wugs (n.)

A nonsense word invented in the late 1950s for a LANGUAGE ACQUISITION experiment into the learning of MORPHOLOGY. The drawing of a mythical animal (a wug) was presented to children, and the child was told: ‘This is a wug’. Then the experimenter would point to a second picture, saying ‘Now, there’s another one. There are two of them. There are two —.’ If the children had learned the plural ending, they would say wugs; if they had not, they would say wug. Using several such NONSENSE words in a range of morphological CONTEXTS, much basic information was obtained concerning the order and timing of the acquisition of GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES. Several similar experimental tasks have since been devised.