The Development of English Morphology: an Acquisition Model

The formation and use of morphological rules was studied in a large sample of English school children, aged 31/2-91/2 years and of average ability. It was found that children induce grammatical rules after a lengthy exposure to adult language models and after the learning of specific forms. Construction of appropriate rules may take many years and children pass through clearly defined stages of rule building. The rate and order of acquisition can be correlated with the characteristics of the adult language models to which they are exposed. Critical factors in these adult models are (1) frequency of occurrence of forms (2) regularity or its absence in adult usage.