23-MONTH-OLD CHILDREN HAVE A GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF NOUN

This study investigated experimentally the nature and development of children's early productivity with nouns, both in verb-argument structure and with plural morphology. Eight 20- to 26-month-old boys and girls were, in the context of playing a game over a several week period, exposed to four novel nouns, modeled in experimentally controlled ways. The question was whether, when, and in what ways the children would become productive with these nouns in their spontaneous speech, going beyond the particular linguistic forms they had heard. In terms of verb-argument structure, 7 of the 8 children used their nouns in productive argument roles, that is, in semantic roles they had not heard them used in. Five of the 8 children used the plural morpheme productively with the novel nouns as well. Implications for theories of grammatical category formation are discussed.