The Acquisition of Morphonotactics in Lithuanian

This study introduces a new approach to the acquisition of Lithuanian morphology and phonotactics and analyses the interaction of the phonotactics of consonant clusters with morphology (morpheme boundaries) in first language acquisition. When analysing the acquisition of morphonotactics, all consonant clusters were divided into several categories: initial, medial and final consonant clusters and consonant clusters within a morpheme and within a morpheme boundary. These groups of consonant clusters are analysed in the child’s language. Some consonant clusters in the child’s language like lb, mb, mp are produced without any problems. But other clusters like sk, nt, st are not always acquired by a child that easily. The analysis of these clusters has shown that it is easier for the child to acquire the clusters when they are across morpheme boundaries. Thus the development of acquisition of marked phonology depends on the acquisition of morphology. 1. Object, goals and methods The acquisition of the Lithuanian language is a relatively new topic and there has been little research in this field. The acquisition of the Lithuanian language in the domain of morphology was analysed by I. Savickienė (1999, 2000, 2003), P. Wójcik (2000), I. Balčiūnienė (2005, 2006). However, the phonetic, phonological, syntactic or lexical features of Lithuanian first language acquisition have not yet been investigated. The object of this research is the acquisition of morphonotactics in Lithuanian. The main hypothesis of this research has been put forwards by W. U. Dressler, the coordinator of the “Cross-linguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition “ (funded by the Austrian Academ