Linguimericks, Etc.—Book १६ SpecGram Vol CLXXII, No 2 Contents Degenerative Grammar—Desirée-Debauchée Cyntacks & Dec A. D’Cadence

Untold Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know
(because they aren’t actually true)


gathered at great personal risk of
psycholinguistic harm from actual student papers
by Madalena Cruz-Ferreira

This 50th collection of students’ pearls of wisdom, laboriously digitised from hand-written papers, demonstrates once again how students new to the study of language speculate about grammar after having imperfectly absorbed what their teachers think they have taught them.

Test QuestionChild Vocabulary

At age 0;11, one child was reported to use the form [ˈwawə] for the adult noun water. One month later, the child started using the same form for any drink (milk, water, juice, etc.). Explain whether these data might create problems for the quantification of this child’s vocabulary.

(Data adapted from Cruz-Ferreira, M. (2006). Three is a Crowd? Acquiring Portuguese in a Trilingual Environment. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.)

Answers

More to come...

Linguimericks, Etc.Book १६
Degenerative GrammarDesirée-Debauchée Cyntacks & Dec A. D’Cadence
SpecGram Vol CLXXII, No 2 Contents