Children as young as two years old have an understanding of complex grammar even before they have learned to speak in full sentences, according to psychology researchers at the University of Liverpool.
The researchers showed the children, aged two, sentences containing made-up verbs, such as “the rabbit is glorping the duck”, and asked them to match the sentence with a cartoon picture. They found that even the youngest two-year-old could identify the correct image with the correct sentence, more often than would be expected by chance.
The study suggests that infants know more about language structure than they can actually articulate, and at a much earlier age than previously thought.
Read more at University of Liverpool