Child Language Acquisition
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N·awww so cute! Aren·t you lil baba? Ahem... anyway. Child Language Lang uage Acquisiti Acq uisition on while it is not no t as difficult as its counterpart of Language Change this topic isn·t to be underestimated however. There are lots of theories that can be applied to a piece of data. So many processes and stages to remember so don·t take this lightly. By the end you may just want to kick a baby ... no, just me then? Great... ______________________________ __________________________________________ __________________________________ __________________________________ ______________ __ Speaking Acquisition Phonology
So this studies how those cute little babies actually learn how to articulate certain sounds and eventually mash them all together to create words that we understand. It·s a fascinating process to say the least and one you will have to understand for the exam. Stage 1(0-2Months) Basic Biological Noises - These are noises that reflect biological occurrences in the baby such as crying due to hunger, pain or discomfort. This is categorised as Reflexive Noises Breathing, eating, swallowing and coughing etc. are known as Vegetative Noises Stage 2 (2-5Months) Cooing and Laughing ² Cooing noises are generally initiated when the child is comfortable. To begin with this sound develops de velops alongside crying but eventually eventua lly the child learns to respond to their mother·s speech or smiles. Cooing itself is quieter than crying and are a re shorter bursts of vowel-like vowel-like sounds with a possible consonant quality at the back of the mouth. At 4 months the first throaty chuckles begin and laughs begin to emerge! Stage 3 (5-8 Months) Vocal Play ² In comparison to Cooing, vocal play is normally steadier and longer. Vocal play normally lasts for 1 second with consonant + vowel-like sequences that are frequently repeated. Intonation goes from low to high and vice versa. Nasal and fricative sounds are made in various parts of the mouth. Studies have shown that this is a period of practice of vocalisation for the child. Stage 4 (7-13 Months) Babbling ² Babbling is much less varied than vocal play. A smaller set of sounds are used which accommodate the native language of the child. Reduplicated Babblingis Babblingis firstly used which involves only a couple of sounds such as [bababa]
Berko
Child Adult Child Adult Child
& Brown (1960)
The ´FISµ Phenomeno n
fis This is your fis? No-my fis h, this is your fish? Yes, my fis
This experiment shows that even though the child could not pronounce the / sound, he was able to detect that it was di fferent than the phoneme /s/. So it shows that children have less phonetic rules in their speech than adults.
The ¶FIS· Phenomenon Phenomenon shows that children are ab le to produce more phonemes than they can understand
Cruttenden
(1974)
Intonation Experiment (Football)
Used adults, teenagers and young chi ldren and asked them to try and predict the football results win, draw or a loss using only the intonation of the first team announcement. Adults were more successful at this task; children 7-11 were largely unsuccessful. unsuccessful. Teenagers d id better than the children b ut did significantly worse than the adults.
This shows that children, even into the teenage years, are stil l learning to recognise intonation and stress patterns in speech!
Lexis/Semantics
Age 1 2 3 4 5 7 11
Average Size of Vocabulary 100 300 700 1200 3000 4000 40,000 possibly?
e can already see that children learn and incredible amount of words in a relatively short amount of time. ost of these words begin as words that describe the immediate environment around them, children are said to be egocentric at this point po int in their learning.
Children between the ages of 12 months and 18 months will start to use words but in a more creative way, they may use the word even if they don·t know specifically what it means. ² This is when a child uses a word in a restricted way. For example exa mple when a child says ¶hat· she may only mean the hat S E wears not anyone else·s. Overextension ² Overextension ² hen a child uses a word to refer to several but related things such as if a child says ¶cat· they may mean anything that has a tail dogs, monkey, fox Underextension
exical/Semantic Lexical/S
Theory
Nelson (1973)
ategories Categ
18 ch d n w
1 2 3 4 5
ud d and N
n a ang d h w d n
of the first 50 words spoken
h
5 ca g
:
Cla Ob c (d g h ball) p c c Ob c (Mumm Dadd ) c n /Ev n (g v p up) M d ng Th ng (d nc ) , no) nal/ c al (h llo, b b ,
wa also ound ha words ha describe something that can be touched were most common in the irst 50 words learnt.
Grammar
Th u ha d
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g amma a n an a h k dd w nk
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a n n h Eng h anguag and mu b
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v n
Holophrastic olophrastic Stage tage
H ph a a n w d u anc ha p a c mp d a and p m h am unc n a an n n nc w u d F amp wh n a ch d a dd ma m an a numb h ng c ud b a d ca a v ´h m dd µ c u d b an n ga v ´wh m dd ?µ an mp a v ´g m dd µ an c ama v ´ h m dd g a µ a gv w nn dc n ua c u and d c ph h n n n h h ph a h ch d ha u d
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u 2 w d n c n unc n w h n an h h d n ma ma u h w w d n a numb
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m an ng and n ma c n a n 2/3 b Ob c ) O
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= ub c + = ub c +
h c mp n n n
d d
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3 4 w d c mb na n h
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´M k wan cupµ ´d gg naugh µ
h ba c b ck n nc ( ub c
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Tel Telegraphi egraphicc Stage tage ab u 2 a ag ch d n a h g aph c ag
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= ub c + b = b + Ob c µ = ub c + Ob c = ub c + mp m n
Th a c mp
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´d g unn ngµ ´ ba µ ´dadd d nn ´d d µ
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T he Tw o W ord ord Stage tage ab u 18 m n h ch d n w b g n b g nn ng g amma n h anguag wa :
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b + Ob c b + mp m n
nd ca
h b g nn ng
Children at this point will still omit functional words such as prepositions, determiners and auxiliary verbs. After
the Age of 5... Children will begin to use the following grammatical constructions - Coordination Conjunctions - Negatives - Questions - Inflections
Grammatical
Brown
Theory
(1973)
Acquiring Inflections
Children tend to acquire inflections in grammar i n this particular order Present participle ´-ingµ = ´I goingµ Plural ´-sµ = ´bricksµ Possessive ¶s = ´ ike·s bearµ eterm eterminers/Prepositions a, the = ´Get the ballµ Past tense ´-edµ = ´I hugged itµ Third Person Singular verb´-sµ verb´-sµ = ´She loves meµ uxiliary ´beµ = ´It is sunny
This process takes place d uring 2-3 2-3 years of age!
Berko
(1958)
The ¶Wug· Test
Children were shown a picture of a strange creature and told it was a ug.Then they were shown 2 of these creatures. They were told ´Now there·s another one, there are two ___µ The child ren aged 3 and above answered by saying there were two ugs.
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The children had never heard of a ug before, so when they used the pl ural form itproved that at this age grammatical rules were no longer imitated.
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To hear the grammatical rule being used so often and then for it to become second nature is known as internalisation
Pragmatics
Children learn how to interact with others at an early age. Even with the game of peek-a-boo children begin to learn the rules of turn taking and the form of early social interaction, also caregivers may respond to a baby·s babbling as if they were having a conversation so already there·s interaction between child and caregiver. As children grow older they will start to develop more conventions of conversation including politeness features, turn taking, adjacency pairs and opening and closing sequences. In addition to
this Non Verbal Communication NVC develops as well allowing children to make hand and face gestures according to what they are saying. «
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Pragmatic Theory
Halliday
(1975)
The Seven Functions of Children·s Language
Hallida y
believed that children use languag e in the following ways for thefollowing thefollowing purposes
Instrumental ² to get something ´toiletµ Regulatory ² to make requests or give orders ´not your teddyµ Interactional ² to relate to others ´nice mummyµ Personal ² to express views and feelings ´bad kittyµ Heuristic ² to find out about the immediate environment ´what that?µ Imaginative ² language that comes about through play, storytelling etc. Representational ² to convey information ´I·m threeµ
Theories of Language Development Development
So, the next question is how do children learn all of these sounds and rules in a matter of years? 4 different theories have been put across to attempt to explain how children do learn language at all.
Skinner (1957)
The Imitation Theory
Skinner suggested that children learn languag e through imitation ation and reinforcement. reinforcement. He argued - Children repeat what they hear - Caregivers reward a child· s effort with praise - When correcting mistakes, reinforcement is used by repeating the correct word
Specific pronunciations of individual words are acquired bycopying by copying an adult. This theory explains an important part of their phonological development However,
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there are flaws with this theory Children can construct sentences they·ve never heard before; so they aren·t alwa ys imitating They don·t memorise 1000 s of sentences; so so their development ca nnot be exclusively based on repeating what they·ve heard from their parents Imitations cannot explain overgeneralisations Imitation cannot explain the ¶fis· phenomenon ª
C homsky
(1965)
The Innate Theory
Chomsky believed that unlike imitation, language acq uisition was inbuilt.
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He
suggests that each child has a Language Acquisition evice ( LAD LAD ) which allows them to take in and then use grammatical rules that a re spoken where they live This theory explai explai ns how children make overgeneralisations in language a nd why inflections are learnt in a specific order All children pa ss through the same same early stages of la nguage acquisition before refining their sounds to their native native languag e However this theory does underestimate underestimate the significance of Skinner·s arg ument of Imitation
Piaget (1980)
The Cognitive Theory
Piaget claimed tha t instead of languag e acquisition being innate it was more to do with the mental process and once a child a cquires certain mental capabiliti es, then it can begin to acq uire the language.
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Bruner
At first a child can·t mentally p rocess the concept concept of something that exi sts outside their immediate surroundings. This is called beingegocentric being egocentric At 18 months old children realise that that things have object perm per manence ² they will always exist even if the child cannot see them. This coincides with a big increase in vocabulary Through this development a child is better equipped to understand abstract concepts such as past, p resent and future However, the theory cannot explai explai n how those with learning difficulties are still linguisticall y fluent ² this means that cognitive development and languag e development aren·t as closely linked
(1983)
The Input Theory
Bruner believed that in order for language to develop p roperly there has to be linguistic interaction with caregivers.
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Bruner believes that there is a Language Acquisition Support System Syste m ( LA SS)this system is used by LA SS)this caregivers aid a child·s linguistic development in social situations There are clear patterns of interaction between child and carer in everyday social situations such as meal time, playtime and bat time for example When children a sk questions it shows evid ence of successful linguistic linguistic support from the ca rer
CDS
² (Child Directed Speech)
Have ou ever noticed how adults will often talk to babies in a really odd kind of voice? This odd· sounding voice is called CD or motherese. ut this type of voice isn·t yet known to actually aid the child in language development. ®
¯
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±
honology Phonology
ntonation is exaggerated and words are stressed more strongly than they are in adult conversation, the pitch is also higher. Words and phrases are often repeated and the pace is often much slower with longer pauses than in adult speech. ²
Le
is ocabulary is simplified, reduplication is often used in association of certain things ´choo chooµ (Train) ´moo mooµ (cow). They also use diminutives (addition of suffix) such as ´birdieµ or ´fishyµ. high proportion of these words will normally refer to ob ects that can be seen or touched. ³
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¶
Grammar
entence structure is simplified and function words (e.g. auxiliary verbs) are often omitted. The resent tense will replace the past tense; hence they will only talk about what is happening now. ·
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Caregivers will use CD often to encourage the child to respond and to teach them how dialogue works. The early conversations, at about the age of 2, are normally initiated and maintained by adults. During the ages of 2 4 children learn a lot about the rules of conversation, such as turn taking, they also begin to respond in a way that enables the conversation to continue. Of course the classroom setting also teaches children a lot of things, one of th ese is formality. When in the classroom they are pushed to speak in a more formal manner than they would in the playground for example. ut it is hard for children of a young age to talk with other children as at nursery for example, children will only have 300 words to be able to communicate with, and with little pragmatic understanding at this age it is difficult for any child to maintain conversation with another child. The conversation is normally ust a series of short statements, which sometimes, aren·t even related to each other. This is known as close losed c d conve onversations rsations.. ·
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eading Reading
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Acquisition
Learning to read for a child is like trying to decode a series of strange graphemes you·ve never ever seen before. o it can be tricky for them, but somehow, children are still able to decode these little graphemes and learn to read entirely! ¼
Different books have different purposes for the reader if they are aged at a young age, if a question in the exam asks about a children·s book then you·re going to have to know what the purpose of the book is in relation to reading acquisition. For
T oddle oddlers 0 18 ½
¾
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onths)
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Books
for toddlers aim to help speech development by providing pictures for children to label ob ects These are normally based around hypernyms (weather, clothes, animals etc.) and provide then relevant hyponyms (rain, socks, dogs etc.) Nouns and djectives are the most common word class in early books À
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Á
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For
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2 5 years) years) Early story books are designed to be read to children NOT by them! They contain complicated words and grammatical structures. Children·s understanding of words and structures is ahead of their ability to use them (F henomenon) Â
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For
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5 7 years) years) Books for young children aim to be enjoyable and are an act of shared experience. They aim to introduce children to storytelli ng! For
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8 years years onw onw ards) ards) At the age of 8 children become independent readers ... Woo É
Well it·s all well and good if the children are able to b egin reading but how do they really get down to the nitty gritty and deconstruct the words they see in front of them? Well, there are a number of methods and not all of them require skill... Looking at the shapes of words and linking them to familiar graphemes to interpret the sound of the word Semantic mantic Understanding the meanings of words and making connections between words in order to decode new ones Visu Visual Looking at pictures to interpret unfamiliar words or ideas ntactic tic Applying knowledge of word order/word classes to work out if a word Syntac sounds· right Cont e t ual earching for understanding from the situation of the story Miscue Miscue When a child makes an error they may guess similar looking words or words from a picture the cheating sods! Graphophonic raphophonic
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Chall (1983) Stage
0
Stage
1
Stag tages of Reading eading Development
re-reading and pseudo reading
Up to 6
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nitial reading and decoding
6-7
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Î
Ï
Stage
2
Confirmation and Fluency
7-8
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Preten retend
rea reading ding and word rec gnitionn letter and recognitio Predic redicting ting sing single le words or next stag stage e of story Rea Reading ding simp simple le texts containing high frequ freque ency ncy lexis Estima stimatio tionn of 600 words words understood understood Rea Reading ding texts more qui quickly, ckly, accur accurately and and flu fluently Paying ying more more atten ttention tion to the words and and meani aning of the texts Estima stimatio tionn of 3000 words words understood understood Rea Reading ding for kno knowledg ledge and and informa formatio tionn be becomes the motiva otivatio tionn Some
Stage
3
Reading for Learning
9-14
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Stage
4
Multiplicity and Complexity
14-17
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Resp Responding ding criti critica cally lly to what what they have have rea read and and analysi analysing ng texts
Stage
5
Construction and Reconstruction
18+
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Rea Reading ding selec selectiv tively and and form forming opinion ions abo about what what they have have rea read
When
1. 2. 3. 4.
5. 6.
looking at books in the exam there might be a few things worth to note about. Look at... The Characters Chara cters ² Normally animals rather than humans The Breaking of Stereotypes ² ice or small creatures tend to be the heroes in stories The Coining of New Words ² ´Gruffaloµ why does the writer do this? What·t the purpose behind it? Poetic Phonological evices ² Helps children to remember words when reading them out aloud ² Rhythmic patterns p atterns helps the child with future storytelling ² U ² Use of plosive alliterative choices ´terrible teethµ ² Repeated Repea ted structure emphasises phrase structure, helping to extend vocabulary irect Speech ² ifferent voices for each characters ² Repetition of syntactic structures Graphology ² Where is the picture? If Left it aims to d raw attention first ² Any facial fa cial features in the story? ² Text/ Text/Image cohesion ² Pictures help the children to understand fully what the lexis means! Ð
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________________________ ___________________________________ _______________________ __________________________________ _______________________________ _________ Writing Acquisition hh we are nearly there now, just a little more theory to do with writing then we·re done. But just imagine it, as a child you are learning to speak, read and write ALL at around the same time, it·s just crazy isn·t it? Ò
Kroll (1981)
Stages of Writing Acquisition
1. The Preparatory Stage 0-18 onths ² Children d evelop their motor skills needed for writing ² They begin to learn the ba sics of the spelling system 2. The Consolidation Stage 6-8 Years ² Children write in the same way that they speak ² They use lots of colloquial isms ² They use short declarative statements and familia r conjunctions like ´andµ ² They b egin to express id eas in the form of sentences, though though without much p unctuation and without knowing how to finish off the sentence 3. The Differentiation ifferentiation Stage 8-15 Years ² Children become awa re of differences between spoken and written mode - Begin to understand di fferent fferent genres - They begin t o use more complex grammar and sentence structures structures ² Punctuation becomes more accurate and consistent 4. The Integration Stage 15+ Years - Writing becomes accurate with a wide vocabulary a nd more accurate spelli ng - Children can cha nge languag e style depending depending on audience audience and purpose - General story writing skills improve - They develop a personal writing style Ô
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THE GREAT CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUIS UISITION TIMELINE And
here it is. My masterpiece! Since there is so much to learn in terms of dates of children thought ·d help you guys out by creating a little something special to help for revision. Enjoy! Ü
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AGE
KEY E ENTS Ý
0 Þ
1
Basic Biological Noises Cooing and Laughing ocal Play Holophrastic Stage Reading books for Toddlers (Just Pictures) Preparatory Stage of Writing Babbling Melodic Utterance Avg. Size of ocab 100 Overexte nsion/Underextension begin Two-Word Stage Beginnings of Pragmatic understanding Understanding of Object Permanence Avg. Size of ocab 300 Telegraphic Stage Brown·s Theory of Acquisitio n of nflections begins Conversations are maintained by Adults Early Story Books begin to be read to them Pre Reading and Pseudo Reading (Stage 0 Chall) Avg. Size of ocab 700 Grammatical nternalisation (Wug Test) Avg. Size of ocab 1200 Begin to understand the Rules of Turn taking Avg. Size of ocab 3000 Begin reading books for enjoyment All owels and Consonants Understood nitial Reading and Decoding (Stage 1 Chall) Consolidation Stage (Kroll) Avg. Size of ocab 4000 Confirmation and Fluency (Stage 2 Chall) ndependent Readers Differentiation Stage (Kroll) Reading for Learning (Stage 3 Chall) Avg. Size of ocab 40,000 14 17 Multiplicity and Complexity (Stage 4 Chall) 15+ ntegration Stage (Kroll) 18+ Construction and Reconstruction (Stage 5 Chall) Þ
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4 5 6
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7 8 9 11+
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