Talk:epilinguistic

Epilinguistic, pertains to the study in languages of intuitive awareness. Karmiloff-Smith (1979) distinguished two kinds of data for the study of child language development: epilinguistic data and metalinguistic data. Both involve awareness but of different kinds. Epilinguistic behavior arises when a child can demonstrate intuitive awareness of implicit grammatical rules (e.g., gender concord or the use of one article in preference to another). Karmiloff-Smith suggested that this type of behavior is evident when the child can recognize instantly that a sentence is ungrammatical. On the other hand, metalinguistic behavior is evident when the child has conscious awareness of why a sentence is ungrammatical and can demonstrate this understanding with an explanation for the ungrammaticality.