(Preface: I'm not well-versed in language acquisition, so the context I've
provided here will be dumbed-down, or perhaps just dumb.)

**Context:** When children acquire their first language, they typically go
through a phase where they take grammatical rules (e.g. "form past tense by
adding -ed to a verb") and apply them in situations where they aren't
applicable (e.g. using * _goed_ as the past tense of _go_ ). This is called
**overgeneralization**. Children acquiring English as a first language
overgeneralize verb conjugations all over the place - "I ated the candy", "She
telled me to do it", etc.

Since Japanese has fewer irregular conjugations than English, I expect
overgeneralization (in the context of conjugation) to be less visible, but I
doubt that it is absent altogether. I have, for example, heard * _iikunai_ as
the overgeneralized negative of _ii_ "good" in place of _yokunai_. (Albeit
this was a child character in an anime, not a real child, so this may not be
representative.)

**Question:** Do children make similar errors with irregular verbs and other
conjugatable words? For example, might they use * _shiru_ as the 終止形 of _suru_
"to do" or * _kinai_ as the negative of _kuru_ "to come"? What about with
irregular honorifics like _irassharu_ , _gozaru_? (I guess children wouldn't
use these as much, since keigo is mastered relatively late...)

I would also be interested in cases where children incorrectly treat non-
conjugatable words as conjugatable, e.g. (to use some examples from the
comments), * _ippakunai_ as the negative of _ippai_ "a lot; much" or *
_kireikunai_ as the negative of _kirei_ "pretty".
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conjugations child-speech
In what ways do Japanese children overgeneralize conjugation patterns?
I think this is not really overgeneralization, but when I was in Tokyo I've
heard quite a few little kids use 連用形＋して instead of 連用形＋音便＋て to form て-form
(i.e. 飲みして, 待ちして), likely to avoid the messy 音便 rules. I guess this is some
sort of new form that spread among kids.

Edit: After recalling a bit, it seems that this "error" comes up the most
often with 〜てみる. So kids would say ちょっと待って, but 飲みしてみて.
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The kinds of mistakes that children make depend on how often they hear the
correct speech around them. From my experience, Japanese children make fewer
mistakes in conjugating verbs than in using particles properly. I've heard
adult women use "kireiku nai" deliberately for the same of emphasizing their
point. My first Japanese teacher used to say that you spend your first year of
Japanese study learning all of the rules, and then the rest of your life
learning when to break them. I've also heard adults say yon-nichi instead of
yoka to differentiate between four days and eight days.
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I expect children in all cultures go through a trial and error period of well
intended but amusing errors as their ability to speak develops.

This paper looks at the development of Japanese children's narrative
abilities, comparing the narrative given for a series of pictures by several
age groups up to adult.

<http://www.researchgate.net/publication/245402146_Anchor_tense_in_Japanese_Narrative>  
(Short
version:<http://csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu/proceedings/2006/iccs/p119.pdf>)

It does not identify errors so much as track how a child's ability to relate a
story changes as he/she gets older. Basically as a child begins to appreciate
aspect and tense he/she starts to set all narratives in the past (たーform).
Then, as this sense develops, the child starts to introduce expressions in the
るーpresent tense aswell.
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There are a lot of ways that these over-generalizations occur doing child
language acquisition. They do in fact occur -- often -- in Japanese. In fact,
I think it is safe to say that they occur in every language.

There's a rather in depth list of examples of some of these over-
generalizations available in the papers referenced below. I will describe one
example here: the over-generalization of ～らせて (e.g. as seen in 遅【おく】らせて) and
～させて (e.g. 食べさせて). Thus many children will say things like:

> おきらせて and おきさせて (＝おこして).

Even earlier than that, Japanese children will often simply use 自動詞 to express
the meaning of a 他動詞, as seen in:

> かあさん、でんしゃ、うごいてくれ。(＝かあさん、でんしゃを **うごかして** くれ)

There are many more papers and likely books written on this subject, but any
Japanese-language introductory book on language acquisition should have a
bunch more examples.

* * *

### References

  * [荒井文雄(2003)日本語における起因他動詞の習得段階－起因他動詞をめぐる誤用のもつ意味－『京都産業大学論集』、人文科学系列第30号、pp.1-38](http://www.cc.kyoto-su.ac.jp/~arai/acquisition%20causative.html)
  * [荒井文雄(2006)日本語における可能表現の習得過程『京都産業大学論集』、人文科学系列第34号、pp.1-23](http://www.cc.kyoto-su.ac.jp/~arai/acquisition%20potential.html)
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