Irish is a rapidly changing minority language spoken as the main community language in some areas of the officially Irish-speaking "Gaeltacht" regions in Ireland. We analyse narratives from 17 parent-child dyads, living in one such area. All children, aged 3-6;4, had high exposure to the local variety of Irish. The input quality was…

Investigations into early vocabulary development, including the timing of the acquisition of nouns, verbs and closed-class words, have produced conflicting results, both within and across languages. Studying vocabulary development in Irish can contribute to this area, as it has potentially informative features such as a VSO word order, and…

Varying definitions of formulas, or apparently nonproductive utterances in children's speech, are compared, and criteria for formula recognition are reviewed. A preference rule system is proposed, which distinguishes conditions for formula recognition. Formulas found in the data of one child acquiring Irish are examined. (29 references) (KM)