pivot (n.)

A term introduced into language ACQUISITION studies of the 1960s, to refer to a primitive WORD-CLASS thought to characterize the early two-word combinations produced by children. Analysis of these combinations suggested that children used a few words very frequently, and in a fixed position, e.g. my daddy, my car, my drink; shoe gone, car gone, etc. These common elements were seen as ‘pivots’ on which the rest of a SENTENCE (the ‘OPEN-class’ word) depended, the STRUCTURE of the whole SENTENCE being seen as either Pivot + Open or Open + Pivot. This analysis is no longer popular, for several reasons (e.g. it fails to relate to the analysis of adult grammatical structures, ignores the SEMANTIC structure of such sentences, and seems to apply to only certain types of sentence in certain children).