Abstract
Research shows that young children do not conceive of spoken language as consisting of conventional words, probably until they have learned to read and write. The building blocks they use and recognize do not initially correspond to what we call words, but rather to larger constituents and constructions. Children learn chunks and then gradually break up these constructions into smaller units such as words and morphemes. The proposed research aims at, on the one hand, investigating what these building blocks are, and, on the other hand, to trace the changes in the use and awareness of these building blocks in relation to both typological linguistic variation and the acquisition of literacy. In two studies, 75 monolingual Dutch, 75 monolingual Turkish and 75 bilingual Dutch/Turkish children (pre-readers and readers) are presented with experimental tasks that measure the use (on-line experiments) and awareness (off-line experiments) of building blocks at the level of morphemes, words and constructions. Study 1 focuses on the impact of the acquisition of literacy, study 2 on typological variation.