This 65th collection of students’ pearls of wisdom, laboriously digitised from hand-written papers, demonstrates once again how students new to the study of language speculate about grammar after having imperfectly absorbed what their teachers think they have taught them.

Test Question—Child Syntax

Wh-questions have been observed to develop earlier than yes/no questions, for querying the names of objects. At the two-word stage, for example, questions like What that? (target: ‘What is that?’) appear before questions like That water? (target: ‘Is that water?’).

Give reasons that may explain why this is so.

Answers

• Although the Finite is omitted in the examples, it is possible that the child’s mind is conscious of the existence of the Finite, but not yet ready to articulate the full sentence.

• In a way, the child is trying to emphasise that he is asking a question. The child is no longer in the holophrastic stage and can juxtapose distinct words.

• Wh-questions come first because they are a question most children ask. The first would have a typical structure of the sentence. The child needs to know the context of the subject, and that the part of speech of that is a subject in itself. The surroundings also use more wh-questions (cognitive reason).

• Wh-questions are generally diadic questions as they involve relations of up to two objects or persons. Many children are able to grasp diadic relationships by the two-word stage.

• These questions contain the referrant. Children are usually spoken by adults who use the SVO synthetic structure (Subject Verb Order).

• The child has not realised the transformation rules to ask questions, although UG is built into our generic code.

• Children cannot learn language, because Chomsky proved that grammar is innate. Since multiple parameters exist in the child, it must hinder or boost language acquisition.

• The children cannot perceive differences in their own production. At age two, children do not recognise PS rules, or misuse it.

• These are questions, not sentences. These constituents are not of the same synatic type.

• Omitting the first word in every That water sentence, it is only a passing imitation or an attempt at repetition of prior utterances by parents, teachers or other education.

• This could be because the child has not comprehended grammatical slots. These assumptions are serious and could skew our investigation.

More to come...

	The Campaign for Phonemic Equality—Announcement
	As All That Glitters is Not Gold: Disappointing Parapsycho­linguistics—Nadia d’Orro
	SpecGram Vol CLXXVI, No 2 Contents