Coining complex compounds in English: affixes and word order in acquisition

Novel English compound Ns of the type clock-maker require knowledge of the appropriate affixes & their placement as well as of modifier-head word order. Children aged 3:0 to 7:0 (N = 48), asked to coin agentive & instrumental compounds, appear to go through 3 stages in learning how to produce them: (1) they combine bare Vs with head Ns denoting the pertinent category, as in a wash-man, an open-machine; (2) they construct ungrammatical compounds from VPs with a V & N combined, in that order, as in a kick-ball, a build-wall. When they add affixes like -er to such compounds, they add them to the head of these constructions, ie, the V bases in leftmost position, as in a puller-wagon, a builder-wall; & (3) they realize that the heads of compound Ns go in the rightmost slot, regardless of whether the head has a N or V base. This leads them to use the appropriate compound order, as in a water-drinker, a wagon-puller. These stages in production are the outcome of reliance on certain acquisitional principles. These account both for mastery of affixes before word order, & for reliance on sentential V + O word order prior to mastery of compound, O + V, order in complex compounds. 8 Tables, 37 References. HA