“Parno Sar Papin – White as a Swan”, Or How Metaphors Help Roma Children to Acquire Grammatical Categories in Romani

Abstract

The paper presents the process of language socialization and acquisition of grammatical categories through the Roma oral culture in which metaphors are extensively used. Roma children who grow up in extended Roma families and community learn the language through communication with speakers of different registers. Research with 22 Roma children between three and six years of age from Croatia was carried in order to find out what grammatical categories are learned in this period of the life of children. The children were tested with a specially designed language assessment test in Romani (Kyuchukov & de Villiers, 2014b). The results show that Roma boys perform the test much better than Roma girls. Boys learn Romani from folkloristic genres which are rich in metaphors and this helps them to acquire complex grammatical categories.

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