Inflectional Morphology Development and Its Association With Parental Input: Evidence From Kannada-Speaking Preschool Children

Abstract

Morphological development is a crucial component of early language acquisition. This study examined developmental changes in types and tokens of inflectional morphemes produced among 214 typically developing Kannada-speaking preschool children and their parents. Inflectional use was elicited through a story retelling task and analyzed in child’s and parental speech. Results showed developmental increase in both types and tokens of inflectional morphology production in children, indicating that preschool years constitute an important phase of inflectional systems in Kannada, an agglutinative language. Parental inflectional production remained relatively stable across age groups, while only the variety of parental inflections significantly predicted children’s output, emphasizing the role of input richness over frequency. Children produced high functional load markers (namely dative case, tense, and person–number–gender agreement), more frequently than optional or irregular forms. Overall, findings support usage-based theories with educational and clinical relevance. These findings, however, warrant future validation across other naturalistic tasks.