Development of Grammar

Question 1

Proto Words

Answer 1

Words that are similar to — but not quite — actual words. Say, “gaga” for Grandma or “baba” for bottle.

Question 2

Holophrastic stage of development

Answer 2

12 Months:
- a single word representing a more complex thought.

• For example, the word ‘juice’ may be used to signify ‘I want some juice’- in this context, ‘juice’ would be holophrase.
• ‘Up’ is another commonly used holophrase usually signifying ‘please lift me up’ or ‘I want to get up’.

Question 3

Two-word stage

Answer 3

18-24 Months:
- Introduces the use of Syntax

• Two-word utterances are formed, that tend to feature :

Subject + Verb (Me + Go)
Verb + Object (Hit + Ball)

Question 4

Telegraphic Stage

Answer 4

24-36 Months

• speech that resembles an old-fashioned telegram
• Characterised by the omission of auxiliary verbs and determiners
• focus on lexical essentials

E.g ‘daddy get milk’ or ‘Ben feed ducks’

Question 5

Post-telegraphic stage

Answer 5

36+ months

• lexical content gradually expands to include auxiliaries, prepositions and articles
  E.g ‘Mummy’s car’

Question 6

Inflections

Answer 6

Roger Brown (1973) listed an order of acquisition from 20-36 month old children

1. -ing - ‘walking
2. -s (plural) - ‘games’
3. -‘s (possessive) - ‘daddy’s
4. ‘a’, ‘the’ - ‘a dog, the cat’
5. -ed - ‘finished’
6. -s (third-person singular verb ending ) - ‘goes’

• Children will often apply -ed to irregular verbs to indicate part tense such as ‘mummy wented out’ indicating over-generalisation and is an example of a virtuous error.
  7. ‘be’ (primary auxiliary) - ‘I am’

Question 7

Negatives

Answer 7

• Gestures and facial expressions will be used early to indicated displeasure.
• reliance on words such as ‘not’ and ‘no’ (15-18 months)
• After, ‘no’ maybe used mid-sentence and auxiliary and modal verbs may appear, ‘don’t/cant’

Question 8

Auxiliary verbs

Answer 8

a verb used in forming the tenses, moods, and voices of other verbs. 
The primary auxiliary verbs in English:
1. be
2. do
3. have

the modal auxiliaries are:
can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, and would

Question 9

Determiners

Answer 9

a modifying word that determines the kind of reference a noun or noun group has,

for example a, the, every.

Question 10

Syntax

Answer 10

the arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language.

Question 11

Prepositions

Answer 11

A preposition is a word used to link nouns, pronouns, or phrases to other words within a sentence.

Question 12

Articles

Answer 12

An article is a word used to modify a noun, which is a person, place, object, or idea.

Technically, an article is an adjective, which is any word that modifies a noun.

Usually adjectives modify nouns through description, but articles are used instead to point out or refer to nouns.

‘The’, ‘a’ and ‘an’ are examples