Children's Judgments of Grammatical and Ungrammatical Irregular Past-Tense Verbs

KUCZAJ, STAN A., II. Children's Judgments of Grammatical and Ungrammatical Irregular PastTense Verbs. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1978, 49, 319-326. 2 investigations concerned with children's judgments of grammatical and ungrammatical irregular past-tense verb forms are reported. The results of both investigations suggest that 3and 4-year-old children are more likely to accept base + ed forms (e.g., eated) than past + ed forms (e.g., ated), while 5and 6-year-old children are as likely (or even more likely) to accept past + ed forms as they are to accept base + ed forms. It is suggested that this developmental tendency reflects an increasing emphasis on syntactic regularity which occurs with increasing age.