morphological and syntactic development

Question 1

what is the sequence for acquisition of functional words and morphemes

Answer 1

stage 1; present progessive on verbs(singing)
stage 2; preposition in and on (in bad; on blanket)
stage 3; plural ending in nouns (houses)
stage 4; irregular past tense verb forms (went, broke)
stage 5; possessive ending on noun phrases(daddy’s car)
stage 6; verb be (is, am, are)
stage 7; articles(a, am, the)
stage 8; past tense ending on verbs (jumped, goed)
stage 9; regular present tense ending on verbs (Mamma sings)
stage 10; irregular present tense verb forms (has, does)

Question 2

what are the 3 stages of acquisition of inflections

Answer 2

acquisition of inflection acquires in 3 stages
* intial, children memorize words on an individual basis and have no regard for general principles or rules this means, for example that they may at first produce the correct plural form of ‘foot’ (‘feet’) and the correct past tense for ‘run’(‘ran’)
* during the second stage they show an awareness of the basic principles governing inflections and as a result they may apply regular ends to words that require irregular inflection.
* in the 3rd stage, correct inflections are used, including forms

Question 3

what are the stages of negative constructions

Answer 3

• at first, there i a single dependence upon the words ‘no’ and ‘not’ they struture they use is negative then rest of sentence
• second stage around 3 years, don’t and can’tbegin to be used. the struture to use is noun phrase + negative + rest of the sentence
• third stage more negative forms are acquired and the structure is noun phrase + aulixilary + negative + rest of sentence.

Question 4

common grammatical mistakes

Answer 4

children have trouble separting possesive pronouns from personal ones at first, leading to mistakes like this.
they also have trouble sorting the object case (me, him, her, them) from the object (i, he, she, they)

Question 5

forming questions through the stages is acquired in 3 stages

Answer 5

• intially (during the 2-word stage) questions rely on inotation alone
  e.g. ‘daddy gone?’ said with rising tone.
• during the 2nd stage children acquire question words; first what and where and then why, how and who. this results in constructions such as ‘where daddy gone’
• in the 3rd stage children begin to use auxiliary verbs and also learn to form questions by reversing the order of subject and verb. e.g. joe is here becomes is joe here.

Question 6

verbs in the multiword stage

Answer 6

use the auxilairy verbs do, can, have and will. have is particularly useful to them, because once they have mastered it’s different tenses, they can at last talk about time.
* 2 year olds can’t manage this
* 3 1/2 to 4 year olds can make the time-scale
* 2 year olds who only say teddy sitting can’t distingush between present and past until they’ve learned to use auxiliary verbs.

Question 7

conjunctions in multiword stage

Answer 7

• child use the word ‘and’ to make lists of things; eg. here is lucy deciding which tags to make to bed with her. “and i want teddy, and that teddy, and my dolly”
• children use ‘and’ to join snetences together; “i got a car and i got a gun and i got a game.”

Question 8

compound and complex sentences

Answer 8

compound sentences consist of 2 or more main clauses
complex sentences consist of a subordinate claus embedded inside a main clause
* children produce complex sentences with relative clauses when they are about 3 years old. typically, children do not acquire the full knowledge of this complex constructions until they go to school
* sentences - end of multiword stage
1. before 4 1/2 they only use simple sentences, above 4 1/2 most can create complex sentences.