Morphology and Syntax

Question 1

Morphology

Answer 1

The formation of words from smaller units called morphemes

Question 2

Inflectional morphology

Answer 2

The alteration of words to make new grammatical forms.
An inflectional morpheme is a suffix added to a word (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) - these are bound morphemes:
- added inflections to words creating tense (e.g. walk, walked, walking)
- shows person e.g. I am, you are
- marking distinctions between adjectives e.g. cold, colder, coldest
- showing possession e.g. Mia, Mia’s dog (‘s)
- making plurals e.g. dog, dogs (s’)

Question 3

Derivational morphology

Answer 3

The creation of new words by adding prefixes and suffixes. These may make up words or convert words from one word class to another:
- adj-to-noun: -ness (slow -> slowness)
- adj-to-verb: -ise (modern -> modernise)
- adj-to-adj: -ish (red -> reddish)
- adj-to-adv: -ly (personal -> personally)
- nou-to-adj: -al (recreation -> recreational)
- nou-to-ver: -fy (glory -> glorify)
- ver-to-adj: -able (drink -> drinkable)
- ver-to-nou (abstract): -ance (deliver -> deliverance)
- ver-to-nou (agent): -er (write -> writer)

Question 4

Free morpheme

Answer 4

Morphological unit that can exist outside the word (word within itself/independent)
e.g. ‘help’ in ‘unhelpful’

Question 5

Bound morpheme

Answer 5

Morpheme that adds meaning but can only exist inside the word e.g. the segments (prefix and suffix) ‘un’ and ‘ful’ in ‘unhelpful’, jumpED, laughING, UNinterestED

Question 6

Mean Length Utterance (MLU)

Answer 6

• a measure of children’s ability to produce stretches of language
• the number of morphemes is divided by the total number of utterances to find the average length
• a higher MLU is taken to indicate a higher level of language proficiency

Question 7

Age and length of utterance

Answer 7

Children’s language development follows a sequential order. This is true of their developing expressive language skills and, as they mature, the length of their utterances increases.
20-30 months: typically two words long
28-42 months: up to 4 words long
34-42 months: up to 6 words
48+ months: 6+ words
It should be possible, therefore, to measure the typical length of a child’s utterances and determine whether or not this is in keeping with what would be expected for their age.

Question 8

Virtuous errors - demonstration of morphological development

Answer 8

Good things!!
Show children understand the concept of grammar but are applying it to an irregular word e.g. “I runned” shows they understand how to apply past tense regular suffixes

Question 9

Overgeneralisations - demonstration of morphological development

Answer 9

When children apply the general rule to everything before they have learnt all the irregularities e.g. mouse/mouses rather than mice

Question 10

Possession - demonstration of morphological development

Answer 10

Children have to understand the idea of ownership, not only in the immediate but generally e.g. a toy is the nursery’s even if theyre playing with it

Question 11

Developing Grammar, Syntactical advances (stages)

Answer 11

1) One-word/Holophrastic: one word utterances
- 12-18 months
2) Two word: two words combined to create simple syntactical structures
- subject + verb, verb +object
- 18-24 months
3) Telegraphic: three or more words joined in increasingly complex/accurate orders
- subject + verb + object, subject + verb + complement, subject + verb + adverbial
- 24-36 months
4) Post-telegraphic: increasing awareness of grammatical rules and irregularities
- instead of saying ‘runned’ using ‘ran’
- 36+ months

Question 12

Two Word stage

Answer 12

• Marks beginning of syntactical development
  1. Subject + Verb e.g. Milly walk, daddy run
  2) Verb + Object e.g. kick ball, draw picture, eat dinner

Question 13

Roger Brown 1970’s two word sentences

Answer 13

Agent + Action e.g. daddy kick
Agent + Affected e.g. daddy ball
Entity + Attribute e.g. daddy tall
Action + Affected e.g. throw ball
Action + Location e.g. sit chair
Entity + Location e.g. chair floor
Possessor + Possession e.g. daddy bike
Nomination + Entity e.g. that chair
Recurrence + Entity e.g. more cat
Negation + Entity e.g. no ball

Question 14

Nomination

Answer 14

Label for an object/person

Question 15

Telegraphic stage

Answer 15

• combining three or more words (content rather than function words)
  3) Subject + Verb + Objects e.g. He has an apple,
  4) Subject + Verb + Complements
  e.g. Brandon is an athlete
  5) Subject + Verb + Adverbial
  e.g. She danced well, They walked quickly

Question 16

Subject complement (telegraphic stage)

Answer 16

The adjective, noun or pronoun that follows a copula

Question 17

Copula verbs (telegraphic stage)

Answer 17

Linking verbs, any form of the verb be e.g. am, is, are, was, were, been, being) as well as become and seem

Question 18

Linking (copula) / Action verbs

Answer 18

If you can substitute any of the verbs with an equal sign and the sentence still makes sense, the verb is almost always a copula e.g. is, appear, feel, grow, look, prove, remain, sound, taste, turn

Question 19

Telegraphic stage features

Answer 19

Developing use of function words
- Questions
- Negatives (‘no’-Bellugi)
- Pronouns (‘I want play’-Bellugi)
- Determiners (one, the, other)

Question 20

What do syntactical advances allow children to do

Answer 20

1) Order words into phrases and clauses
2) Make different types of utterance (simple, compound, complex) for different function apart from declarative (imperative and interrogative require different word order e.g. I give it to you vs Can you give it to me? vs Give it here now

Question 21

Question formation

Answer 21

What - subject/object
Where - location
Why - reason, shows cognitive awareness
When - time, more abstract, temporal aspects are required later

Question 22

Bellugi’s Stages of Negative Formation (stages 1-3 of syntactical advances

Answer 22

1) ‘no’/’not’ at beginning or end of sentence
e.g. no wear shoes
2) moves ‘no’/’not’ inside sentence e.g. I no want it
3) attaches negative to auxiliary verbs and the copula verb ‘be’ securely e.g. No, i dont want to, I am not

Question 23

David Crystal’s ‘no’

Answer 23

• Another way of saying no
  The pragmatic ‘maybe’ can still communicate what you don’t want to do without expressing a negative word

Question 24

Bellugi’s Stages of Pronouns

Answer 24

1) Child uses own name e.g. Tom play
2) Recognition of pronouns I/me and different position e.g. I no want it
3) Use according to whether they are in the subject or object position within a sentence e.g. I play with the toy, Give it to me

Question 25

Modal Auxiliaries

Answer 25

can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, could, would

Question 26

Determiners

Answer 26

Articles: a, an, the
Numerals: one, two, three
Ordinals: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, last, next
Possessives: my, your, our, their, his, hers, whose, my friend’s
Quantifiers: some, many, every, any
Demonstratives: this, that, these, those

Question 27

Post-telegraphic speech stage

Answer 27

Final function words are applied to speech e.g auxiliary verbs do/have/be allowing progressive and perfect tense use e.g. I am eating, I have had my food)

Question 28

Post-telegraphic stage features

Answer 28

• Combine clauses using coordinating (FANBOYS) and subordinating conjunctions (because, although) to make complex utterances (compound/complex sentences)
• Manipulate verb forms more accurately e.g. using the passive voice (the car was followed by the lorry)
• Construct longer noun phrases (the two big red buses)