Ming explains how children learn language in whole chunks like "let's walk the dog" and store them as single units. They may use these chunks in wrong contexts or with different meanings than intended, creating a gap between the form they learned and what they're actually trying to say.
Gestalt is you learn the whole thing. It's like let's walk the dog. It becomes the default meaning for taking the dog out. If you watch Terminator, Asta Vista baby, right? I don't know what that means. I can't even say it correctly. I don't know how to separate those words. It's just a chunk to me, and it's the same to a lot of children. What is the crux of this problem is that when you learn these chunks, children are using it in the wrong language context. When we think about words, we call it language form meaning, what word are we using? Example of let's swap. Walk the dog, right? When you say let's walk the dog, the meaning the form is let's walk the dog. That's the sentence length. That's the words that they use. But the meaning and the use of it. The child might get it wrong because that's the only form they have. So when they say let's walk the dog, it might mean that I want to go take a walk, whether if there's a dog or not. It might also mean that the dog looks tired or the dog's hungry.
