Phonologically- Driven Acquisition of Clitics in Yemeni Arabic

Abstract

This paper investigates the acquisition of clitics by Yemeni Arabic children. It looks at the acquisition of proclitics (affixes attached at the beginning of the word) and enclitics (affixes attached at the end of the word). The study examines the language of four children aged 1;8, 2;3, 2;8 and 2;11. It concludes that children seem to start acquiring enclitics prior to proclitics. The paper also considers the different repair strategies – certain phonological processes – that children resort to in order to compensate for the (adult's) input-output mismatches.