Language Acquisition - Syntax and Morphology

Syntax and Morphology

As syntax began to be studied more closely in the early 20th century, in relation to language learning, it became apparent to linguists, psychologists, and philosophers that knowing a language was not merely a matter of associating words with concepts, but that a critical aspect of language involves knowledge of how to put words together—sentences are usually needed in order to communicate successfully, not just isolated words. When acquiring a language, it is often found that most verbs, such as those in the English language, are irregular verbs. These verbs do not follow specific rules to form the past tense. Young children learn the past tense of verbs individually; however, when they are taught a "rule", such as adding -ed to form the past tense, they begin to exhibit overgeneralization errors (e.g. runned, hitted) as a result of learning these basic syntactical rules that do not apply to all verbs. The child then need to relearn how to apply these past tense rules to the irregular verbs they had previously done correctly.