LING 3P61 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Sociolinguistics, Noam Chomsky, Narrative Structure
19 Mar 2018
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Maybe kids and adults have both abstract productive grammars (nativist view) and sometimes rely on memorized sequences (constructionist view) Ex to make irregular past tense, we rely on memory but for regular nouns we have rule. Believe learning grammar is not about learning rules, even for regular. It is about forming strong connection between nodes in a network. Pseudo-verb blick sounds like kick or lick and kids have heard each of those in past tense with -ed so when asked past tense of blick they say blicked. Kids learn grammar because they are born knowing something about the meanings of words. Born with knowledge about what words mean. They know how to identify nouns and verbs because they know agents and objects are nouns and actions are verbs. Agent nouns are subject of sentence and object nouns are objects of the sentence. Therefore the can figure out rules for putting nouns and verbs in order.
