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Understanding relationships between parent input and language acquisition is fundamental to the design of interventions. This study focused on copula is, a highly frequent tense/agreement morpheme with variable surface forms. It has syllabic and contracted forms and appears in different syntactic positions for statements versus questions. We analyzed parent input to 42 typically developing children at 2;0. The input packaging of copula is was significantly correlated with child copula is productivity at 2;3. Is contracted to WH pronouns (e.g., where’s his foot?) was negatively related, but full form copula is in declarative sentences (e.g., the apple is red.) was positively related. Hierarchical multiple regression showed that child copula productivity at 2;0 combined with input packaging at 2;0 accounted for over 59% of the variance in child copula productivity at 2;3. Child copula productivity accounted for approximately 29% of the unique variance. Parent input packaging accounted for an additional 11% of the unique variance. The implications of input packaging for the design of optimal input for grammatical interventions will be discussed. |
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