Abstract

The present work reviews the first steps towards a better understanding of the acquisition of morphology in an agglutinating language, Hungarian. The acquisition of Hungarian received considerable attention from the early years of language acquisition research, but mainly production from toddlers and preschool children has been investigated. The beginning of the acquisition of morphology, in particular how infants may start to learn to decompose word forms in Hungarian, is only now starting to be explored. The current paper reviews the most recent results on this issue, and discusses its implications for language acquisition theory in general. The reviewed evidence suggests that Hungarian-learning infants are sensitive to vowel harmony by 13 months and are able to decompose morphologically complex words at 15 months. This knowledge is crucial both for word learning and for the acquisition of grammar. Indeed, agglutinating languages provide strong evidence that the sequential view of language acquisition needs to be abandoned in favor of a more integrated view where the different domains of language develop synergistically.