Transcript morphemes

Learning Objective
 To identify the grammatical features
of early speech
 To understand what a morpheme is
and how it is used to measure the
complexity of a child’s utterance
Key Words
 Morpheme: the smallest units of language
that carry meaning. A simple word is a
morpheme, for example: book.
 Free Morpheme: a morpheme that can
stand alone as an independent word, for
example: cat.
 Bound Morpheme: A morpheme that can
only occur when bound to a root
morpheme, for example: -ed, -ing, -ly
Syntax
Syntax is another name for word order.
When we talk about a child’s syntax, we are
referring to how he or she starts to put words
together in patterns, and how he or she
develops an understanding of the
ways in which word order can
control meaning.
Mean Length Utterance
 This is used to work out the average
length of a child’s utterance across a
sample of data. It takes into account
both the words and the morphemes
a child uses.
I eating
Morpheme
Free Morpheme
Bound Morpheme
How many morphemes?
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What you doing?
Not eat that Daddy
Where’s man going?
The cavemans are laughing
The soldiers falled over when they got
hitted
Extension: Label what type of morphemes
they are.
Stages in a Child’s
Acquisition of Language
Post-Telegraphic
Sounds that are similar to
actual words, but applied
inconsistently to referents
Goggie
Holophrastic
Utterances consisting of two
words with a range of
patterns
That my doll
Proto-Word
Utterances consisting of 3+
words from which
grammatical function words
are omitted
Daddy
Two Word
Utterances where words
omitted from the Telegraphic
phase start to appear and
clauses begin to be linked
We went to the
park and played on
the swings
Telegraphic
Single words that relate
consistently to identifiable
referents
Where Mummy?
Holophrastic
This is the stage where one word utterances
convey more than one word’s meaning.
Gestalt Expressions
 Shoeson
 Topon
 Wassat
 Whosat
Two-Word Stage
The stage at which Syntax comes into play
as children start to form mini-sentences, with
Syntax starting to resemble that of adults.
Roger Brown noted that many of the
patterns these expressions fall into are
linked to the semantic relationships
between the words.
Two-Word Stage
Child’s Utterance
Two-Word combination and meaning
expressed
I walk / daddy go
Doer + Action (subject + verb)
Eat dinner
Action + Undergoer (verb + object)
Baby medicine /
dolly dinner
Doer + Undergoer (subject + object;
verb is often missed out)
My shoe / mummy
hat
Possessor + thing (generally both
nouns)
Naughty cat / big
car
Property + Thing (property usually an
adjective)
Go away / come
here
Action + Location
Data Response
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)
Daddy go
Mummy bag
Ball gone
Get drink
Cup inthere
Lion Sad
Possible
Combinations
Possessor
Doer
Action
Undergoer
Thing
Location
Property
Telegraphic Stage
Beyond the two-word stage, children add more words to
their utterances but omit apparently less meaningful words
such as:
Auxiliary Verbs: These are verbs that are used together
with other verbs, for example: we are playing, Lucy has
arrived.
Determiners: they indicate the kind of reference which
the noun has: the, a, an.
Prepositions: A preposition links nouns, pronouns between,
under, beside. and phrases to other words in a sentence:
And Finally...
What are these...?
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Wassat?
Daddy go
Goggie
A
Through