First-language acquisition of synthetic compounds in Estonian, Finnish, German, Greek, Lithuanian, Russian and Saami

In this first cross-linguistic study of the emergence and early development of synthetic compounds we present the strictly parallel analysis of systematically collected longitudinal data from seven languages: the Finno-Ugric languages Finnish, Saami, Estonian and the Indo-European languages Lithuanian, Russian, Greek and German. The data of spontaneous interactions between children and parents allow insights usually not obtainable via transversal formal tests. For example, the target of acquisition is the specific parental child-directed speech and not the target languages as represented in grammars, dictionaries and adult electronic corpora.