ABSTRACT
Proposed by M.D.S.Braine, the distributional analysis of utterances in child language which are devoid of reference to the utterance meaning. In pivot grammar, frequently occurring closed-class words (primarily function words. ‘pivots’ or ‘operators,’ such as more, than, also) are distinguished from open-class words (nouns, verbs, and the like). In contrast to words of the second class, ‘pivots’ determine positional restrictions: thus, in utterances of two words, they can occur either only in the first or in the second position, and may not cooccur or stand alone. For criticism of this analysis, see Miller (1976); for a revision of this analysis, cf. Braine (1976).
