Gee, Grammar, What Big Lies You Have!

Linguists in France are going ga-ga over their findings: Very young children appear to have a knowledge of language that's in place even before they're able to ply their understanding of syntax through actual speech.

A team of researchers read stories to 27 toddlers, all within two weeks of their second birthdays, Each child was fitted with a net of brainwave monitoring electrodes. The story read to the wired tots was mostly composed of correct simple sentences. But interspersed within were deliberate grammatical errors: A noun was used in the part of the sentence where a verb would have been expected, and alternately a verb was placed where a noun should have been.

A detectable spike in brainwave activity was observed among the test subjects when presented with the incorrect grammar. Specifically, when a noun took the place of a verb, heightened activity was measured in the left front area of the brain. When a verb took a noun's place, activity was seen to rise above background in a region further back on the left side.

The parts of the brain where heightened activity was detected correlate with what we understand about regions of the mature brain dedicated to processing language.

While using playful nonsense talk with your small one may be cute and fun, the implications are clear that it may be beneficial to their development to use correct language as part of interaction. There's more comprehension going on in that sweet little head than might have been thought.