Acquisition of polarity items in Czech children: An experimental study

Abstract

The Czech polarity items i and ani are traditionally treated as English even. This paper deals with the acquisition of these polarity items in Czech children. These focus/scalar particles are specific for their sensitivity to probability. We aim to find out whether Czech children at primary school (junior school age) have already acquired i/ani and whether they are able to connect them correctly with alternatives on the scale of probability. The research was conducted with children from the second and the fourth grade at primary school. The paper represents an initial insight into this area since no similar research has been done in the Czech language so far.

Keywords

• language acquisition
• focus particles
• scalar particles
• experimental linguistics
• language teaching