Bricks need  .  .  .

               MORTAR!             

Bricks need mortar!

Without mortar, bricks will crumble and fall. 

Language has “mortar” too!  It’s called

GRAMMAR

In the speech therapy world, grammar is also referred to as “grammatical morphology” or “inflections.”

It is  all the little word-endings and small bits of words that we put before and after the vocabulary words to string them together.

Adding grammar or inflections changes the meaning of the vocabulary word.  

Here is an example.  Adding various grammar  to the vocabulary word “jump” can result in:

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • jumping
                                  • jumped
                                  • jumps
                                  • is jumping
                                  • was jumping
                                  • a jump,
                                  • the jump

Requirement #2:  WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND & EXTRACT MEANING FROM  GRAMMAR

To understand what we hear, we must be able to extract meaning from VOCABULARY –and– extract meaning from GRAMMAR