Introduction: Unlocking Children's Grammar and Morphology

Welcome to this revision guide for Component 02 Section A: Child Language Acquisition (OCR H470). In this chapter, we explore how children between the ages of 0 and 7 learn to build sentences (grammar/syntax) and shape words (morphology).

In your exam, you will receive a spoken language transcript featuring a young child and usually an adult or caregiver. You will have around 40 minutes to write a 20-mark essay (10 marks for AO1: Linguistic methods and analysis, and 10 marks for AO2: Concepts and theories). Don't worry if child grammar seems messy or chaotic at first glance! Young children are actually mini-linguists who follow very systematic stages as they build their language toolkit.

1. The Grammatical Stages of Spoken Language

Children do not jump straight from babbling to complete, complex sentences. Instead, they progress through four clear grammatical stages based on the structural complexity of their utterances.

A. The Holophrastic Stage (approx. 12–18 months)

The word holophrase comes from Greek: holo (whole) + phrase (sentence). In this stage, a child uses a single word to convey the meaning of an entire sentence.

  • Example: A child says "juice" while reaching towards a cup. In adult grammar, this means "I want some juice please."
  • Key Feature: Heavy reliance on non-verbal cues, gestures (pointing), prosodics (intonation), and the immediate physical context to make their meaning clear.

B. The Two-Word Stage (approx. 18–24 months)

This is where true syntax (word order) begins! Children start combining two free morphemes. Remarkably, children almost always follow correct English word order (Subject + Verb + Object structure), even without formal schooling.

  • Agent + Action: "doggie bark" (Subject + Verb)
  • Action + Object: "kick ball" (Verb + Object)
  • Possessor + Possessed: "daddy car" (Owner + Item)

C. The Telegraphic Stage (approx. 24–36 months)

Think of an old-fashioned telegram where you had to pay per word: you only kept the essential words to save money! Utterances in this stage are 3 or more words long and consist primarily of content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives) while omitting grammatical function words.

  • Example: "me want big ball" instead of "I want the big ball."
  • What is typically omitted? Determiners/articles (a, the), auxiliary verbs (is, are), prepositions (in, on), copular verbs, and grammatical inflections (like -ed).

D. The Post-Telegraphic Stage (approx. 36+ months)

During this stage, the child's grammar rapidly expands to resemble adult speech. The "missing" functional glue from the telegraphic stage starts appearing consistently.

  • Key Features: Correct pronoun cases (subject vs. object pronouns), auxiliary verbs and modal verbs (can, will, must), conjunctions for compound/complex sentences (and, because, but), prepositions, and passive structures.

Quick Review Box:
• Holophrastic: 1 word = whole sentence ("milk")
• Two-Word: 2 words, correct syntax begins ("kick ball")
• Telegraphic: 3+ words, content words only ("daddy go work")
• Post-Telegraphic: Complex syntax, function words and inflections included ("daddy is going to work because he has a job")

2. Morphological Development & Milestones

Morphology is the study of how words are constructed out of smaller units of meaning called morphemes.

  • Free Morphemes: Words that can stand entirely on their own (e.g., dog, walk, happy).
  • Bound Morphemes: Units of meaning that must attach to a free root word (e.g., prefixes like un-, suffixes/inflections like -ing, -ed, -s).

Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)

Linguists evaluate a child's grammatical complexity using a formula called the Mean Length of Utterance (MLU). Rather than relying solely on chronological age, MLU measures the average number of morphemes a child produces per utterance:

\(\text{MLU} = \frac{\text{Total number of morphemes}}{\text{Total number of utterances}}\)

Example: The utterance "daddy walked" contains 2 morphemes (daddy [1] + walk [1] + -ed [1] = 3 morphemes total in adult grammar; or root walk + past tense inflection -ed).

Roger Brown’s 14 Grammatical Morphemes

Psycholinguist Roger Brown discovered that children acquire grammatical morphemes in a remarkably consistent, predictable order:

  1. Present progressive (-ing, e.g., singing)
  2. Prepositions (in, on)
  3. Plural regular (-s, e.g., cats)
  4. Irregular past tense (e.g., went, came)
  5. Possessive (-’s, e.g., mummy’s)
  6. Uncontractible copula verb (is, are, am functioning as the main verb, e.g., "Who is ready?" "I am.")
  7. Articles (a, the)
  8. Regular past tense (-ed, e.g., walked)
  9. Third-person regular present (-s, e.g., he runs)
  10. Third-person irregular present (e.g., does, has)
  11. Uncontractible auxiliary (is, are assisting a main verb, e.g., "Is he playing?" "He is.")
  12. Contractible copula (e.g., "She's happy")
  13. Contractible auxiliary (e.g., "She's running")

Berko Gleason’s Wug Test (1958)

How do we know children aren't simply copying adult words like parrots? Jean Berko Gleason designed an experiment using fictional creatures called Wugs.

  • Children were shown a picture: "This is a WUG. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two ___."
  • Even young children who had never heard the word "wug" before replied with "wugs" (correctly using the plural allomorph /z/).
  • Takeaway: Children internalise abstract morphological rules and apply them creatively to completely novel words.

Virtuous Errors (Overgeneralisation / Overextension of Rules)

When children learn a rule (such as adding -ed for past tense or -s for plurals), they frequently overapply it to irregular words. In linguistics, we call these virtuous errors because they show intelligent, logical rule application!

  • Overgeneralised Past Tense: "runned", "goed", "felled" (applying regular -ed to irregular verbs).
  • Overgeneralised Plurals: "foots", "mouses", "sheeps" (applying regular -s to irregular nouns).

3. Syntactic Development: Questions, Negations & Pronouns

Ursula Bellugi: Stages of Negation

Children master saying "no" through three distinct syntactic stages:

  • Stage 1 (External Negation): The negative particle (no / not) is placed on the outside of the utterance (at the start or end).
    Examples: "No sit there", "Wear shoes no."
  • Stage 2 (Internal Negation): The negative word moves inside the clause, positioned directly next to the verb, but lacks an auxiliary verb.
    Examples: "I no want book", "He no bite."
  • Stage 3 (Auxiliary Integration): The child correctly combines negative particles with auxiliary verbs.
    Examples: "I didn't do it", "She won't go." (Note: double negatives or auxiliary agreement errors may still occasionally occur).

Ursula Bellugi: Stages of Pronoun Acquisition

Pronouns are tricky because their form changes depending on whether they are the subject or object of a sentence. Bellugi identified three stages:

  • Stage 1: The child uses their own name or proper nouns instead of pronouns (e.g., "Tom want car" instead of "I want the car").
  • Stage 2: The child confuses subject and object pronouns, frequently using object pronouns in the subject position (e.g., "Me play that", "Him did it").
  • Stage 3: The child correctly distinguishes between subjective case (I, he, she, they) and objective case (me, him, her, them) (e.g., "I play that", "He did it").

Question Acquisition Stages

Forming questions in English requires complex syntactic maneuvering:

  • Stage 1 (Prosodic Questions): Declarative statements or single words spoken with rising intonation (e.g., "Milk?" \(\nearrow\), "Doggie go?" \(\nearrow\)).
  • Stage 2 (Wh- Questions without Inversion): Using interrogative pronouns (where, what, why) at the start of the clause, but without inverting the subject and auxiliary verb (e.g., "Where daddy go?", "What you doing?").
  • Stage 3 (Subject-Auxiliary Inversion): Successfully inverting the auxiliary verb and subject (e.g., "Where is daddy going?", "Can I have one?").

4. Theoretical Perspectives on Grammar & Morphology

When analysing transcripts for Section A, you must connect linguistic features to theoretical models. Remember: do not treat theories as rigid checklists; instead, use them to explain why the child is speaking the way they do.

A. Nativist / Innatist Approach (Noam Chomsky)

  • Core Idea: Children possess an innate capacity for language called the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) and an internal blueprint known as Universal Grammar (UG).
  • Application to Grammar: Virtuous errors (e.g., "goed", "mouses") provide strong support for Chomsky. Children do not hear adults say "goed", proving that language cannot simply be learned by imitation—children are actively extracting and testing abstract structural rules.

B. Behaviourist Approach (B. F. Skinner)

  • Core Idea: Language is acquired through imitation, reinforcement, and operant conditioning.
  • Limitations in Grammar: Skinner struggles to explain novel syntax and virtuous errors. Furthermore, transcripts show that parents rarely correct grammatical errors systematically; adults tend to praise or correct the truth value (meaning) rather than grammatical form.

C. Cognitive Approach (Jean Piaget)

  • Core Idea: Language development is subordinate to and driven by cognitive development. A child cannot use grammatical structures representing concepts they do not yet understand.
  • Application to Grammar: A child must understand cognitive concepts such as time, cause-and-effect, and object permanence before they can meaningfully use past tense inflections (-ed), comparative forms, or conditional clauses (if... then).

D. Social Interactionist Approach (Jerome Bruner)

  • Core Idea: Language is acquired through social interaction supported by a Language Acquisition Support System (LASS).
  • Application to Grammar: Caregivers scaffold grammatical growth through Child-Directed Speech (CDS). Look in transcripts for:
    • Recasting: The adult repeats the child's utterance in a grammatically corrected form (e.g., Child: "Doggie runned!" \(\implies\) Adult: "Yes, the doggie ran fast, didn't he?").
    • Expansion: The adult elaborates on the child's telegraphic utterance into a full grammatical clause (e.g., Child: "Big car" \(\implies\) Adult: "Look at that big red car driving down the street").

5. Exam Pitfalls and Top Tips (OCR H470)

Based on OCR examiner reports, keep these vital strategies in mind to secure top-band marks:

  • Avoid "Feature Spotting": Don't just say "The child is in the telegraphic stage because they say 'me want car'." Specify the exact linguistic mechanisms: "The child uses an utterance characteristic of the telegraphic stage, omitting the determiner 'the' and auxiliary verbs, while demonstrating Stage 2 pronoun usage by substituting the objective pronoun 'me' into the subject position."
  • Never Treat Theories as Prescriptive Rules: OCR examiners explicitly warn against treating theoretical models as "paragons of good acquisition". Real children mix stages, use irregular forms correctly by rote before regularising them, and vary day-to-day.
  • Integrate Grammar with Meaning & Context: Always link grammatical forms back to pragmatics (what the child is trying to achieve) and the conversational scaffolding provided by the caregiver.
  • Be Precise with Word Classes: Take care not to confuse an auxiliary verb (a helper verb, e.g., "she is jumping") with a copula verb (the main linking verb, e.g., "she is tired").

Summary Checklist for Section A Revision:
\(\checkmark\) Identify grammatical stage: Holophrastic, Two-word, Telegraphic, or Post-telegraphic.
\(\checkmark\) Calculate/assess MLU and identify bound vs. free morphemes.
\(\checkmark\) Check for virtuous errors / rule overgeneralisation (Berko Gleason / Wug Test).
\(\checkmark\) Identify Bellugi's stages for negation and pronoun cases.
\(\checkmark\) Identify question formation (intonation \(\implies\) wh- fronting \(\implies\) inversion).
\(\checkmark\) Evaluate using theoretical viewpoints: Chomsky (LAD/virtuous errors), Skinner (imitation/reinforcement), Piaget (cognition), Bruner (LASS/recasting/expansion).