LING444 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Baby Talk, Habituation, Childes
4 Nov 2018
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8-month old infants do recognize new words" in a nonsense string of syllables. However, while this should help in acquiring new words, it does not explain how children can tell what is a grammatical morpheme. Random calculating of statistics is not sufficient. Example of how analyzing an english morpheme is useful: the notion of a paradigm. Children will end up learning that am, is, are, was , and were are forms of the same word be. Each of these word forms has the same basic meaning -- they would have the same entry in a dictionary ( or in the mental lexicon) Each of these word forms can occur in this slot: (np) ex: studying for a final. By knowing that all those words are forms of be, we can generate in one fell swoop". His friend was studying for a final. Children need some innate guidance to even know that grammatical paradigm exist.
