The segmentation problem in early language acquisition

induction process, but are the indirect result of the formation of a syntactic verb category hitherto absent. The formation of this category creates a new level of linguistic representation that conjoins roots and inflections in a rule-based way. The existing lexical representations of the word are not assimilated to this category but preserved independently. This explains the co-occurrence of correct and incorrect forms. The theory predicts the contexts in which each form will occur.