AUTHOR=Omane Paul Okyere , Höhle Barbara 

TITLE=Acquiring Syntactic Variability: The Production of Wh-Questions in Children and Adults Speaking Akan

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Communication

VOLUME=6

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/communication/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2021.604951

DOI=10.3389/fcomm.2021.604951

ISSN=2297-900X

ABSTRACT=<p>This paper investigates the predictions of the Derivational Complexity Hypothesis by studying the acquisition of <italic>wh</italic>-questions in 4- and 5-year-old Akan-speaking children in an experimental approach using an elicited production and an elicited imitation task. Akan has two types of <italic>wh</italic>-question structures (<italic>wh</italic>-in-situ and <italic>wh</italic>-ex-situ questions), which allows an investigation of children’s acquisition of these two question structures and their preferences for one or the other. Our results show that adults prefer to use <italic>wh</italic>-ex-situ questions over <italic>wh</italic>-in-situ questions. The results from the children show that both age groups have the two question structures in their linguistic repertoire. However, they differ in their preferences in usage in the elicited production task: while the 5-year-olds preferred the <italic>wh</italic>-in-situ structure over the <italic>wh</italic>-ex-situ structure, the 4-year-olds showed a selective preference for the <italic>wh</italic>-in-situ structure in <italic>who</italic>-questions. These findings suggest a developmental change in <italic>wh</italic>-question preferences in Akan-learning children between 4 and 5 years of age with a so far unobserved u-shaped developmental pattern. In the elicited imitation task, all groups showed a strong tendency to maintain the structure of <italic>in-situ</italic> and <italic>ex-situ</italic> questions in repeating grammatical questions. When repairing ungrammatical <italic>ex-situ</italic> questions, structural changes to grammatical <italic>in-situ</italic> questions were hardly observed but the insertion of missing morphemes while keeping the <italic>ex-situ</italic> structure. Together, our findings provide only partial support for the Derivational Complexity Hypothesis.</p>