Welcome to Grammatical Development for AQA A-Level English Language (7702)
Welcome! In Paper 1 Section B (Children's Language Development), you will analyze unseen transcripts or written texts of children aged 0 to 11. Your goal is to explore how children learn to put words together into meaningful, grammatically complete sentences. This section is worth 30 marks, split equally between AO1 (linguistic methods, terminology, and clear writing) and AO2 (evaluating theories and concepts against the data).
Don't worry if child grammar analysis seems overwhelming at first. Grammar acquisition is not random; it follows predictable stages, patterns, and rules. In these notes, we will break down syntactic stages, morphological acquisition, specific sentence transformations (like negatives and questions), and theoretical debates so that you can score top marks in your exam.
1. Stages of Syntactic and Grammatical Development
Children do not begin speaking in complex, fully formed sentences. Instead, they build up their grammatical knowledge through distinct developmental stages.
A. The Holophrastic Stage (approx. 12–18 months)
• What happens: A child uses a single word (a holophrase) to convey the semantic weight and communicative intent of an entire sentence.
• Example: A child saying "Juice" might mean "I want more juice", "I spilled my juice", or "That is juice".
• Key Mechanism: At this stage, grammar is supported by non-verbal context (pointing, reaching) and distinct prosodic features (such as rising or emphatic intonation).
B. The Two-Word Stage (approx. 18–24 months)
• What happens: Children combine two words together, creating the very first traces of syntactic structure and functional grammatical relationships.
• Common Grammatical Relations:
1. Agent + Action: "Daddy go" (Subject + Verb)
2. Action + Object: "Kick ball" (Verb + Object)
3. Possessor + Possessed: "Mummy shoe"
• Linguistic Insight: Even without grammatical function words, children at this stage already show an understanding of English word order (almost always placing the agent before the action).
C. The Telegraphic Stage (approx. 24–36 months)
• What happens: Utterances expand to 3–5 words. Think of this like an old-fashioned telegram where you paid per word: the child keeps essential content words (nouns, main lexical verbs, adjectives) and omits non-essential grammatical function words.
• Omitted Elements: Determiners (a, the), auxiliary verbs (is, are, was), copula verbs, and prepositions.
• Example: "Daddy throw red ball" instead of "Daddy is throwing the red ball".
• Syntactic Structure: Utterances strictly follow standard Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) syntax.
D. The Post-Telegraphic Stage (approx. 36+ months)
• What happens: The child's grammatical system undergoes rapid expansion. The "missing" functional glue appears.
• Key Features Acquired:
1. Auxiliary and Copular Verbs: Full verb phrases emerge (e.g., "He is running").
2. Coordination: Joining clauses using coordinating conjunctions (and, but, so) to form compound sentences.
3. Subordination: Using subordinating conjunctions (because, although, if) to form complex sentences with dependent clauses.
4. Expanded Noun Phrases: Rich modification (e.g., "the big fluffy brown dog").
5. Inflectional Morphology: Correct past tense, plural, and possessive markers.
Key Takeaway for Section 1: Syntactic development moves systematically from Holophrastic (1 word) \(\rightarrow\) Two-Word (2 words) \(\rightarrow\) Telegraphic (content words only, 3–5 words) \(\rightarrow\) Post-Telegraphic (complex, compound, and fully inflected clauses).
2. Morphological Development & Roger Brown (1973)
What is Morphology?
Morphology is the study of how words are constructed using smaller units of meaning called morphemes. A free morpheme can stand alone as an independent word (e.g., walk, cat), whereas a bound morpheme must attach to another word to modify its meaning or tense (e.g., -ed, -s, -ing).
Roger Brown's Sequence of Grammatical Morphemes
In 1973, researcher Roger Brown discovered that children acquire grammatical morphemes in a regular, predictable order regardless of their general intelligence:
1. Present progressive inflection: -ing (e.g., "running")
2. Prepositions: in, on
3. Regular plural inflection: -s / -es (e.g., "cats", "boxes")
4. Irregular past tense verbs: (e.g., went, came, broke)
5. Possessive inflection: 's (e.g., "Mummy's")
6. Uncontractible copula: (e.g., "He was sad" — the verb was acts as the main verb and cannot be shortened)
7. Articles / Determiners: a, the
8. Regular past tense inflection: -ed (e.g., "walked")
9. Third-person singular regular present tense: -s (e.g., "He runs")
10. Third-person irregular present tense: (e.g., does, has)
11. Uncontractible auxiliary: (e.g., "She was dancing" — helping verb that cannot be shortened)
12. Contractible copula: (e.g., "She's happy" \(\rightarrow\) "She is happy")
13. Contractible auxiliary: (e.g., "He's playing" \(\rightarrow\) "He is playing")
Measuring Progress: Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)
Roger Brown developed MLU as a reliable metric of grammatical complexity. Rather than counting words, MLU counts morphemes.
The mathematical formula for MLU is:
\(\text{MLU} = \frac{\text{Total number of morphemes}}{\text{Total number of utterances}}\)
Worked Example:
Consider the utterance: "Daddy walked in the houses".
• Daddy (1) + walk (1) + -ed (1) + in (1) + the (1) + house (1) + -s (1) = 7 morphemes across 1 utterance (\(\text{MLU} = 7.0\)).
If an utterance is simply "Daddy walk house", it contains only 3 morphemes (\(\text{MLU} = 3.0\)).
3. Morphological Rules and Internalisation
The Wug Test (Jean Berko Gleason, 1958)
How do we know children aren't just copying adult speech like parrots? In 1958, psycholinguist Jean Berko Gleason designed the famous Wug Test.
• Children were shown a drawing of an imaginary, fictional bird-like creature and told: "This is a Wug."
• A second creature was added: "Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two..."
• Children aged 4 to 7 overwhelmingly replied: "Wugs", applying the plural allomorph sound /z/.
Significance for your exam: Because children had never heard the pseudo-word "Wug" before, they could not be imitating adults. This proved that children possess internal, productive grammatical rule systems that they actively apply to generate novel language.
Overgeneralisation and "Virtuous Errors"
When children internalise regular morphological rules, they often apply them too broadly to irregular forms. This process is called overgeneralisation (or overregularisation).
• Noun Overgeneralisations: "feets", "sheeps", "mouses", "tooths".
• Verb Overgeneralisations: "runned", "goed", "holded", "felled".
Crucial Examiner Tip (AO1/AO2): Never label these forms as "mistakes" or "failures" in your exam essay! These are virtuous errors. They provide direct linguistic evidence of cognitive mastery: the child has grasped the underlying grammatical rule (e.g., add -ed for past tense) and applied it logically.
4. Specific Sentence Transformations (Ursula Bellugi)
Researcher Ursula Bellugi identified specific, observable stages for how children acquire negatives, questions, and pronouns.
A. Negation Acquisition
• Stage 1 (External Negation): The negative particle (no or not) is attached to the very beginning or end of the utterance.
Examples: "No go sleep", "No eat biscuit", "Wear shoes no".
• Stage 2 (Internal Negation): The negative word moves inside the utterance next to the main verb, but auxiliary verbs are still missing.
Examples: "I no like it", "Me not want juice".
• Stage 3 (Auxiliary Integration): The child successfully incorporates auxiliary and modal verbs alongside negation.
Examples: "I don't want to go", "She cannot find it", "You shouldn't do that".
B. Question Formation
• Stage 1 (Prosodic Questioning): The child relies entirely on rising intonation (\(\nearrow\)) applied to single words or telegraphic declarations.
Examples: "Dat doggie?" \(\nearrow\), "Mummy coat?" \(\nearrow\)
• Stage 2 (Wh- Fronting): The child acquires interrogative pronouns (What, Where, Why, Who) and places them at the start of the clause, but without auxiliary verbs or inversion.
Examples: "Where daddy go?", "What that?"
• Stage 3 (Subject-Auxiliary Inversion): The child correctly front-shifts the auxiliary/modal verb ahead of the subject noun phrase.
Examples: "Where is daddy going?", "Can I have that?", "Why are you crying?"
C. Pronoun Acquisition
• Stage 1 (Proper Noun Substitution): The child refers to themselves and others using their own names rather than personal pronouns.
Example: "Tom play toy" instead of "I want to play".
• Stage 2 (Subject/Object Confusion): The child mixes up subjective pronouns (which do the action) and objective pronouns (which receive the action).
Example: "Me do it" instead of "I do it", or "Give it to I".
• Stage 3 (Complete System Mastery): The child accurately differentiates subjective (I, he, she, they), objective (me, him, her, them), and possessive pronouns (my, mine, his, her, theirs).
5. Theoretical Paradigms & Grammatical Acquisition
When analyzing transcripts in Section B, you must evaluate the child's grammar through the lens of key theoretical models (AO2).
1. Nativist / Innatist Model (Noam Chomsky)
• Core Concept: Chomsky argues that the human brain contains an innate, biological mechanism dedicated to language: the Language Acquisition Device (LAD), pre-programmed with Universal Grammar (UG).
• Key Argument — Poverty of the Stimulus: Chomsky claims that the spoken language children hear around them is degenerate, fragmented, and full of false starts. Yet, children rapidly construct complex grammatical systems. This suggests they are drawing upon innate grammatical principles.
• Evidence from Data: The Wug Test, virtuous errors (e.g., "I runned"), and universal stages of syntax development.
2. Usage-Based / Cognitive Linguistics (Michael Tomasello)
• Core Concept: Tomasello rejects innate grammar modules. He argues that grammar is learned through general cognitive abilities: intention-reading (understanding social purpose) and pattern-finding.
• Pivot Schemas and Item-Based Constructions: Children build early grammar around specific slots or fixed frames (e.g., "Where's the [X]?", "More [X]", "Put [X] on"). Through hearing repetitive language patterns, they gradually abstract general syntactic rules (like SVO) through chunking and analogy.
3. Social Interactionist Model (Jerome Bruner)
• Core Concept: Language develops within social interaction. To complement Chomsky's LAD, Bruner proposed the Language Acquisition Support System (LASS) — the structural social framework provided by caregivers.
• Key Mechanisms in Child-Directed Speech (CDS):
- Expansions: The adult fills in missing grammatical elements of a child's telegraphic utterance (e.g., Child: "Doggy bark" \(\rightarrow\) Adult: "Yes, the doggy is barking at the cat").
- Recasts: The adult rephrases an ungrammatical utterance correctly without explicit negative criticism (e.g., Child: "I falled over" \(\rightarrow\) Adult: "Oh dear, you fell over on the grass?").
- Scaffolding: Supporting the child's syntactic development step-by-step.
4. Behaviourist Model (B.F. Skinner)
• Core Concept: Language is acquired through operant conditioning, direct imitation, and positive reinforcement.
• Limitation in Exam Analysis: Skinner cannot easily account for virtuous errors (e.g., "mouses"). Children say things they have never heard an adult model, showing that language is governed by generative rules rather than pure imitation.
6. Common Exam Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
Pitfall 1: "Feature-Spotting" Without Analysis
The Mistake: Merely labeling words (e.g., "The child uses an auxiliary verb here and a preposition there") without explaining what this reveals about the child's stage of development.
The Fix: Always link the feature to a developmental framework (e.g., "The omission of the auxiliary verb is in 'daddy running' illustrates Brown's telegraphic stage, where content words are prioritized over grammatical function words").
Pitfall 2: Confusing Copular and Auxiliary Verbs
Make sure you distinguish these two verb functions:
• Copular Verb (linking verb): Links a subject to a complement adjective or noun (e.g., "She is happy", "The car was red"). It is the sole verb in the clause.
• Auxiliary Verb (helping verb): Accompanies a main lexical verb to express tense or aspect (e.g., "She is running", "They were playing").
Pitfall 3: Confusing Coordination and Subordination
• Coordination: Joining two independent clauses of equal grammatical weight using coordinating conjunctions: and, but, or, so (creating a compound sentence).
• Subordination: Linking an independent main clause to a dependent clause using subordinating conjunctions: because, although, if, when, while (creating a complex sentence).
Pitfall 4: The "Theory Dump"
The Mistake: Writing three paragraphs describing Chomsky and Bruner in general without referencing the transcript.
The Fix: Anchor every theoretical concept to a specific quote from the exam data. If you mention Bruner's LASS, quote the exact recast or expansion used by the caregiver in the transcript.
7. Quick Review: Chapter Summary Checklist
Before sitting your exam, make sure you are confident with each of the following:
• Syntactic Stages: Holophrastic \(\rightarrow\) Two-Word (Agent+Action, Action+Object, etc.) \(\rightarrow\) Telegraphic (SVO order, missing function words) \(\rightarrow\) Post-Telegraphic (complex/compound sentences).
• Brown's Morphemes: Understand the acquisition sequence and how to calculate MLU: \(\text{MLU} = \frac{\text{Total Morphemes}}{\text{Total Utterances}}\).
• The Wug Test: Gleason's evidence that children internalise implicit morphosyntactic generative rules.
• Virtuous Errors: Overgeneralisations ("runned", "feets") as proof of rule-learning.
• Bellugi's Transformations: Three stages of Negatives, Questions (intonation \(\rightarrow\) Wh- fronting \(\rightarrow\) inversion), and Pronouns.
• Theories: Chomsky (LAD/UG/Poverty of Stimulus) vs. Tomasello (Pattern-finding/Pivot schemas) vs. Bruner (LASS/Expansions/Recasts) vs. Skinner (Imitation/Reinforcement).