CAS PS 241 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Pragmatics, Tabula Rasa, Language Acquisition Device
14 Dec 2017
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Syntax is comprised of rules on how words in a language can be combined to make sense. Two words stage or telegraphic speech: speech that only contains elements essential to communicating a message. They always cleverly combine words in order to make sense even if all the parts of speech are not there. Syntactic bootstrapping, which is using knowledge of syntax to gure out the meaning of a new word. 17-months-olds have substantial receptive and productive grasp of syntax. Syntax is acquired systematically, coming up with grammatical rules: The wug test by bergo gleason (1958) children seem to have gured out what the rules of syntax are by very early in life and with no real help. They have listened to the language enough and by 3 they have gured out what the rules are in order to determine grammatical rules even for words that they have never heard before.
