Word Order in German Language Development

Abstract

This article concerns how children process sequential orders in an elicited imitation. The subjects were seventeen German-speaking children from 3; 6 to 5; 5 years of age. The same model sentences were varied in two ways based on the deep-surface structure distinction. In German, the deep structure is defined by a verb-final rule and the surface structure, by a verb-medial rule. Virtually all of the children studied could repeat the surface structure correctly (one child failed in one sentence), but the deep structure was rejected by most of the children and turned either into the corresponding surface structure or into some ungrammatical sequences. The findings are interpreted as denying the notion of primary acquisition of the deep structure. It is further argued that children's grammar rules are concrete in nature and very limited in generality, referring to some particular structures to which they are actually exposed.