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Lecture Five

Lecture Five. Grammatical Development 2. Grammatical development 2 …. This lecture will consider the acquisition of grammatical rules in more depth. We will consider: Inflections Questions Negatives. Acquisition of inflections ….

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Lecture Five

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  1. Lecture Five Grammatical Development 2

  2. Grammatical development 2 … • This lecture will consider the acquisition of grammatical rules in more depth. • We will consider: • Inflections • Questions • Negatives

  3. Acquisition of inflections … • Predictable patterns: revealed by research in the acquisition of inflections. • Grammatical function words: also seem to be acquired in a predictable order.

  4. Brown (1973) … • Study: 20 – 36 month olds exhibited the sequence shown below: • -ing • plural –s • possessive –s • ‘the’, ‘a’ • past tense –ed • third person singular verb ending –s • auxiliary ‘be’

  5. Cruttenden (1979) … • Memorize words individually. No regard for rules. • Awareness of general principles governing inflections. • OVERGENERALIZATION • Correct inflections are used, including irregular forms.

  6. Understanding of grammatical rules … • Researchers: How do children produce grammatically accurate constructions so early in their development? • Rules?? • Imitation??

  7. Berko (1958) … • ‘Wug’ • ‘This is a Wug’ • ‘Now there is another one; there are two of them’ • Complete the sentence: ‘There are two …’

  8. Berko (1958) … • 3-4 years old: ‘wugs’ • Grammatical rule for plural ‘s’ was clearly being applied.

  9. Overgeneralization … • 2 ½ - 5 years: grammatical errors show an awareness of rules. • They ‘overgeneralize/overregularize’, trying to make the language more consistent than it is: • sheeps • wented • mouses

  10. Be careful … • Although children apply grammatical rules in this way, they are not conscious that they have acquired them and would not be able to explain them = NO METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS

  11. ? Asking questions involves complex constructions. Research: suggests they are three stages involved in acquiring this skill … Questions …

  12. Questions … • Two-word stage: questions rely on rising intonation only. • Second year: question words acquired: first ‘what’ and ‘where’, then ‘why’, ‘who’ and ‘how’= ‘Where daddy gone?’ • Third year: begin to use auxiliary verbs and inversion…

  13. Questions … • Therefore: ‘Joe is here’ becomes ‘Is Joe here?’ • However: questions involving –wh words are not always correctly inverted: ‘Why Joe isn’t here?’

  14. NO! It also appears that the accurate expression of negative (stereotypically characterised by the ‘terrible twos’) occurs in three stages … Negation …

  15. Negation … • Single dependence on the words ‘no’ and ‘not’ used independently or in front of expressions: ‘no want’ and ‘no go bed’. • Third year: ‘don’t’ and ‘can’t’ appear. Begin to appear after the subject and before the verb of the sentence: ‘I don’t want it’ and ‘Sammy can’t play’

  16. Negation … 3. More negative forms are acquired: ‘didn’t’ and ‘isn’t’. Negative constructions are not generally more accurate.

  17. Vocabulary test … • OVERGENERALIZATION • IRREGULAR FORMS • METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS

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