Why does a child acquiring English as L1 overgeneralize the regular past tense inflection ('goed' instead of 'went')?

💡 Explanation

Children initially learn past tense rules and apply them broadly, even to irregular verbs, because phonological rule application opacity arises due to the surface forms not directly reflecting the underlying rule. Therefore, overgeneralization happens, rather than reflecting incomplete learning or memory deficits, because the child’s developing grammar applies regular rules consistently.

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