of ten small chapters (pp. 11-128), a short introduction (pp. 9-10), an appendix (pp. 129-137), abstracts in Polish (pp. 138-143) and Lithuanian (pp. 144-148) and a list of used literature (pp. 149-152). The preface states that the empirical basis for studying the acquisition of the language by Baltic children is small, including the data processed by the author himself, therefore the main purpose of the book is to “present a general picture of how the verb system of the Lithuanian language is acquired” (p. 9). Mr. Wėjcikas emphasizes the specificity of the subject of the monograph — the study of the language of one child. Although in such cases it is possible to perceive certain universalities of language acquisition (according to the famous psycholinguist D. T. Slobin), nevertheless the process of language acquisition is to be considered a very individual phenomenon, conditioned by various factors (ibid.). For this reason, P. Wėjcikas is reluctant to draw far-reaching conclusions about the acquisition of the verb system of the Lithuanian language- .'The book is published in the series "Baltica Varsoviensia" (vol. 2), which was founded and edited by Prof. Wojciech Smoczynski; The first volume of this collection is a collection of works by Tamara Buch on Lithuanian studies (T. Buch, Opuscula Lithuanica, Warsaw, 1998). The author of the monograph, P. Wėjcikas, who teaches Lithuanian studies at the University of Warsaw, studied Baltic studies at the Universities of Warsaw and Vilnius, wrote a master’s thesis on the language in which adult Lithuanians communicate with a two-year-old child (based on recordings made in one family), see P. Wojcik, Characteristics of speech addressed to a 2-year-old Lithuanian child. Master's thesis. Vilnius: Vilnius University Press, 1994; t. p. aut., Some characteristic features of Lithuanian Baby Talk, in Linguistica Baltica 3, 1994, 71-86. 252 | REVIEWS in general. Such a sober perception of the object of research and the possibilities is a commendable trait, characteristic of a rare first-step Zengian scientist. The first chapter of the monograph, as it should be, is the history of the question (pp. 11-17). The work introduces the study of the language of Baltic children, starting from the works of V. Rūkė-Dravinienė, which contain a lot of data on how her two children learn Latvian, as well as the morphology of the verb. Obviously, P. Wojciek is more attentive to the latter topic and discusses it in a separate section (p. 13-14), focusing on the order of the acquisition of verb categories (there seems to have been no such section in the dissertation). Next, we review Lithuanian children’s language studies, which began very late — in 1992, when the initiative of Magdalene Smoczynska began to systematically record Eglė’s, and a year later — and Rūta’s language. Eglė’s language development proved to be very peculiar, not corresponding to the standard language development of a 2-3 year old child, therefore only Rūta’s audio recordings were chosen for the study of Lithuanian language acquisition.” In the second chapter (pp. 18-21) the author introduces the research material — Ruth’s audio recordings: it is explained how they were collected, transcribed and analyzed according to the CHILDES system well known in the world of psycholinguistics. A total of 38,500 sentences were encoded, in which more than 26,000 verb forms were found and analyzed (about 10,000 were used by Ruth, the remaining — by adults who communicated with her, mostly her mother). The third chapter (pp. 22-36) is a concise description of the Lithuanian verb system (i.e., the adult language model that is learned by children). Without questioning the author’s competence on the issues of the Baltic verb, I would like to draw attention to some questionable details. For example, some non-recursive forms are incorrectly interpreted when the allomorph -is of the recursive is seen, e.g.: kelk-is (= kelki-s), kels-is (= kelsi-s), p. 32 (elsewhere, in the table on p. 36, the word is already divided into sūp-ki-s, sup-si-s). Incomprehensible division of the forms sūptume, suptute, sūptumėme, sūptumėte | sūp-tume, sup-tute, sūp-tumėme, sūp-tumėte (p. 36). What is morphologically -tume, -tute, -tumėme, -tuméte? Changes in vowels, such as lėkti, lekia, lėkė; karti, karia, korė (p. 31) should be called mixed synchronically (the first one the author assigns to quantitative, the second — to qualitative; this is already a diachronic interpretation). Diachronicity also appears in the comments on the category of genus, where it is stated that adjectives, numerals and participles can have the form of an anonymous genus (p. 30, note 20). In the subsystem of variable nouns (non-pronouns) by genus, number and vowel, the contradiction of conjugable and inconjugable forms is assumed synchronously first. The latter forms differ in terms of gender, number and verb categories, so the term of non-noun forms, proposed by some Lithuanianists, has not been adopted. The fourth chapter (pp. 37-42) gives a general picture of the distribution of verb forms — both in Ruth’s language and in the language of the adults communicating with her (input). Here it is stated that the limit of years and 9 months (1;9) is very important for the acquisition of verb morphology — then the future and past (occasional) tenses begin to be separated, the vocabulary increases considerably. The next three chapters describe how Ruth learns the grammatical categories of the verb. It begins with time (chapter V, pp. 43-59), then analyzes the creation and development of the forms of person (chapter VI, pp. 60-80) and pronoun (chapter VII, pp. 81-88) in Ruth’s language. The eighth chapter (p. 89-93) deals with infinitive forms — the participle and the participant, and the ninth (p. 94-117) — the development of verb structure. Chapter Ten (p. 118-128) — Summary. Here, the morphological categories and the structure of the verb are highlighted.2 Eglė’s audio recordings were used by P. Wėjcikas for the study of adult language in communication with children (child directed speech), see footnote 1. |253 mosi General laws of Ruth’s language, similarities and differences between Ruth’s and adult (input) language. The acquisition of the morphology of the verb Rūta is compared with the Latvian language data presented in the works of V. Rūkė-Dravinienė. In the appendix to the monograph (p. 129-137) we will find transcribed and encoded material, temporal adverbs, 3 person forms, participants and other examples. Mr. Węjcik’s research is based on almost a year of audio recordings of the child’s speech, processed, as said, according to the CHILDES system. Thus, the material of the author of the monograph is reliable and verifiable, and it and the results of the research can be used by all scientists who study children’s language based on the CHILDES principles. On the other hand, the laws observed by the researcher will also be interesting for psycholinguists who do not practice the CHILDES system (see Dravinienė’s publications used in the reviewed work). In short, anyone who cares about Lithuanian language acquisition in children will look for the works of P. Wėjcik (and I. Savickienė), because there are simply no others. The works of these young researchers will be a reference point for those linguists who choose Lithuanian children’s language as the subject of their research. The fact that only one child is studied poses certain problems (see the thoughts stated in the preface of the monograph), for example, it is not clear which phenomena are to be considered as individual peculiarities of Ruth’s language and which are characteristic features of Lithuanian children’s language in general. However, even such a study allows to highlight universal or more universal and individual features of Ruth’s language formation, when data from language studies of children of other nations are used as a help. In drawing his conclusions, P. Wėjcikas compares the facts of Rūta’s language with the corresponding data of Latvian children’s language. Research on the language of children of other nations, including the work of the participants in the project “The Acquisition of Preand Protomorphology” led by W. U. Dressler, could have been used much more for comparison. It would have been interesting to find out whether the material of the verb Rūta allows to distinguish the stages of premorphology, protomorphology and modularized morphology assumed by the proponents of natural morphology. In general, for the interpretation of the facts, the author could make more use of universally accepted statements of general linguistics and show his linguistic knowledge. From the summaries made in the monograph, I would like to emphasize the order of acquisition of individual verb morphological categories established by P. Wėjcik, which, I almost doubt, is characteristic of the acquisition of Lithuanian verb morphology in general. First (about 1;8) appear the present tense and imperative forms, a month later — the present and future tense forms, participants, and last — the supposed tense forms. This sequence roughly corresponds to the structural and statistical* significance of the categories. If we compare the duration of the verb and noun categories, the second categories Rūta mastered a little faster. Symptomatic is the predominance of the so-called third-person forms throughout the study period. This would support the view that in the Baltic languages the “3rd person” falls out of the system of person category and is not really a person (cf. V. Žulis’ works). The facts in the monograph are presented precisely, the exemplary technical design is noteworthy. Proofreading errors are relatively rare, in the English text I noticed only a few of them: paticiples (= participles) p. 14, 19 v.*; situtaion (= situation) p. 24, išn. 14; diphtongs (= diphthongs) 3 In making generalizations about the acquisition of the morphology of the verb Rūta, P. Wéjcikas, by the way, also takes into account the statistical data on the use of verb forms in Lithuanian common language, presented in the works of V. Zilinskienés. * Here and hereafter v. means “(row) from above”, ap. —“(row) from below”. 254 | REVIEWS p. 32, 2 ap. In the Lithuanian part there are more errors — not only proofreading, e.g. : Aurelia (= Aurelija) p. 16, 10v., išn. 6; busimasis (= future) p. 25, 8 v.; lekti (= to run) p. 31, 8 v.; pusti, puté (= blow, blowed), žadžia (= plays) p. 31, 13 v.; baigiai (= finished) p. 34, 6 r. ; p. 34, exp. 27 works of Lithuanian accentologists are not included in the list of literature; mok+eé-- té-s and mok+é-mé-s (p. 35, 2,3 ap.) should be replaced; feciu (= dad) p. 58, 12 ap. ; biški (= a little bit) p. 92, 3 ap. ; it is not true that the form šokti does not exist in Lithuanian (p. 103, note 64); krenta (= falls) p. 115, 15 ap. (mother tongue falls —not the form of common language- ); MFTYTI (= METYTI) p. 117, 1 v.; (tevelis) (= father) p. 133, 13 ap. ; tetis (= tetis {tétis}) p. 134, 10,13 v. The here mentioned riktas „dissolve“ among the abundance of impeccably presented examples and eye-grabbing. The situation is worse with the Lithuanian summary — its language, style and punctuation require considerable editing. It is regrettable that many of the errors in the Lithuanian text are taken from the dissertation. This would indicate that the preparation of the monograph was accompanied by haste. Perhaps haste should also be interpreted as the dissertation that appeared in the text of the book instead of the monograph, e.g., “In this dissertation, I shall refer to problems of accentuation” (p. 34, note 27). Concluding this review, I would like to say that despite the shortcomings and errors, P. Węjcik’s monograph is a serious work, which has broadened the horizon of Lithuanian studies by studying children’s language. The reviewed book and articles would not have been possible without the efforts of many people: the audio recordings were made and transcribed by Ruth’s mother, Lithuanian scholar Aurelija Kaškelevičienė (this work was partly supported by the Austrian Academy of Sciences — a grant provided by Prof. W. U. Dressler; also the Open Lithuania Foundation, which purchased a computer, a tape recorder and cassettes), the data was encoded and analyzed, of course, by P. Wojcikas, advised and fully supported by the well-known psycholinguist Prof. M. Smoczynska, whose initiative also started research into Lithuanian children’s language; The writing and defence of the dissertation was supervised by Baltologist Prof. Axel Holvoet. The help of these and other people is beautifully highlighted in the book by the author himself (p. 7), but the main hero of the new branch of Lithuanian linguistics is he himself, a professionally prepared psycholinguist and Lithuanianist, who will undoubtedly continue to successfully pursue Lithuanian studies. Bonifacas Stundžia Received 2001 08 17 Department of Baltic Studies and General Linguistics Vilnius University Universiteto g. 5, 2734 Vilnius, Lithuania [email protected] PIETRO U. DINI, BALTIAN LANGUAGES. COMPARATIVE HISTORY. Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijy leidybos institutas, 2000, 540 p. Pietro U. Dini's introduction to Baltic philology Le lingue baltiche has already received many positive reviews in the linguistic press. Translations into Lithuanian and Latvian speak not only about the fact that it fills a gap in Baltic literature, but also about the positive features of the book itself. The special editor of the book, Bonifacas Stundžia, has made considerable efforts to ensure that the Lithuanian edition takes over all these characteristics of the original. His careful work has prevented many