Development Sequence of Person Markers in Pre-school Children

Abstract

This study investigates the development sequence of person markers in pre-school children. It observed participants’ accurate use of person markers through a picturesupported elicitation task. Ten children with normal language development, aged between 2.5 and 4 years, participated in the task. Eight different verbs with three person markers for progressive aspect in present tense were elicited from participants. The mean score and standard deviation for each person marker used indicated that participants faced difficulty in producing accurate second person marker. Each participant showed highest accuracy in producing third person marker for each verb form. An implication of the study can be to determine the accuracy order of verbal inflection based on person markers in the process of Bengali language acquisition in children. It can also be helpful in cross-linguistic studies on morphological development of young children.