Determinative, Individual- und Massennomen im Spracherwerb des Deutschen : Diskussion des Nominal Mapping Parameters

Abstract

The Nominal Mapping Parameter gave rise to an acquisition model which makes clear and falsifiable statements about the acquisition of articles in German. It claims that children acquiring a Germanic language omit articles for a longer period of time than children acquiring a Romance language, as they have to decide for each noun separately whether it is count or mass. Thus, article drop in the acquisition of Germanic languages is considered to be a lexical learning problem. This study presents a critical discussion of this model on the basis of data from ten children acquiring German. Although these children pass through a protracted period of article omissions, omissions are unrelated to the count/mass distinction.