Studies on child grammar

STUDIES ON CHILD GRAMMAR Reproduced by Sabinet Gateway under licence granted by the Publisher (dated 2012) JEANETTE BLOOM, B . A . LOG. (RAND) The general hypothesis on which work in the field is based, is that child speech is a systematic reduction of adult speech, largely accomplished by omitting 'function' words that carry little information. From this corpus of reduced sentences, the child induces general rules which govern the construction of new utterances. As a child becomes capable, through maturation and the consolidation of frequently occurring sequences, of registering more of the detail of adult speech, his original rules will -be revised and supplemented. As the generative grammar grows more complicated and more like adult grammar, the child's speech will become capable of expressing a greater variety of meanings. Brown and Bellugi2 suggested that the model sentence is processed by the child as a total construction rather than as a list of words. In their study, the child's imitations preserved the word order of the model sentences. There is a constraint, a limitation on the length of utterance the child is able to program or plan. Constraint on length compels the imitating child to omit some words or morphemes from the model sentences. Differential stress was felt to be a possible cause of the child's differential retention. Brown and Fraser4 list the morphemes likely to be retained in the child's speech. Ervin9 having studied children's imitations systematically to see if they are grammatically different from free utterances, concluded that, we cannot look to overt imitation as a source for the rapid progress children make in grammatical skill in thess early years. Certain utterances in a child's language are bound to be imitations of adult sentences. However all children are able to understand and construct sentences they have never heard. These sentences are well-formed in terms of general rules implicit in the sentences the child has heard. The child processes the speech to which he is exposed. He induces the latent structure. Braine,1 Brown and Bellugi,2 Brown and Fraser4 and Miller and Ervin14 have been concerned with devising a set of rules which would, account for the material presented in their studies, as well as to predict -new sentences —a generative grammar. Braine's study will be mentioned here, since on hisfindings is based the model of analysis used in the present study. By examining the word combinations and privileges of occurrence in his samples, he derives two main word classes. These he labels 'pivots' and 'x-words'. Pivots are few in number, occur in several word combinations and each is associated with a particular position, either initial or final. X-words form a large, open class, containing all the rest of the child's vocabulary. The child's singleJournal of the South African Logopedic Society, Vol. , No. : December 1968 Studies on Child Grammar 37 word utterances are drawn from the x-class. The class of pivot words Px is broken down into Pi (initial position) and P2 (those which occur in final position). Thus on the basis of privileges of occurrence, it is possible to construct a set of parts of speech and also a syntax which governs the ordering of these parts of speech. Syntactic rules which summarize most of the speech here are: utterance = P i + X or X + P2. Glass Pi and class χ can occur together, and class Px always precedes class x. Class P2 and χ can occur together, and P2 always follows x. This is a simple generative grammar. Brown and Fraser4 used this approach to develop a developmental syntax. Laura Lee,10 also used this as a basis for her model of analysis (Table 1), while Paula Menyuk11-13 studied children's use of transformations. In the present study, the development of syntax from the 'Pivot-open class' construction to the formation of kernel sentences at the phrase structure level of grammar, is considered. Reproduced by Sabinet Gateway under licence granted by the Publisher (dated 2012) A Comparison of the Syntactic Structures of a Normal and an Articulation-Defective Three-Year-Old This' study is concerned with the child's acquisition of syntax. It is not concerned with the cognitive aspects of language, with conceptualization, or with receptive-expressive phenomena. It deals entirely with the speech output of the child; and with its systematization of that output into hypothetical stages, from the appearance of single-word utterances, to the formation of adult, grammatically acceptable sentences. Before describing the development of a child's grammar, it is necessary to specify the properties of natural languages as used by adults, since this is the model presented to the child and the eventual outcome of his development. From a structural point of view, every natural language is constructed from a small number of distinctive elements, namely vowels and consonants, levels of pitch, pauses and stresses. These make up the phonemes of a language.3 All natural languages have a finite number of phonemes and each sentence can be represented as a finite sequence of these phonemes, though there are infinite sentences.7 Every natural language is a system. From knowledge of one part of the language, it is possible to anticipate correctly many other parts. The system of language may be divided into sub-systems. Descriptions of language are achieved by dealing with each sub-system as a separate level of representation. 1. Phonological Level. On this level, the phonemes of a language and the permitted patterns of the combinations of phonemes are enumerated. One language never includes all the conceivable patterns of combinations. In English, for example, one may not combine phonemes / rj / and / k / to produce / 13k / at the beginning of a syllable, while at the end of a syllable this is permitted. The phonological system may be described in Tydskrif van die Siiid-Afrikaans e Logopediese Vereniging, Vol. 15, Nr. 1: Des. 1968 Journal o the South African Logopedic Society, Vol. , No. (N.P. incorporated into construction (Constr.)) Level III. Constructions \ (article possible) + (quant.) + (adj.) + Ν my big car no more car the other big car Level II. Noun Phrase \ Article: a car, the car Possessive: Daddy car, my car Quantifier: more car, two car Adjective: Big car, dirty car Designative Constr. (locator demonstrator identifier) + N.P. There the big car that my car it a car itsa big car Locator: there car, here car Demonstrator: this car, that car Identifier: it car itsa car 'sa car 's car Pred. Constr. N.P. + (adj. PP locator N.P.) that car in garage the car broken the car there David a good boy Adjective: car broken light off Locator: car there, car here 2-Word Designative 2-Word Predicative Verb Phrase Constr. V + (part) + (NP PP Loc Adv.) put away the car ride in a car put car up there take car again Verb + Noun: see car push it Verb + Particle: go up fall down Noun + Verb: I see Mommy do (...truncated)