Wug is this?
This is a wug! A wug is one of the most recognizable symbols of Linguistics, the science that studies the language faculty, the different languages of the world, and the language creatures (humans using languages!).
This wug was used by Dr. Jean Berko Gleason in a 1958 experiment now called the "Wug Test". Children were given a brand new word (like "wug") and were asked to provide, for instance, the plural of such new word.Here's the transcription of the original prompt:
This is a WUG.
Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two ____.
English-speaking adults will agree that the plural of "wug" is "wugs", where the plural marker ("s") is pronounced with a vibration of the vocal folds (put your fingers over your throat and feel the vibration! It sounds [z]!). Children, however, will provide different answers depending on their age.
Currently, among linguists, any linguistic experiment using made-up words is called a "Wug Test", and the made-up word a "wug".
Read Dr. Jean Berko Gleason's paper here.
Read Dr. Jean Berko Gleason's Wikipedia entry here.
Happy Women's History Month 2019!
Wow - that's so cool. I thought that I had learned (somewhere) that are a few "universal" grammar rules across languages, is that not true?
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DeleteTotally true, bluebeard423! Languages are only different in the surface; once you start digging in a little bit, it is pretty obvious they all follow the same principles... because they are all products of the same language faculty! I'll prepare a post on this soon!
DeleteThat's interesting. I am curious now what children pluralized the words as.
ReplyDelete--Steven Ketchum
I'm also curious about this. Maybe you can expand on this more in a future post?
DeleteThese are potential answers:
Delete- "two wug[z]" (just like an adult),
- "two wu[ks]" (note that the consonants have changed),
- "two wug[ez]" (adding a vowel),
- "two wug[sez]" (adding a whole new syllable),
- "two wug" (with no explicit plural marking), etc.
Of course, children are very creative so expect very interesting and funny incorrect answers!
This was very interesting and very fun to learn . Sometimes without realzing it we do just create plurals out of nowhere. I still remember that when I used to teach english to spanish speaking people, many of them (adults mostly) will still make the mistake from man --> mans or person -->persons, instead of the actual plural word. Somewhat I think they were like children, since learning a new language is very hard and you go back to the basics.
ReplyDeleteI will look more into this test ! Thank you
Thank you for sharing your experience, NVP! Your students had interiorized the plural rule that was more similar to the one they use in Spanish. Exceptions always need to be explicitly taught (like "children", "mice", etc.). Now, changing the topic a little bit, I'm curious about the sound your students produced as the plural. The plural of "pen", for example, is "pen[z]" and not "pen[s]", but the plural of "cat" is "cat[s]" and not "cat[z]". However, in Spanish, the sound [z] has a very limited distribution and does not appear in the plural marker. If your students were beginners, they were most probably saying "pen[s]" (incorrectly) and "cat[s]" (correctly).
DeleteThank you for sharing! I was wondering if a "wug test" is something used predominately in the English language? or can this be done across several languages?
ReplyDeleteYou can actually create wug tests for any language! And with many modifications! It'll all depend on your research question.
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