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The wug test is an experiment in linguistics, created by Jean Berko Gleason in 1958. It was...

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 primary school were almost fully competent with both /s/ and /z/. Both preschool and first-grade children dealt poorly with /ɨz/, giving the correct answer less than half the time, possibly because it occurs