Morphological development

Question 1

What a morpheme.

Answer 1

• • smallest meaningful unit of speech
• —free: stands as a word when in isolation
• —Bound: doesn’t make sense on its own e.g. -ing

Question 2

How are words formed?

Answer 2

Derivation
— morpheme change word meaning e.g. sing –> singer

Inflection
— morpheme additional results in grammatical change e.g. sing+s = sings

Compounding
— free morphemes joined together

Question 3

How many morphemes did Brown identify?

Answer 3

14
Not aquired all at the same time
Goal is to acquire abstract abstract morphological structure e.g. plural ‘s’

Question 4

What are the stages and ages of morphological development?

Answer 4

Stage I =  12 to 16 months (early two word stage)
Stage II = 27 to 30 months
Stage III = 31 to 34 months
Stage IV = 35 to 40 months
Stage V = 41 to 46 months

Question 5

Whats acquired in stage II?

Answer 5

19 - 28 mo: Progressive -ing
—–aqcuired even though auxiliary verb isnt (e.g. “eating” rather than “is eaiting”)

27 - 30 mo: In, on

27 - 33: regular plural -s

• —-(over generalise to irregular e.g. tooths)
• —-used to indicate number e.g. puppies
• —-use most on words which are objects in environment

Question 6

Whats acquired in stage III?

Answer 6

25 - 46 months: Irregular past verbs

• —Learn these one-by-one
• —Isn’t a rule to generalise
• —sometimes make over generalisation errors e.g. brang, brung

26 - 40 months: Possessive ‘s

• —intitially children mark possession with stress
• —e.g. DOGGIE bed
• —used for possession of alien objects (clothes)
• —no initially used on inalienable objects (eg. body parts)

27 - 39 months: uncontractable copullas

• — Connects subject and predicate
• — Is a connecting form of ‘be’
• — First acquired in contexts where it can’t be contracted ——–in questions (“Whos hungry?” “i AM”),
• ——-or when it’s the first or last word (“IS she ill?”)
• ——-or in negative sentences where ‘not’ is contacted e.g. “he ISn’t teacher”
• ——-In past tense “she WAS ill”

Question 7

Whats acquired in stage IV?

Answer 7

28 - 46 months: Articles

• a, the
• pragmatics is important
• “a/an”, non specific, for new info
• “the”, specific reference, old info

26 - 48 months: Regular past -ed
- e.g. mummy pushED the buggy

26 - 46 months: Regular 3rd person -s

• e.g. kathy hitS
• goverened by person & number
• 3 person singular she/he/it present-tense marker
• uninflected

Question 8

Whats acquired in stage V?

Answer 8

41 to 46 months: Irregular ‘has’ and ‘does’

• irregular 3rd person
• long period of inconsistent use of ir/regular forms
• use of -s may be affected by the qualities of the noun
• Children are more likely to use -s if the noun is animate, e.g. The dog barks, than if it is inanimate, e.g. The candle melts.

29 to 48 months: uncontractable auxilliary [be]

• e.g. he IS (in re to question)
• aux. is “helping” verb e.g. he IS teaching
• not main verb
• aux “to be” develops much more slowly than copula
• most frequent in past tense e.g. he WAS eating

29 to 49 months: contractible copula [be -> is]

• e.g. “the man’s big” - copula -s is contractable
• counted as contracted even if it is (just has potential)
• e.g. mummy’s angy vs mummy is angry
• Mastered 4+ years
• “is” is often over-used e.g. “they is big”

30 to 50 months: contractible auxilliary

• mastered 4+
• acquisition of “is” and “are” before “am”.