Read the following statements and choose the correct option : Assertion (A) :…
2023
Read the following statements and choose the correct option :
Assertion (A) : A child in his early childhood stage uses more verbs than nouns and ignores the grammar rules. Reason (R) : They lack vocabulary range.
- A.
(A) is true, but (R) is false.
- B.
Both (A) and (R) are true, but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).
- C.
(A) is false, but (R) is true.
- D.
Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D
A child's spoken output in early childhood is shaped directly by the size of the vocabulary they have available. A restricted vocabulary produces two linked effects: the child relies on high-utility action words to convey meaning economically, and — lacking enough word exemplars to have internalised the target language's grammar system — the child disregards or overgeneralises its rules. This vocabulary-constrains-speech principle is the standard explanation used in child-development-and-pedagogy material for early telegraphic/holophrastic speech.
Applying this to the pair given here: Assertion (A) states that an early-childhood child favours verbs over nouns and disregards grammar rules, and Reason (R) states that this happens because the child lacks vocabulary range. A restricted vocabulary is exactly the mechanism that pushes a child toward economical, high-utility verbs and simultaneously leaves too few exemplars for the grammar system to be internalised — so (R) supplies the direct explanation for (A). Both statements hold, and (R) explains (A).
Treating (A) as true but (R) as false would require the verb-preference and grammar disregard to come from some driver other than vocabulary size — no alternative driver is indicated in the pair, so this reading does not fit.
Treating both statements as true but denying that (R) explains (A) would require the vocabulary limit and the speech pattern to be unrelated facts running side by side — but a restricted vocabulary is the standard cited mechanism for exactly this pattern, so an unrelated reading does not fit.
Treating (A) as false but (R) as true would mean an early-childhood child does not show the verb-preference/grammar-disregard pattern at all despite a genuinely limited vocabulary — that denies a well-documented feature of this speech stage.
Note: some psycholinguistics research on first-word vocabularies documents an initial 'noun bias' (nouns outnumbering verb types early on), which looks at word-type counts rather than the broader usage-pattern claim in (A); this narrower research finding does not override the answer confirmed by the official CTET (August 2023, Paper II) and CBSE Class X Home Science answer keys for this exact assertion-reason pair.