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This paper deals with German kinship terms ending with the form "n" (Muttern, Vatern). Firstly, data from newspapers are presented that show that especially Muttern denotes very special meanings that can only be derived to a limited extent from the lexical base: a) Muttern referring to a home where mother cares for you, b) Muttern standing for overprotection, and c) Muttern representing a special food style (often embedded in prepositional phrases and/or comparative constructions like wie bei or wie von Muttern). Secondly, it is argued that the addition of n to kinship terms is not a word-formation pattern, but that these word forms are instead lexicalized and idiomatized in contemporary German. Hence, a diachronic scenario is applied to account for the data. It is argued in the present paper that the n-forms have been borrowed from Low German dialects, especially from constructional idioms of the type ‘X-wie bei Muttern’ and that forms were enriched by semantic concepts associated with the dialect.
The present study investigates word formation processes and strategies in monolingual and bilingual children by age 7 to 8. Using an elicitation task in form of naming of low frequent complex objects, it is analyzed whether bilingual children use other word formation strategies than monolinguals do. Therefore, N=9 monolinguals and N=9 bilinguals were tested. N=268 elicited reactions were analyzed. Results show bilinguals to use the same word formation strategies to the same extent as monolinguals do. Compounding overweighs derivation in each child. However, a more in-depth qualitative analysis shows that the complex compounds formed by bilingual children disregard the German composition rule of right-hand heads to a significantly higher extent than the monolingual children do. Since this acquisition process has been reported for German monolingual 2-year old children, this result is interpreted as a delayed acquisition process rather than a transfer from the respective first language.