Berko’s Wug Test was developed to test children’s’ understanding of the role of the plural “s” in English. In other words, they were testing children’s understanding of: Question 28Answer a. Semantics b. Syntax c. Prosody d. Pragmatics
The correct answer and explanation is:
Correct Answer: b. Syntax
The Wug Test, developed by Jean Berko Gleason in 1958, was designed to investigate how young children acquire the rules of English morphology, particularly the rules for forming plurals. In the test, children were shown a drawing of a fictional creature called a “wug.” After being told “This is a wug,” they were shown two of these creatures and prompted with “Now there are two of them. There are two ___.” The child was expected to fill in the blank with “wugs,” applying the plural “s” rule.
This test primarily examines children’s understanding of syntax, which refers to the rules that govern how words are combined in language. Syntax includes morphological rules like how to form plurals or past tense forms of verbs. In the case of the Wug Test, the child’s ability to add “s” to a novel word shows whether they have internalized the syntactic rule for pluralization rather than simply mimicking memorized examples.
The significance of the Wug Test lies in showing that children do not just imitate adult speech. Even very young children are able to apply grammatical rules to words they have never heard before. This means they have an abstract understanding of language structure. By demonstrating that children could apply the plural rule to a made-up word like “wug,” Berko showed that children possess productive grammatical knowledge.
Other choices like semantics (meaning), prosody (rhythm and intonation), and pragmatics (contextual use of language) are not the focus of this test. While the test does touch on meaning, its core aim is to assess rule-based language production, which places it squarely in the domain of syntax.