The volume deals with the emergence of verb morphology in children during their second and early third year of life from a cross-linguistic perspective. It covers 15 contributions - each analyzing one single language - based on parallel longitudinal investigations of children with parallel methodology and macrostructure in representation. The main question addressed is: How do children detect morphology and construct first subsystems of verbal inflection? The focus lies on the transition from a premorphological phase to a protomorphological phase. The main proposal consists in the concept of miniparadigms and of their relation to morpho-syntactic developments in early first language acquisition.

Language acquisition is a human endeavor par excellence. As children, all human beings learn to understand and speak at least one language: their mother tongue. It is a process that seems to take place without any obvious effort. Second language learning, particularly among adults, causes more difficulty. The purpose of this series is to compile a collection of high-quality monographs on language acquisition. The series serves the needs of everyone who wants to know more about the problem of language acquisition in general and/or about language acquisition in specific contexts.