What is a Wug?

A Short Summary of Jean Berko Gleason's Research

One of the most well-known researchers in child language acquisition, Jean Berko Gleason was born in 1931 in Cleveland, Ohio, and showed great interest in languages from a young age. Part of her fascination was inspired by her close relationship with her older brother, Marty, who struggled to communicate with others due to his cerebral palsy. Initially, her main goal was to study and learn languages, but she ventured into psycholinguistics - the study of the psychology of language - and went on to receive a PhD in Linguistics and Social Psychology in 1958 from Harvard University. Now she is a professor emerita in the Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences at Boston University. 

Berko Gleason’s most well-known contribution to linguistic research is the “Wug Test”. This affectionate name refers to her 1958 study, where she investigated 4- to 7-year-old children’s knowledge of English morphological rules. To avoid the possibility that they had simply memorized various grammatical constructions such as plural endings or different tenses, she invented several imaginary animals and nonsense verbs - including “wugs”, “gutches”, “binging” and “bodding”. Using hand-drawn picture cards and sentences containing the invented names and words, she tested the conjugation abilities of children and adults by asking them to provide the appropriate conjugation of the nonsense word or verb at the end of the sentence. She found that children often gave the same answers as adults, indicating that children have internalized knowledge of their language’s rules and can use them productively: that is, in a new and creative way. The findings of the Wug Test were considered revolutionary at the time and it continues to be influential in linguistics decades later, having been used to study aspects of other languages like Japanese and Italian.

In addition to language acquisition, Berko Gleason also investigated other domains of linguistics throughout her career. She studied topics related to foreign languages, such as the psychophysiological responses of bilinguals to taboo words in their first and second languages as well as how people lose their language skills. She also wrote a guide on how to maintain one’s skills when learning other languages and aphasia - a broad term for a variety of language disorders caused by brain damage. Her work has examined different types of aphasics and the aspects of their disorders: one of her studies compared an aphasic’s loss of language to the language acquisition stages of a neurotypical child and a dyslexic child. Overall, Berko Gleason’s body of research is diverse and extensive, and she remains a respected figure in linguistics today, over sixty years after making her whimsical first venture into the field. 

Catriona Carmichael-Hauer

July 2023

Linguistics and Psychology student at the University of Alberta