Words of foreign origin in a child’s language (a case study)

Abstract

The paper presents the results of longitudinal research based on authentic data analysis. The research subject was a Czech-speaking monolingual boy. Recordings of the subject’s dialogues in communication with adults from the age of three years to the age of 10 years were analysed; parental diaries were used as supplementary material. The author observed the appearance of words of foreign origin in the child’s speech. The frequency of words, the degree of their adaptation, and the correctness of use in terms of meaning, grammatical form and pronunciation were monitored. The research also focused on which language the words were taken from and in which semantic field they were located. Some tendencies were traced, e.g. the increasing frequency of words of foreign origin in the child’s production over time. An interesting factor was incorrect declension; the child did not respect the difference of the declension paradigm and classified the lexeme with prototypical Czech noun patterns. A shift in semantic fields was also evident. Initially, the child used commonly adapted lexemes. Later, lexemes from English were added, falling into the sociolect of computer-game players and lexemes of the youth sociolect. With the onset of schooling, the number of foreign-language terms from various areas increased, but those lexemes were not often used in the recordings as they were not in the child’s area of interest.