The Early Acquisition of Korean Morphology : A Case Study

The acquisition of verb and noun morphology in Korean was investigated longitudinally in one child from age 1;7 to 2;4. The findings revealed early production of a wide range of grammatical morphemes including the first 50 verb and noun suffixes. The agglutinating morphology and stress characteristics of Korean seemed to contribute to this early development. However, because the child had not yet acquired a number of Korean morphemes by the conclusion of the study, it is possible that the acquisition of morphology does not proceed as rapidly in Korean as in other agglutinating languages. Factors that might account for the differences in acquisition rate are discussed.