Cat or horse? Exploring children’s morphological awareness in the naming of animals

Abstract

Our study examines the use of English morphology by native English-speaking children across the developmental span in the midwestern region of the United States. We used a task elicitation methodology in which 100 children were asked to name three pictures in English: one of a real horse, one of a real cat, and one with a real cat wearing a horse mask. We tabulated the types of responses generated across the age span and analyzed when native speaking children began to demonstrate the use of English derivational morphology and diminutive morphology, and how children chose L1 lexicon to describe the three animal pictures such as the use of compounding and semantic shifting. We saw evidence of overextension, misnaming, ambiguity, and the linguistic creativity inherent in the playful use of morphology.