A preliminary evaluation of grammatical capacity in Children

Abstract

Summary The purpose of this study was to examine the hypothesis that children have incorporated the generative rules of their grammar and are able to understand and produce sentences in accordance with these rules and to extend systematically their behavior without additonal instruction if additional memory aids are given. Fourteen nursery-school children (age 2 years 10 months to 3 years 8 months) and 50 kindergarten children (age 4 years 9 months to 6 years 1 month) were the subjects in this study. A language sample was obtained from each child in various stimulus situations. The children were then asked to repeat a set of sentences representative of the various transformation types (sentences which go beyond the simple-active-declarative type) and a set representative of the various restricted forms (deviations from complete grammaticalness) that were found in their usage of grammar. In addition, three older Ss were asked to repeat the two sets of sentences, to repeat the set containing the restricted forms in a manner they thought correct, and to repeat the set representing the transformations given to them in reverse word order. It was found that when given the memory aid of immediate recall, these children were better able to produce than use in their own language both transformations and completely grammatical rules at all three levels of the grammar (phrase structure, transformations, and morphology). The 3 older Ss, although they had repeated all sentences containing transformation types with complete accuracy, were unable to do so when the structure of these sentences was removed (reverse word order) even though they were again given the aid of immediate recall. The children's deviations from complete repetition were due to the particular structure contained in the sentence and not sentence length. It was hypothesized that significantly more nursery-school than kindergarten children modified some transformations and corrected some restricted forms because the younger children were evaluating and producing sentences in accordance with the rules of their grammar at a more external level than the older children. Therefore, the older children were better able to perform the task of repeating regardless of the structure of the sentence. The data obtained seem to indicate that the children in this population, at age 3, have incorporated most of the basic generative rules of the grammar that we have thus far been able to describe and are using these rules to understand and produce sentences. Some of the results obtained suggest areas for further examination of this hypothesis.