lecture five
DESCRIPTION
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 …. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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. Memorize words individually. No regard for rules.
2. Awareness of general principles governing inflections.
3. OVERGENERALIZATION
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.
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:
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 …
NO!• It also appears that the
accurate expression of negative (stereotypically characterised by the ‘terrible twos’) occurs in three stages …
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 …
• OVERGENERALIZATION
• IRREGULAR FORMS
• METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS