The phenomenon of overregularization in Esperanto-speaking children

This article deals with the phenomenon of overregularization in a language already extremely regular, i.e. Esperanto, in children who are learning it as their mother tongue together with one or two other national languages. It consists of an analysis of the diaries kept by Esperanto-speaking parents, tracing the development of five children who were brought up speaking Esperanto as one of their two or three mother-tongues. The children were all of European origin, and their ages ranged from one to five years. The different forms of overregularization have been subdivided into three levels of complexity based on the number and type of morpheme compositions used, and the degree of semantic elaboration. Detailed comments are provided on the forms and meanings of the various examples representing each level, showing the correlation between the age of the children and the growing complexity of the forms. This study can be seen as a first step towards a more systematic analysis of the typologies of overregularization specific to this category of early bilingual children and a better understanding of their language development profile.