ACQUISITION
OF
MORPHOLOGICAL RULES AND USAGE AS
A
FUNCTION
OF
SOCIAL EXPERIENCE
JOHN
W.
GIEBINK,
ANNETTE
RUTH
NEVILLE,
AND
ROBERT
E.
DAVIDSON
The
University
of
Wisconsin
A convenient framework for viewing the relationship between language usage
and social experience has been presented by Bernstein
(1961).
An aspect of his
position is that there are two general language codes. One of these
is
“restricted”
or
“public” and is described as being syntactically redundant and grammatically
simple. The other code
is
“elaborated” or “formal,” and
it
is
varied in
its
syn-
tactical structure and allows for communication of organized logical sequences.
Bernstein contends that the lower class relies primarily on the use of the restricted
code that facilitates social interaction, while middle class children learn both public
and formal language
so
they cannot only communicate on a social level, but ulti-
mately retain their superior position by their ability to use the elaborated code
for
the exchange of ideas and information.
There is empirical support for the notion that the grammRtica1 aspect of lan-
guage
is
related to cultural experience although assumptions about the relative
value of various language systems are open to question (Moskovitz,
1968).
As
Labov
(1969)
and others have pointed out, many studies dealing with cultural
aspects of language development have used standard English as the criterion, and
as
a
consequence lower class children have appeared relatively deficient when com-
pared with middle class children.
For
example, Bernstein
(1961)
has noted that
language in the lower class home
is
likely to be grammatically incorrect with
repetitive use
of
conjunctions and a rigid and limited use
of
adjectives and adverbs.
The relative importance
of
grammar as an aspect of language in differentiating
between lower and middle class children has been demonstrated by Deutsch,
Maliver, Brown,
&
Cherry
(1964).
They found no difference between these two
groups of fifth grade children in their total verbal output, but the middle class
children demonstrated
a
greater variety of output. The middle class children were
also superior to the lower class children in performing a cloze task, which in a way
samples grammatical skill. The “giant word” units noted in the speech of culturally
disadvantaged children by Bereiter and Engleman
(1966)
probably are also a
reflection of lack of grammatical differentiation. In
a
more direct test, Giebink
&
Marden
(1968)
found that middle class preschool children did better on
a
test of
standard grammar than did their culturally disadvantaged peers, while finding no
differences between the two groups in total undifferentiated verbal output.
Although acknowledged to be complexly determined and not fully understood,
some developmental aspects of language have been described.
It
has been observed
that the speech of young children is not purely imitative, but that they seem to
acquire certain rules and in some instances make inductive generalizations beyond
what they hear (Brown
&
Bellugi,
1964).
It
has been said that by age four the
child has acquired the basic structure of language (Ervin-Tripp
&
Riiller,
1963),
and Menyuk
(1963),
using
a
generative grammar model of language, noted that
middle class kindergarten children functioned at the phrase structure level while
first graders used more transformations. Berko
(19%)
investigated the notion that
children do riot merely imitate speech but also acquire grammatical rules by having