LING 222 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Jargon, Inflection, 18 Months
Document Summary
The development of syntax and morphology: learning the structure of language. New milestone in the course of language development is reached when children start to combine words typically between 18 months and 2 years. Productivity/generativity of language: speaker and hearers have the capacity to produce and understand an infinite number of novel sentences. Syntax: system of putting words together, syntax is the component of grammar that governs the ordering of words in sentences. Closed class words: aka functional words or functional categories: auxiliaries ex: can/will, prepositions like in and of complementizers like that and who and determiners like the and a . Grammatical morphology aka inflectional morphology: adds grammatical information to words, but they do not change the meaning or grammatical category of the word. Prescriptive: compare the outcome of breaking those rules. There is something that no one would ever say and that everyone would agree is ungrammatical. With development children"s utterances change in reliable and predictable ways.
