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 a drawing of an unfamiliar creature, often blue and bird-like, and told, "This is a wug." (Such reasonable but nonsensical words are sometimes called pseudowo...
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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 a drawing of an unfamiliar creature, often blue and bird-like, and told, "This is a wug." (Such reasonable but nonsensical words are sometimes called pseudowords.) 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 /wʌɡz/.
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 ...
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