The wug test is an experiment in linguistics, created by Jean Berko Gleason in 1958. It was designed as a way to investigate the acquisition of the plural and other inflectional morphemes in English-speaking children.
There are three plural allomorphs in English:
The child is presented with some sort of pretend creature, and told, "This is a wug." Another wug is revealed, and the researcher says, "Now there are two of them. There are two...?" Chi...
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The wug test is an experiment in linguistics, created by Jean Berko Gleason in 1958. It was designed as a way to investigate the acquisition of the plural and other inflectional morphemes in English-speaking children.
There are three plural allomorphs in English:
The child is presented with some sort of pretend creature, and told, "This is a wug." Another wug is revealed, and the researcher says, "Now there are two of them. There are two...?" Children who have successfully acquired the allomorph /z/ of the plural morpheme will respond: wugs /ˈwʌɡz/.
Very young children are baffled by the question and are unable to answer correctly, sometimes responding with "Two wug." Preschoolers aged 4 to 5 test best in dealing with /z/ after a voiced consonant, and generally say that there are two wugs, with a /z/; they do almost as well with the voiceless /s/. They do less well in dealing with /z/ in other environments such as after nasals, rhotics, and vowels. Children in the first year of...
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