“I knowed it!”

How and when do children learn grammar?

Gaby Emson

Don't you find it intriguing when you hear a child using a complex morphological structure? How do they do it? Where did they learn these structures?
Something that has always fascinated me is children's acquisition of language and particularly their acquisition of grammar. I find it incredible that a child born into any environment can pick up any language. Currently, I'm studying A-Level French so I understand just how challenging it is to learn a new language and the importance of making mistakes along the way.
According to David Crystal, children partly use imitation to learn grammar and vocabulary. This allows them to develop an understanding of grammatical patterns. However, of course, they are going to make mistakes. But something I find even more interesting is how the mistakes made by children are actually very clever…
For example, the study by Alan Cruttenden in 1979 divided the acquisition of inflections into three fundamental stages which are explained in more detail within Cruttenden's book: "Language in infancy and childhood". According to Cruttenden, during the second stage of development, children will usually show awareness of grammatical principles or rules. However, when words require an irregular inflection often mistakes are made. The common mistake made by a child is known as overgeneralisation. Therefore, the child will apply the same rule to every word not taking into account the irregular exceptions.
For example, if they were asked the plural form of 'foot' usually they will say 'foots' rather than feet. This is because they are able to recognise that usually, to make a noun plural they must add a suffix of '-s'. Which is actually really smart.
This is also evident with mistakes a child makes with the tenses. They understand that typically, the normal rule to make a verb past tense they must add an 'ed' suffix. So, an example would be 'to run', of which they would change to 'runned' rather than ran. Again, something which is actually very smart, because they understand the normal rules. They just need to learn the irregular forms.

During 1958 Jean Berko carried out an investigation exploring "The Child's learning of English morphology". Within Berko's experiment, she was able to conclude that children between the ages of two and half and five years old were able to show awareness of grammatical rules. This was achieved by showing children images of fictional creatures named 'Wugs'. The children were shown the picture (displayed below) and told, 'this is a wug'. Next, the children were shown a picture of two creatures and told, 'Now there is another one; there are two of them.' The children were then asked to complete the sentence 'there are two….' .


Berko found that children aged three and four replied with 'Wugs'. This therefore proved that even though a word unknown to them was used, they were able to apply their grammatical understanding and give the correct form. So, next time you here a young child using or making mistakes with grammatical structures, remember just how clever they actually are.