Question

Overgeneralization, as in when children learning language make an irregular past tense verb regular by adding a past tense morpheme, illustrates how the __________________________ works.

a. usage-based theory

b. competition model

c. connectionist theory

d. intentionality model

Answer 1

The answer is: b. competition model

According to the competition model, at the earlier period when people try to learn different language structure, the information that people learn will compete/conflicting with one another.

This phenomenon explain the irregularity that occurs among children when they're trying to use past tense. Since the information about different sentences overlapping in their head, they sometimes overgeneralize some words as if they belong in the same tenses.