Articles of faith
If you have the chance, listen to a toddler use the words “a” and “the” before a noun. Can you detect a pattern? Is he or she using those two words correctly? And one more question: When kids start using language, how much of their know-how is intrinsic, and how much is acquired by listening to others speak? Now a study co-authored by an MIT professor uses a new approach to shed more light on this matter — a central issue in the area of language acquisition. The results suggest that experience is an important component of early-childhood language usage although it doesn’t necessarily account for all of a child’s language facility. Moreover, the extent to which a child learns grammar by listening appears to change over time, with a large increase occurring around age 2 and a leveling off taking place in subsequent years. “In this view, adult-like, rule-based [linguistic] development is the...