originating from Bogoyvalenskiy, D

[Clarke, John E]

Dear Thora,

Thank you for your kind message. Yes you are right, the sentence the girl
used probably is a piece of fabricated speech and I really don't imagine
this girl thought 'ah yes I'm using the comparative now'...language doesn't
work that way, but it just means to me when a child uses 'gooder' in a task
and then 'better' immediately after, regardless of the context, you can't
then reliably say that that child hasn't acquired the irregular
'good-better' just because they say 'gooder' in an unnatural setting like a
wug test. Who is to say that the child doesn't then use 'better' as a
comparative to the same friend in the minibus on the way home?

Comparatives and superlatives may be 'abstract metalinguistic concepts' but
for most people out there who have no concern for linguistics, they are also
pieces of language, and uses of more and -er, with comparative more coming
later in development must then say something about the child's acquisition
of the system. I don't believe to the child everything they have heard is
readily available, if it was there would be no such thing as language
acquisition and even if it was then who is to say that the child actually
understands what they are saying?

Thanks again and receive kind regards from

John

MA Language Acquisition
University of Essex, UK