The rule-governed nature of child language

In spite of the numerous controversies surrounding child language, psycholinguists are at least in agreement on one major point. Children are not simply imitating what they hear going on around them as if they were parrots. The learning processes involved are far more complex. From the moment they begin to talk, children seem to be aware that language is rule-governed, and they are engaged in an active search for the rules which underlie the language to which they are exposed. Child language is never at any time a haphazard conglomeration of ran-

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dom words, or a sub-standard version of adult speech. Instead, every child at every stage possesses a grammar with rules of its own even though the system will be simpler than that of an adult. For example, when children first use negatives, they normally use a simple rule: 'Put no or not in front of the sentence.' This results in consistent negative sentences which the child could not possibly have heard from an adult:

No play that.

No Fraser drink all tea.

This rule is generally superseded by another which says: 'Insert the negative after the first NP.' This also produces a consistent set of sen­tences which the child is unlikely to have heard from an adult:

Doggie no bite.

That no mummy.

A rather more obvious example of the rule-governed nature of child language are forms such as mans, foots, gooses, which children pro­duce frequently. Such plurals occur even when a child understands and responds correctly to the adult forms men, feet, geese. This is clear proof that children's own rules of grammar are more important to them than mere imitation.

Children do not, however, formulate a new rule overnight, and sud­denly replace the old one with this new one. Instead, there is consider­able fluctuation between the old and the new. The new construction appears at first in a limited number of places. A child might first use the word what in a phrase with a single verb,

What mummy doing?

What daddy doing?

What Billy doing?

then only gradually extend it to other verbs, as in

What kitty eating?

What mummy sewing?

This process is somewhat like the way in which an alteration creeps from word to word in language change (Chapter 12).

Attention to the ways in which children move from one rule to another has shown that language acquisition is not as uniform as was once thought. Different children use different strategies for acquiring speech. For example, some seem to concentrate on the overall rhythm, and slot in words with the same general sound pattern, whereas others prefer to deal with more abstract slots. Of particular

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interest is work which looks at how children cope with different lan­guages. This enables researchers to see if children have any universal expectations about how language behaves, or whether they wait and see what their own particular language offers.

Learning the meaning of words

Children have to learn not only the syntax and sounds of their lan­guage, but also the meaning of words. This turns out to be more com­plicated than some people suppose. For a start, it probably takes some time for children to discover that words can refer to separate things. At first, they probably think that a word such as milk refers to a whole generalized ritual, something uttered as a mug is placed in front of them. Later they, discover that words have meanings which can be applied to individual objects and actions.

At first, children may be able to use words only in a particular con­text. One child agreed that snow was white, but refused to accept that a piece of paper was also white. This tendency to undergeneralize usually passes unnoticed. But it is probably commoner than over-generalization, which attracts much more attention.

People often remark on children's overgeneralizations. Youngsters may call any type of small thing a crumb: a crumb, a small beetle, or a speck of dirt, or they may apply the word moon to any kind of light. An idea popular in the last century was that children see the world through a mental fog. They are able only to grasp broad outlines, which they then narrow down. But this turns out to be an oversim­plification, because children's overgeneralizations are often quite specific, and quite odd. One child referred to a shiny green leaf as a moon! A possible explanation is that she was working from a proto­type (Chapter 8) which was unlike the adult's prototype. This child had apparently taken a picture of a shiny yellow crescent moon as a prototypical moon, and re-applied the word moon to anything which had the approximate shape of the original, as well as one of its other characteristics. The leaf was vaguely crescent shaped, and also shiny. This interesting idea is currently being explored by researchers.