Understanding How and When Morphosyntax is Acquired: Insights from English Allomorphic Variation and Sesotho ‘Optional’ Noun Class Prefixes

ABSTRACT

When acquiring the English plural, children correctly produce plural words long before they develop an understanding of morphological structure. When acquiring Sesotho noun prefixes, children are aware of the multiple constraints governing variation from a young age. Both of these cases raise questions about the Shin and Miller (2022) account of children’s acquisition of morphosyntactic variation.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).