Lecture Five

Grammatical Development 2

Grammatical development 2 …

• This lecture will consider the acquisition of grammatical rules in more depth.

• We will consider:InflectionsQuestionsNegatives

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.

Brown (1973) …

• Study: 20 – 36 month olds exhibited the sequence shown below:

1. -ing2. plural –s3. possessive –s4. ‘the’, ‘a’5. past tense –ed6. third person singular verb ending –s7. auxiliary ‘be’

Cruttenden (1979) …

1. Memorise words individually. No regard for rules.

2. Awareness of general principles governing inflections.

3. OVERGENERALISATION

4. Correct inflections are used, including irregular forms.

Understanding of grammatical rules …

• Researchers: How do children produce grammatically accurate constructions so early in their development?

• Rules??• Imitation??

Berko (1958) …

• ‘Wug’• ‘This is a Wug’• ‘Now there is another

one; there are two of them’

• Complete the sentence: ‘There are two …’

Berko (1958) …

• 3-4 years old: ‘wugs’• Grammatical rule for

plural ‘s’ was clearly being applied.

Overgeneralisation …

• 2 ½ - 5 years: grammatical errors show an awareness of rules.

• They ‘overgeneralise/overregularise’, trying to make the language more consistent than it is:

sheepswentedmouses

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

Questions …

• Asking questions involves complex constructions.

• Research: suggests they are three stages involved in acquiring this skill …

Questions …

1. Two-word stage: questions rely on rising intonation only.

2. Second year: question words acquired: first ‘what’ and ‘where’, then ‘why’, ‘who’ and ‘how’= ‘Where daddy gone?’

3. Third year: begin to use auxiliary verbs and inversion…

Questions …

• Therefore: ‘Joe is here’ becomes ‘Is Joe here?’

• However: questions involving –wh words are not always correctly inverted: ‘Why Joe isn’t here?’

Negation …

• It also appears that the accurate expression of negative (stereotypically characterised by the ‘terrible twos’) occurs in three stages …

•NO!

Negation …

1. Single dependence on the words ‘no’ and ‘not’ used independently or in front of expressions: ‘no want’ and ‘no go bed’.

2. 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’

Negation …

3. More negative forms are acquired: ‘didn’t’ and ‘isn’t’. Negative

constructions are not generally more accurate.

Vocabulary test …

• OVERGENERALISATION

• IRREGULAR FORMS

• METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS