Simon WolfLING 203

9/17/15Study Questions #6

1. The subjects who participated in this study were shown a picture (or not in the

case of compound words) on a card, and the research said some sort of

description of what was in the picture. Most things or actions in the pictures were

given gibberish names. The researcher then asked a question or made a

statement with a blank where the desired form of the nonsense word should be to

elicit the morphemically correct production. These cards covered information

about identically patterning regular plural, possessive, and regular third person

singular morphemes as well as the productive allomorphs of the regular past. Also

tested was the children’s ability to parse out the components of compound words

and explain the reasoning behind their combination.

2. The most common error made by children when tasked with producing the plural

was simply to repeat the singular form of the word and not to apply an incorrect

form of the morpheme, as may be assumed.

3. While children have abilities to productively apply /-s/ and /-z/ which suggest their

future proficiency, they have serious trouble extending the allomorph /-ǝz/ to be

used with new words, regardless of the fact that they have words containing the

corresponding environment in their vocabulary.