MORPHOLOGY THE STUDY OF WORD STRUCTURE INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY

MORPHOLOGY THE STUDY OF WORD STRUCTURE

INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY THE STUDY OF HOW MORPHEMES ARE USED TO CREATE DIFFERENT GRAMMATICAL FUNCTIONS (ADDS ADDITIONAL MEANING)

VIRTUOUS ERRORS • The overgeneralisation of words • These are not mistakes • They are not wrong • They have an underlying logic to them • Children are applying rules to their own language use • Supports the Nativist Theory • If the child hasn’t heard such expressions, why so they use them? • Children start to apply rules to their language that they have observed in others – ‘-ed’ ending used on verbs to create Past Tense, so they apply this to All Verbs thus creating a virtuous error. • It is unlikely that these examples have been learned from adults • BUT a child may hear and use non-standard varieties of English and be influenced by them • OR older siblings who are learning language.

THE WUG TEST • Jean Berko (1950) invented the WUG to test overgeneralisation. • This tested the ‘–s’ plural • She found that when children were faced with this imaginary creature, they tended to create the plural ‘WUGS’. • 4 -5 year olds: 76% created the plural • 5 -7 year olds: 97% created the plural • Beroko used other nonsense words with similar results. – LUN- they added an ‘s’ – HEATH- they added an ‘s’ (a virtuous error) – ZIB- (verb) child says ‘zibber’ • Berko used an imaginary creature to discount copying.

REGRESSION • As children get older virtuous errors increase as the child has picked up new words they presume that they have the same grammar as the ones they know. – E. g. ‘ holded the plane and it flied’

RODGER BROWN (1970) • Early use of the correct term: possibly due to simple repetition of the adult. • Realisation that most verbs take ‘-ed’ in the past tense from so the child applies the rule more actively creating VIRTUOUS ERRORS. • The child appears to the time before the correct endings appear, fully grasped.

THE ACQUISITION OF INFLECTION 1. Progressive aspect verb endings ‘-ING’ – E. g. ‘I walking’ 2. Prepositions ‘–ON’ – E. g. ‘put nappy on’ 3. The U-Shaped Graph Copied Phrase Plural Noun Endings ‘-S’ – E. g. ‘two boys’ Possessive ‘-S’ – E. g. ‘mummy’s bag’ 5. Determiners ‘THE’, ‘A’, ‘MY’ – E. g. ‘give me the milk’ 6. Regular Past Tense ‘-ED’ – E. g. ‘I walked' 7. 3 rd Person Singular Present Tense ‘-S’ – E. g. ‘she sees me’ Accuracy 4. Fully Understood Actively Applied Virtuous Error Time

DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY

PREFIXES AND SUFFIXES • Used to make entirely new words and applying the patterns children hear around them. • Prefix: a beginning that adapts the word in a certain way – E. g. UNhappy • Suffix: an ending that adapts the word in a certain way – E. g. work. AHOLIC

THE THREE MAIN PATTERNS • CONVERSION: using a word as a different word class – E. g. butter function: ‘I jammed the bread’ • AFFIXATION: applying endings to words to create new ones – E. g. ‘-y’ endings: its croudy in there. • COMPOUNDING: joining existing words together to create new combinations – E. g. someone who rides a horse is ‘Horsy-man’ – E. g. someone who rides a tractor is ‘Tractor-man’ In many cases, these processes can lead to the formation of perfectly acceptable standard forms of words but in some cases new or nonsense words are created.