1. Grammatical Development 2
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. ? Questions … Asking questions involves complex constructions.
Research: suggests they are three stages involved in acquiring this skill …

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

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