Natural Production Data on Verb Placement in Lucernese

Abstract

The data I have collected comprise the recorded sentences of two children over a period of just over two consecutive years. Both children are monolingual and are observed as they acquire the Lucernese variant of Swiss German. One of the children, Moira, has been recorded regularly by her mother over aperiod of 27 months (3;10–6;01), totalling 111 hours of recording on 74 cassette tapes. These recordings are in my possession, allowing me to study, analyse, and review the utterances as I desire. Most of this recorded speech is natural production and Moira produces about 4000 embedded clauses. The other child, whom I shall refer to as ‘Eliza’, is a friend of Moira’s, and only one week younger. Eliza’s natural production is less and totals about 500 embedded c1auses, but otherwise resembles Moira’s. On my request, Moira’s mother arranged several elicitation sessions in which both children participated. The results of these elicitation sessions supplement the natural production data: There are several hundred additional examples elicited from each child. While this chapter bears on the children’s natural production data, the data obtained during elicitation are discussed separately in Chapter 3.