Morphology and Syntax Flashcards
Morphology
The formation of words from smaller units called morphemes
Inflectional morphology
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’)
Derivational morphology
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)
Free morpheme
Morphological unit that can exist outside the word (word within itself/independent)
e.g. ‘help’ in ‘unhelpful’
Bound morpheme
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
Mean Length Utterance (MLU)
- 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
Age and length of utterance
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.
Virtuous errors - demonstration of morphological development
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
Overgeneralisations - demonstration of morphological development
When children apply the general rule to everything before they have learnt all the irregularities e.g. mouse/mouses rather than mice
Possession - demonstration of morphological development
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
Developing Grammar, Syntactical advances (stages)
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
Two Word stage
- 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
Roger Brown 1970’s two word sentences
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
Nomination
Label for an object/person
Telegraphic stage
- 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
Subject complement (telegraphic stage)
The adjective, noun or pronoun that follows a copula
Copula verbs (telegraphic stage)
Linking verbs, any form of the verb be e.g. am, is, are, was, were, been, being) as well as become and seem
Linking (copula) / Action verbs
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
Telegraphic stage features
Developing use of function words
- Questions
- Negatives (‘no’-Bellugi)
- Pronouns (‘I want play’-Bellugi)
- Determiners (one, the, other)
What do syntactical advances allow children to do
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 formation
What - subject/object
Where - location
Why - reason, shows cognitive awareness
When - time, more abstract, temporal aspects are required later
Bellugi’s Stages of Negative Formation (stages 1-3 of syntactical advances
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
David Crystal’s ‘no’
- Another way of saying no
The pragmatic ‘maybe’ can still communicate what you don’t want to do without expressing a negative word
Bellugi’s Stages of Pronouns
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
Modal Auxiliaries
can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, could, would
Determiners
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
Post-telegraphic speech stage
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)
Post-telegraphic stage features
- 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)
