Ontogenesis of the Dative Case in the Light of Natural Morphology and Cognitive Linguistics

In the framework of the natural morphology (The types of homomorphism; J. Dolník, 2005) and cognitive linguistics (the dative case as the grammatical exponent of the target person’s role; E. Dąbrowska, 1997), the paper deals with the dative case in early speech development (during the first 3 years of child’s life). The study presents the results of the research into grammatical forms, case meanings and pragmatic functions. The key question is this: which dative case structures children acquire preferentially? The research is based on the combination of qualitative (audiovisual recordings of three children, coding of transcripts) and quantitative (1065 parental assessments) methods. The research leads to conclusions on three levels: (a) The form: grammatical forms of the dative case with segmental and defective homomorphism are typical for preferentially acquired forms. (b) The semantics: dative of benefit and dative of direction can be interpreted as case meanings that create the core of the dative case’s early semantics. (c) The pragmatics: children use the dative case preferentially in utterances with pragmatic function: con-situational information, disagreement, answer, will and challenge. It means that the dative case is primarily used in the developmentally oldest functions. The research broadens the understanding of speech ontogenesis and contributes to language explanation that is compatible with the process of its acquisition.