Allie, our three year old, just told me she’d do something “soonly,” obviously generalizing from an observation that she wanted a word that ended in “-ly” for that role. Matthew, our son, didn’t make the same types of errors at that age. He’s nearly eight now and a very good reader; I’m not sure if he sees the distinction between adjectives and adverbs today and it doesn’t seem to interfere with his speaking, reading, or writing.

Allie also refers to her school, the Eureka Learning Center, as “My-reka;” for Matthew, it was always “Eureka.”

I’m reminded of Steven Pinker’s Words and Rules, which posits that there are two different mechanisms in the brain for modeling language, represented in the title as “Words,” for memorizing vocabulary and irregular forms, and “Rules,” for grammar and declension/conjugation of regular forms. Allie’s language development seems to be very rule-centric.

Both our kids are great with language. But it seems like they’re wired a bit differently from each other.