BibTeX
@MISC{Demuth_languageimpairment,
author = {Katherine Demuth and Susan Suzman},
title = {Language Impairment in Zulu*},
year = {}
}
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Abstract
The acquisition of southern Bantu languages has been relatively well studied, with dissertations on the acquisition of the Sotho languages Sesotho (Connelly 1984, Demuth 1984) and Setswana (Tsonope 1987), and the Nguni languages Siswati (Kunene 1979) and Zulu (Suzman 1991), as well as a number of other articles on Sesotho and Zulu acquisition. Many of these studies have investigated the acquisition of the noun class prefixes and the nominal/verbal agreement system, but there have also been studies on the acquisition of constructions such as passives, relative clauses, wh-questions and the tonal system (cf. Demuth 1992 for review). Thus, although there is much we do not know about how and when certain grammatical phenomena are acquired in southern Bantu languages, we do know that children learning these languages appear to be relatively precocious when compared with their English-speaking peers. In particular, children learning southern Bantu languages have mastered the noun class and agreement system before the age of 3, and the competence with complex grammatical constructions and the grammatical tone system is
Keyphrases
language impairment southern bantu language nominal verbal agreement system certain grammatical phenomenon tonal system southern bantu complex grammatical construction noun class prefix agreement system relative clause noun class zulu acquisition english-speaking peer grammatical tone system
