Essay Available:
You are here: Home → Research Paper → Literature & Language
Pages:
7 pages/≈1925 words
Sources:
Level:
Harvard
Subject:
Literature & Language
Type:
Research Paper
Language:
English (U.S.)
Document:
MS Word
Date:
Total cost:
$ 34.02
Topic:
Acquisition of morphology (Research Paper Sample)
Instructions:
How do children acquire inflectional morphology( regular and irregular ), what are the stages that they go through and what do these stages tell us about theories of language acquisition. Note that your answer should be based on the scientific literature on the topic source..
Content:
ACQUISITION OF MORPHOLOGY
By
Name:
Course:
Date:
Introduction
Morphology is a facet of language dealing with the regulations that govern change in a word interpretation. Morphology has brought about more concerns of linguists. There is no comprehensive theory of language that can emerge without a well-known theory of word development. There are numerous unexplained issues, nevertheless, that make any morphological theory a weak theory, seriously requiring proof-based solutions, a number of them critical to the theory; these are for example, meaning, constrictions, productivity, and many others.
During structuralism era, linguistics emerged as scientific discipline. In the course of this era, linguistics thrived among other things in the identification and evaluation of the sections of language from the easiest, the phoneme, to the most difficult, the sentence, comprising the middle ones such as the morpheme and the word. Morphology comprises the regulations, which permit the speaker to expand his/her linguistic proficiency by means of their application (Huang, & Pinker, 2010). However, it just has normal processes that exist in the working of the system as of coherent and non-arbitrary system.
Morphology in essence is to understand the manner in which human brain function and process language. It assist in providing substitutes to understanding languages, which are cost effective than those used currently. This allows application of artificial intelligent. The significance of linguistic science is the commitment of morphology ranking in the grammar of a particular language in whole grammar. Currently, morphology is seen as an independent part on the similar field as semantic and syntax. Morphological guidelines have official features and ideologies of their own, and their research has steered linguists to realize that the morphological subcomponent has rules that governed more than initially represented.
Tomasello (2003) mentions the greatly item-based nature of child’s speech. Rather than necessitating the manifestation of distinctive classes or abstract structures, “children can as well offer ‘grammatical’ language by easily reproducing the particular linguistic articles and terminologies like phrases and words present in adult speech, which are, by explanation, grammatical without effectively incorporating those items (Tomasello 2000, pp. 156). For example, Tomasello (2000) reveal that in initial designs of child practice, formulaic frames focused on just a few verbs, which they refer to as constructional islands, usually present complement clauses. Their data shows an initial dependence on item-based designs, with additional novel uses happening as familiarity with the language growths.
How do children acquire inflectional morphology?
There are presently two key approaches to the attainment of inflectional morphology among children, which reflect the leading positions in psycholinguistics as well as linguistics. Dual-Mechanism models stress the difference amid lexicon as well as sentence structure made in a good number of conventional theories of language (Clahsen, 1999; Pinker & Ullman, 2002). According to dual-mechanism models, regular and irregular patterns arise from qualitatively distinctive developments. Irregular types are just lexical objects, and are accumulated in the memory just like other words although with an extra grammatical aspect (Sahin et al., 2009). Regular variations, on the contrary, arise due to the presentation of a grammatical law.
Experimental research and data unveil that a child is capable of spreading a regular form of modulation to original lexical objects and allow use of derivational regulations to build novel words (Berent, Pinker, & Shimron, 2002). This verifies that a child is not rote learner, that he or she is ingenious in the morphology sphere and at the same time in the syntax domain.
Assuming a dual-mechanism replica, researchers suggest that kids lay up the exact irregular pattern in the lexicon although they do not access it, altogether and at the same instance. Once children can recover the right irregular pattern from the reminiscence, the standard regular regulation does not work because the rule is obstructed. Nevertheless, once the irregular pattern may not be recovered, that is, once the associative lexical based system fails to offer the irregular structure, a kid may request for over regularization. The standard regulation is applied by default, because it cannot be blocked by anything. This is termed as the overcrowding and recovery breakdown assumption. The benefit of this justification is the ability to incorporate the recovery of irregular pattern into the reminiscence. The storage of reminiscence is based on random model, which relies on rate of disclosure to every specific distinctive structure.
Customarily, morphological regulations are classified into two central categories: derivational and inflectional. Derivational regulations form novel terms, while inflectional regulations alter the structure of a term based on its connection with other terms in the sentence, that is, as per the syntactic environment where the word transpires. As asserted in the split morphology theory, the entire derivational is for the glossary or to the unit referred to as the morphological element, while the entire inflectional is taken as non-lexical (Perlmutter, 1988). Inflectional morphology is transformational and taken at a syntactic height.
A research by Marchman and Bates (1994) reveals that the initial glossary, below 10 verbs, taken up by the uneven verbs; as a lexis of a child expands to nearly twenty to thirty verbs, it remain to have additional asymmetrical verbs than standard verbs, although there is no asymmetrical verbs given in the precedent tense. If the dimension of the vocabulary is less than fifty objects, merely half of the asymmetrical verbs in the initial glossary are generated just like stems. Immediately as the size of verbs increases to above fifty, the figure of stem-only forms starts to reduce (Marchman & Bates, 1994). Moreover, it is just after the lexicon has increased to more than ninety verbs that the average figure of past tense given appropriately surpasses the stem-only forms.
A rise in lexis is assumed to contribute to the expansion of the standard patterns to new patterns (Prasada, & Pinker, 1993). Nevertheless, this association appears to be more associated to statistical artifact. It is anticipated that children will exceedingly over generalize when they understand many verbs. A rise in overgeneralization mistakes could not be the consequence of lexis development in isolation. Lexis development gives a chance for additional mistakes.
Stages of language acquisition
Morphological development in Children involve numerous stages before attaining the right asymmetrical patterns, they start with the right asymmetrical patterns then, after obtaining the standard form, they cover all the patterns. During this phase, they practice an over regularized form and a proper uneven form. After some time, children stop using over regularized, and begin to use all patterns, standard and asymmetrical properly.
In essence, children are not expected to develop familiarity of the standard form. In this particular phase, children memorize standard and asymmetrical past tense patterns and apply them appropriately; nevertheless, no universal law has been established. Past tense in initial English had mistakes, which were extremely uncommon, and children appeared to become incapable to generalize the old form to novel forms. In the subsequent phase, once children have developed the standard form, they start to broaden it to the asymmetrical pattern, forming rare over-regularized forms. At this phase, the rule-based model becomes functional. Nevertheless, by now, the asymmetrical patterns have been kept in the glossary although may at times be recovered. This clarifies the truth that, at this developmental phase, a child can apply the right uneven and the inappropriate over-regularized pattern of the similar verb. Listening to the uneven patterns more frequently, they will combine them in reminiscence and become proficient to remember these forms more frequently until they stop over regularization.
The ordinary description of over regularization is that a kid just memorizes the right irregular forms and then reiterates them. At this phase, it is assumed that children have no acquaintance of the structure of standard past tense patterns and thus there is no over regularization. As soon as the children developed the form, they will widen it to the entire verbs and begin practicing inappropriate over regularized past tense verbs. Nevertheless, simple as it may appear at initial spectacle, this description is not lacking difficulties. A study indicates that a number of the difficulties that accounts of that kind are encountered (Marcus et al., 1990).
Experiential data of initial sentence structures divulge that children experience a developmental phase as soon as they appear to over generalize a design of standard morphology, creating improper past tense patterns likes “comed” or “goed” and improper plural patterns like “mouse’s” or “tooth’s”. When verbs are more confusing, children tend to give out the regularized “goed” following the usage of the proper forms of sentence structure, or improper plural such as “mouse’s” and acquiring the proper plural as mice. They as well pass a step that they widen asymmetrical past tense forms to standard verbs, giving pairs like “bring – brang” and “trick – truck.”
Empirical data of impulsive child English along with experimental outcome focuses to the fact that kids are producers of structures. After getting the inflections, which mark tenses, children naturally take asymmetrical verbs like bring, or go and take them as if the verbs belong to a regu...
Get the Whole Paper!
Not exactly what you need?
Do you need a custom essay? Order right now:
Other Topics:
- Why has blackberry sales declined?Description: Why has blackberry sales declined? Literature and Language Research Paper...4 pages/≈1100 words| Harvard | Literature & Language | Research Paper |
- HR principlesDescription: HR principles Literature and Language Research Paper level...6 pages/≈1650 words| Harvard | Literature & Language | Research Paper |
- The Implications of Globalization on the Innovative Activities of Firms in United KingdomDescription: The Implications of Globalization on the Innovative Activities of Firms in United Kingdom Literature and Language Research Paper...4 pages/≈1100 words| Harvard | Literature & Language | Research Paper |