Wug Analysis (November 29, 2019)

This is a small research assignment that I did for a Linguistics class in University. For the assignment, I was to write up my own variant of the Wug Test and test at least one native English speaker and one non-native English speaker.

The Wug Test was created by Jean Berko Gleason to test if children simply memorize the different morphology of words or if they instead memorize the appropriate morphemes. To test this, she created nonsense words accompanied by a picture. The researcher then pointed to an image and read the prompt, asking the child to fill in the blank.

For example, on the right I have included an excerpt from the original Wug Test. If I was being administered this test, I would see that one of the blue creatures is called a ‘WUG.’ When there are two of them, I would say that there are two ‘WUGS.’ ‘WUG’ is not a real word and as such does not appear in my personal lexicon. How then did I know to say ‘WUGS.’ It must be because I have an understanding of the morphology of English. I know that plurals are usually constructed with the suffix morpheme -s.

Below I have attached my original Wug Test and the results submitted from my interviews. Note, that the documents below are as they appeared when they were submitted. As such, please excuse any obvious errors that may be present in them.