ACQUIRING THE GRAMMATICAL SYSTEM - HOW DO CHILDREN RECOVER FROM THEIRERRORS

We know that children's early language frequently includes grammatical errors. How, then, do they manage to recover from the errors and arri ve at an error-free grammatical system ? Understanding the likely role of corrections or corrective information has practical consequences f or children for whom language development may be delayed, such as deaf children acquiring spoken language. In this paper we consider a type of corrective mechanism which appears to be operating during the early language acquisition process. Two experimental studies are described in which this corrective mechanism was investigated with hearing child ren, and a strong case is made that corrective information in language addressed to children does indeed contribute to their language learni ng processes. Information is also included from a third study, in whic h some exploratory observations were made on corrective feedback to th ree oral deaf children.