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What is a ‘wug’?

If you’ve been to linguist tumblr (lingblr), you might have stumbled upon this picture of a funny little bird or read the word ‘wug’ somewhere. But what exactly is a ‘wug’ and where does this come from?

The ‘wug’ is an imaginary creature designed for the so-called ‘wug test’ by Jean Berko Gleason. Here’s an illustration from her test:

“Gleason devised the Wug Test as part of her earliest research (1958), which used nonsense words to gauge children’s acquisition of morphological rules‍—‌for example, the “default” rule that most English plurals are formed by adding an /s/, /z/ or /ɨz/ sound depending on the final consonant, e.g., hat–hats, eye–eyes, witch–witches. A child is shown simple pictures of a fanciful creature or activity, with a nonsense name, and prompted to complete a statement about it:

This is a WUG. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two ________.

Each “target” word was a made-up (but plausible-sounding) pseudoword, so that the child cannot have heard it before. A child who knows that the plural of witch is witches may have heard and memorized that pair, but a child responding that the plural of wug (which the child presumably has never heard) is wugs (/wʌgz/, using the /z/ allomorph since “wug” ends in a voiced consonant) has apparently inferred (perhaps unconsciously) the basic rule for forming plurals.

The Wug Test also includes questions involving verb conjugations, possessives, and other common derivational morphemes such as the agentive -er (e.g. “A man who ‘zibs’ is a ________?”), and requested explanations of common compound words e.g. “Why is a birthday called a birthday?“ Other items included:

This is a dog with QUIRKS on him. He is all covered in QUIRKS. What kind of a dog is he? He is a ________ dog.

This is a man who knows how to SPOW. He is SPOWING. He did the same thing yesterday. What did he do yesterday? Yesterday he ________.

(The expected answers were QUIRKY and SPOWED.)

Gleason’s major finding was that even very young children are able to connect suitable endings‍—‌to produce plurals, past tenses, possessives, and other forms‍—‌to nonsense words they have never heard before, implying that they have internalized systematic aspects of the linguistic system which no one has necessarily tried to teach them. However, she also identified an earlier stage at which children can produce such forms for real words, but not yet for nonsense words‍—‌implying that children start by memorizing singular–plural pairs they hear spoken by others, then eventually extract rules and patterns from these examples which they apply to novel words.

The Wug Test was the first experimental proof that young children have extracted generalizable rules from the language around them, rather than simply memorizing words that they have heard, and it was almost immediately adapted for children speaking languages other than English, to bilingual children, and to children (and adults) with various impairments or from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Its conclusions are viewed as essential to the understanding of when and how children reach major language milestones, and its variations and progeny remain in use worldwide for studies on language acquisition. It is “almost universal” for textbooks in psycholinguistics and language acquisition to include assignments calling for the student to carry out a practical variation of the Wug Test paradigm. The ubiquity of discussion of the wug test has led to the wug being used as a mascot of sorts for linguists and linguistics students.”

Here are some more illustrations from the original wug test:

Sources: 

Wikipedia, All Things Linguistic

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i <3 menial tasks. for srs.

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This fucking sonic pic saved my life so many time

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how do i break the cycle

prepare yourself for the absolutely insufferable lack of satisfaction found in forgiveness

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oh your pronouns are he/they?

well that’s mathematically incorrect becuase you can still simplify the fraction since both sides have “he”

making your pronouns technically 1/ty

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Trying to apply some of the lessons I've learned at different seminars this year in order to work around the shoulder/elbow niggle. With this exercise variation, the legs are brought up and placed on something to help make it easier to keep the ribs down. Doing this then should help the scapula move around a bit more, and it seemed like it worked a treat today.

#gym #lifting #fitblr #haes #powerlifting #big boy #bodybuilding #strongman #zercher squats #weightlifting

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never forget when saruman literally told gandalf "you've been smoking too much weed bro"

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Making an appointment with a very expensive tailor to hand him a 7 dollar dog sweater and say "He doesn't care for the cut."

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The zionist occupation army invades the Qalandiya refugee camp in the West Bank. They break into bakeries, and steal their goods like flour and eggs and start dumping them in the dumpsters and clapping to each other. They're filming each other while they do this. Ziowood much? Zionist propaganda is just "look at us we're targetting refugee bakeries in our genocide's mass starvation campaign aren't we so cool?" December 3rd 2023.

Anyways 🔻

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"He was was hoping you could do something similar, but more of an evening wear, with a houndstooth pattern."

"What joke?"

Making an appointment with a very expensive tailor to hand him a 7 dollar dog sweater and say "He doesn't care for the cut."

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this is the fucking funniest thing ive ever seen im in tears of laughter. (right axis) . this is a work of fucking art

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btw a lot of harry styles looks hes been praised for being gnc are like. direct copies of juan gabriel's suits

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the municipality of gaza announced it has to halt all waste collection and sewage treatment operations because of the war…..many have said it already but the long-lasting impact this war is going to have on the health of palestinians in gaza can’t be overstated. i think about water stations being targeted by israeli bombers, about the millions of displaced palestinians sharing limited bathrooms, about bisan sharing that she’s been very sick. i think about how contagious covid still is even with normal access to resources like clean water, medication, masks, i think about how many are rightfully concerned about the transmission rates in the us and other countries with relaxed restrictions. where are those people now???