Linguistic Development Research Paper Page 24
ADVERTISEMENT
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
379 THE COMPLEX PERIOD
24
In an interesting parallel to the way in which grammatical morphemes develop in the simplest first
order, the kind of questions which children ask are generally those which contain similar concepts
to the grammatical morphemes. For instance the first questions usually contain the wh-words what
where and who. Only later on are they followed by the why, when and how.
The what where and who have concrete referents. (objects, locations and persons) Such words
can be easily understood by a cognitively immature child, whereas when, why and how require an
appreciation of the more abstract concepts of time and causality. Their onset must wait for the
appropriate insights in the child’s non-linguistic learning.
The strategy for producing negations is very similar to the rule for wh-questions. the initial strategy
is to simply place a negating word such as /no/ or /not/ at the beginning of the sentence e.g. “no
sit there.” the negation has been placed at the beginning of a positive declaration.
The children pass through a second stage in which the negative markers are placed within the
sentence next to the word stem to be modified, so that sentences of the form “i no want milk” or
“I not am going home”. Eventually at the third stage the child will combine negative markers with
auxiliary verbs to negate affirmative sentences in much the same way as adults do.
1st Rule : to negate add “no” or “not” to the front. Or if forgotten at the beginning : add to
the end. But never in the middle.
2nd Rule : 1st rule plus
“no”, “not”, “can’t” and “don’t” can appear after the subject but before the verb. Some
imperatives begin with “don’t” instead of “rule 1s”.
“can’t” and “don’t” are unanalyzed forms of negative. Therefore they are interchangeable with
no.
3rd Rule : Many more features added.
concorded pronouns are not added yet. Thus the progression might be as follows
* I didn’t see somebody today
* I didn’t see nobody today.
I didn’t see anybody today.
Telegraphic speech is still evident at this stage.
Or use of pitch to indicate negation from 2 ; 0 to 2 ; 4 because adults raise the pitch during negation.
Table 7: Progressive acquisition of the negation-transformation rules
When the child’s MLU reaches 3.5 to 4 at around the age of 2 or 3 ; 6 the child will begin to produce
more complex sentences. the first complex constructions generally tend to be embedded sentences
in which a noun phrase or wh-clause serves as the object of a verb. For example “I remember where
it is” (a wh-clause is the object).
Within weeks of passing this milestone children will start to produce relative clauses that modify
nouns. For example “that’s the box that they put it in”. they also learn to join simple sentences
with conjunctions such as and, or , because or so. “he was stuck and I got him out.” or “I want
some milk ’cause I’ve got a cold.”
By the age of 5 or 6 the language is very much like that of an adult. the children have acquired
a working knowledge of the principles of grammar. It is thought that a pre-schooler’s language
ADVERTISEMENT
0 votes
Related Articles
Related forms
Related Categories
Parent category: Education