linguistic analysis - Professor Binkert's Webpage - Oakland University

Seventh, the stages of acquisition are uniform. Typical primitive sentences are sentences like the
following:
(33) a. truck [tk] Noun
b. pretty baby [pii bebi] Modifier + Noun
c. daddy coat [dædi ko] Noun + Noun
d. see truck [si tk] Verb + Noun
e. see baby shoe [si bebi su] Verb + Noun + Noun
Psycholinguists have known for many years that the words children know and use at a very early age
tend to fall into two large groups. One group, which have been called PIVOT WORDS, consists
of words that are low in number but high in frequency. This group includes quantifiers (more,
some), determiners (that, a), possessives (my), and adjectives (pretty, big). The other group, called
OPEN WORDS, consists of words that are high in number but low in frequency. This includes
nouns (baby, truck, mommy) and verbs (go, sit, play). In the early stages, pivot words usually don’t
occur together and don’t occur alone. While they form one class initially, over time, children will
differentiate the classes. The differentiation of pivot words can be charted as follows:
(34) a. Time One - around 24-27 months
Pivot One Open
that horsie
a truck
my car
pretty baby
more milk
Pivot One includes quantifiers (more, some), determiners (that, a), possessives (my),
and adjectives (pretty, big).
b. Time Two - about three months later
(Dem) + (Det) + Pivot Two + Open
that a my truck
that the big truck
*that my a truck
*my a that truck
Pivot Two includes possessives, quantifiers, and adjectives. Demonstratives have
been taken out of Pivot One as a separate class.
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