When he was young, my son used to love playing cops and robbers. One day, we ran out of the house, leapt into the car like Starsky and Hutch, and as we wheel-span out of the drive, he came out with the immortal words: ‘Stay your eyes on that car in front’. The episode has entered into family folklore; he has never lived it down.
‘Stay your eyes on that car in front’ is an example of a clever mistake. It is quite a creative thing to say – certai-nly not something that a seven-year-old is ever likely to have heard – but it is also not quite right. So why did he say it? What does it tell us about his knowledge of language at the time? And why does he not say things like this now that he is an adult?
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