Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

By Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne

16: Learning parts of words - Morphemes and the wug test

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Published January 18, 2018 6:09pm

Hereโ€™s a strange little blue animal youโ€™ve never seen before. Itโ€™s called a wug. Now hereโ€™s another one. There are two of them. There are two ___? You probably thought โ€œwugsโ€ โ€“ and even kids as young as 3 years old would agree with you. But how did you know this, if youโ€™ve never heard the word โ€œwugโ€ before? What is it that you know, exactly, when you know how to add that -s? Now try saying two cat__ ๐Ÿˆ๐Ÿˆ, two dog__ ๐Ÿ•๐Ÿ• and two horse__ ๐ŸŽ๐ŸŽ. Why did you end up with catssss but dogzzzz, and have to add a whole extra syllable to horse? In thi...

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