arning their mother tongue (Greenfield & Smith, 1976).
Studies begun in the 1960s tended to focus on the grammatical basis for early language development. In this theory of language acquisition, the pivoting nature of early grammar pushes the child toward the addition of new words combined in new ways to express new and increasingly complex thoughts. For instance, a youngster's two-word sentences are made up of many types of words, called "open" and "pivot." The pivot words occur in fixed positions, and "push" the meaning so that as vocabulary increases, so does syntactical complexity. In this view, the pivot words are grouped together more and more as the child ages, thus allowing the child to form a variety of thoughts and expressions all based on an original idea (McShane, 1980). The child hears the pivot words from others, and imitates their sound depending on the degree and variety of need. Thus, the beginnings of verbal language arise with a combination of open and pivot words, placed arbitrary until the child learns that a certain action demands a specific response (Griffiths, in Fletcher & Garman, 1986).
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