A three-year-old who has heard adults say 'went' hundreds of times says 'I goed to the store.' What does this error reveal about how she is acquiring language?
AShe has a memory deficit preventing her from retaining irregular verb forms she has heard
BShe has not yet been exposed to enough input to learn the correct past-tense form
CShe has induced the regular past-tense rule and is applying it systematically, even to an irregular verb she has heard correctly modeled
DShe is imitating an adult with non-standard grammar who uses 'goed' in her environment
'Goed' is a form the child has never heard — yet she produces it consistently. This overgeneralization error is the strongest evidence that children are not passively imitating adult speech. She has extracted the rule 'add -ed to form past tense,' applied it correctly to regular verbs, and then over-applied it to an irregular one. The very fact that she produces a form she has never heard proves she is actively constructing grammar, not mimicking.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
The 'poverty of the stimulus' argument claims that:
AChildren receive too little spoken input to acquire language without explicit grammatical instruction
BChildren converge on grammatical rules that are more abstract and constrained than the input they hear can logically justify, suggesting an innate grammatical endowment
CCaregivers systematically withhold corrections, leaving children with impoverished grammatical feedback
DChildren's early grammar is more limited than adult grammar because input during the critical period is insufficient
The poverty of the stimulus is Chomsky's argument that the input children receive — which is incomplete, full of interruptions, and never explicitly negative (children are not told which sentences are ungrammatical) — underdetermines the abstract grammatical structures they converge on. Children don't just learn what they hear; they learn a system more constrained than what the data alone could justify. This gap argues for some innate Language Acquisition Device that narrows the space of possible grammars a child will consider.
Question 3 True / False
Children who grow up acquiring two languages simultaneously from birth are not linguistically disadvantaged; simultaneous bilingual acquisition is the typical experience for the majority of the world's population.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
The misconception that bilingual children are 'confused' or delayed is not supported by research. Simultaneous bilingual acquisition — exposure to two languages from birth — is cognitively normal and globally common. Bilingual children may initially have smaller vocabularies in each individual language compared to monolingual peers, but their total vocabulary across both languages is comparable. They do not mix languages due to confusion; code-switching is systematic and rule-governed.
Question 4 True / False
Adults learning a second language follow essentially the same acquisition pathway as children learning their first language — the main difference is speed.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
Second language acquisition differs qualitatively from first language acquisition in several important ways. Adult L2 learners benefit from explicit grammatical instruction; L1 learners do not need it. L2 learners show L1 transfer — systematic errors that reveal the influence of their first language — which has no parallel in L1 acquisition. Most importantly, the critical period constrains full native-like acquisition in phonology and morphosyntax: adults who begin L2 learning after puberty typically retain an accent and residual morphosyntactic difficulty that children acquiring L1 do not experience.
Question 5 Short Answer
Why do overgeneralization errors like 'goed' or 'mouses' serve as evidence that children are inducing grammatical rules rather than imitating adult speech?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: These forms are ones children have never heard adults produce — they are not in the input. A child could only generate 'goed' by having extracted the rule 'past tense = verb + -ed' and applied it to 'go.' This proves the child is operating with an abstract rule, not a memorized list of surface forms. If imitation were the mechanism, children would reproduce 'went' (which they hear constantly) and never produce 'goed' (which they have never heard).
The significance of overgeneralization errors goes beyond their being cute mistakes. They are the fingerprint of rule-based cognition. A purely imitative learner would produce only forms present in the input; a rule-applying learner produces novel forms predicted by the rule. Children consistently produce novel forms that fit the rule but violate the correct surface form — this pattern is systematic, cross-linguistic, and temporary (children eventually learn the exceptions). The systematicity is what makes these errors theoretically important.