Lexical categories in early child English

In terms of Universal Grammar, our language is made up out of grammatical categories, namely lexical categories and functional categories (compare 1997 Radford: 29-60). What are grammatical categories? When little babies enter our world – do they carry categories within them? What are their first words? Do they belong to a certain category and is the child aware of that? How do children’s first word-combinations look like? Are there similarities to the adults’ language?

This paper suggests answers to these questions. Since every language has a more or less different grammar, the focus stays on the English language. This makes it possible to go into detail. Moreover, the concern lies in early child English up to the age of about two years. The overall claim is that children up to that age only produce words and word combinations belonging to thematic or lexical classes. This is also Radford’s thesis presented in his book Syntactic Theory and the Acquisition of Syntax (1990).

To be able to understand what lexical categories are, the following chapter provides a definition of grammatical categories. Afterwards, Radford’s theory will be described. In the next section, examples of children up to the age of about two years are given and analyzed concerning the occurrence of lexical categories. Other opinions will be presented and discussed in the following section. The paper closes with a conclusion.