Child Language Acquisition

CLA is how children develop their language from utterances and noises to fully developed speech.

What are the key stages of acquisition?

• 0-2 months: vegetative stage

  • natural/biological responses)

  • E.g. coughing, burping, etc.

• 4-7 months: cooing.

  • Grunts, sighs becoming ‘coo’ like sounds.

  • Laughter starts.

  • Hard consonants/vowels are produced.

  • Pitch & loudness practiced.

• 6-12 months: babbling.

  • sounds liked to own language produced.

  • replicated words: mamamama.

• 9-18 months: melodic utterances.

  • speech sounds begin to show intonation patterns like rhythm and tone of real speech.

  • sounds like talking but not actual words.

• 12-18 months: holophrastic stage

  • child using single words to represent whole meanings/intentions

  • e.g. ‘milk’ meaning ‘i want milk’ or ‘there is milk’

• ~24+ months: two-word stage

  • pairs of words used to express simple ideas

  • e.g. ‘want juice’

  • shows understanding of syntax & semantic relationships (subject + verb, adjective + noun)

• 2-3 years: telegraphic stage

  • short + essential words used only

  • e.g. ‘daddy go work’

  • mostly words like nouns, verbs, adjectives

• 3+ years: post-telegraphic stage

  • speech becoming grammatically complex + accurate

  • use of function words/auxiliaries/infections and complex/compound sentences

  • e.g. ‘i’m going to the fridge because i want milk’

who is michael halliday & what are the functions of language?

• a British linguist who developed the ‘systemic functional linguistics’ (SFL)

• Instrumental: uses language to express a need,

  • e.g. “I need a fork.”

• Regulatory: uses language to direct other people,

  • e.g. “Get out of here, you stupid bird.”

• Interactional: uses language to make contact and form relationships,

  • “Would you like to be my study buddy?”

• Personal: uses language to express feelings,

  • “Sweet foods make me happy.”

• Heuristic: uses language to gain knowledge about the environment,

  • “Hey, why’s that pizza on fire?”

• imaginative: uses language to tell stories/jokes and create an imaginary world,

  • “Once upon a time, there was a vampire who fell in love.”

• Representational: uses language to convey facts or information,

  • “Did you know that pandas only eat bamboo?”

who is B.F Skinner? What is his theory and law?

• A behaviourist. In 1957, he published ‘Verbal Behaviour’, where he attempted to account for language development in humans.

• Skinner’s instrumental conditioning is the idea that organisms need reinforcement of behaviour so that they become learned:

  • Positive reinforcement: rewards are given,

  • Negative reinforcement: punishments are given.

• He created the law of effect, which states that the tendency to repeat an action is increased if it is rewarded and decreased if it isn’t, or if it is punished.

What are Skinner’s box experiments? What is behaviourism?

• Skinner learned that behaviours become habitual when desired if rewards are guaranteed (reinforcement). The steps are:

1. The hungry rat is put in an observation chamber.

2. The rat is left to roam until it accidentally knocks the lever.

3. The rat receives a food pellet as a reward.

4. The rat then repeats the action more and more so it can receive food and it comes a habit/routine.

• If an action proves to have a positive outcome, the organism will be more likely to continue/repeat the behaviour.

• If an action has a negative outcome, the organism is less likely, and won’t repeat the action.

• Behaviourism is the notion that humans (+ rats) are conditioned in terms of their behaviour.

Who are Noam Chomsky & Jean Berko Gleason? What do they believe?

• In 1959, Chomsky wrote an article that argued against Skinner’s book. A child learns language too quickly for it to be wholly dependent on Skinner’s ideas.

  • A child could say, “I want a bath”, but might not have ever heard the sentence said by somebody.

• Berko-Gleason received her doctorate at Harvard Uni in the field of psycholinguistics in 1958, then created the WUG test.

  • By presenting artificial words to children, BG showed that even in early stages of life, we can extract language rules and apply them to unfamiliar words.

• Both believe that we are born with an innate capacity for language development.

• Chomsky argued that the human brain has a ‘language acquisition device’ (LAD) which enables children to use language around them to work out what is or isn’t linguistically acceptable

• the device provides children with an innate understanding of underlying grammatical rules that govern language use.

What is the WUG test?

• The WUG test is where children can understand grammar rules and apply them to artificial words.

  • Wugs = plural of ‘wug’. What young children + adults both say.

  • Tiny wug = wuggette/wugly/wuggy, what adults say. Baby wug, what children say.

  • a man who knows how to zib is = zibbing. What adults + children both say.

  • A man whose job is zibbing = zibber, what adults say. Zib man, what children say.

What did Jean Piaget suggest?

• children can only use certain linguistic structures if they understand the involved concept.

  • for example, a child can’t use past tense if they don’t understand the concept of past time.

• as children grow, the develop an awareness of concepts from experiences and acquire the linguistic means to express the concepts.

What four stages did he propose?

Stage	Age	Key features
sensorimotor	0-2	Object permanence develops Lexical choices are usually concrete rather than abstract
pre-operational	2-7	Language and motor skills are more competent Language is egocentric (focused on themselves)
concrete operational	7-11	Children begin thinking logically about concrete events
formal operational	11+	Abstract reasoning develops

Who is Lev Vygotsky and how did his theory differ from Piaget’s?

• a soviet psychologist who was best known for his work on psychological development in children.

• His theory differs from Piaget's in a few ways:

  • more emphasis on culture affecting cognitive development (no stages like Piaget)

  • more emphasis on social factors contributing to cognitive development (which Piaget underestimated this and was criticised for it)

What did Vygotsky believe?

• learning happens because of interacting with our environment,

• We develop because we learn, not the other way around.

• Learning enhances our development level.

• To learn, we have to do tasks just outside of our reach, so we need help.

  • If it is too easy, learning isn’t encouraged;

  • If it is too hard, it is just frustrating, and no learning occurs.

What is the zone of proximal development?

• the space where we can almost do tasks, but still need help. Soon after, we can do it ourselves.

  • we can say we ‘learned something’

  • e.g. an instructor helping a child to swim because it will help them learn more than if they are to try on their own and likely drown instead

What idea did Jerome Bruner propose? What does it aim to do?

• The ‘language acquisition support system’ (LASS)

• The support provided by parents and other carers to a child’s language development.

1. gain attention: e.g. draw a baby’s attention to a picture,

2. query: e.g. ask the baby to identify what is in the picture,

3. Label: Tell the baby what the object is,

   Feedback: respond to the baby’s utterances.

what is child directed speech and what is the purpose?

• A series of speech patterns used by parents and carers when communicating with young children.

• The purpose of CDS is to:

  • attract and hold a child’s attention,

  • help the process of breaking down language into understandable chunks,

  • Make the conversation more predictable by keeping the conversation in the ‘here and now’ and referring to what the child can see.

What is simplication / emphasis / prosodics / audience participation?

simplication: substitution of hard sounds w/ easier ones Use of proper nouns instead of pronouns short sentences Use of diminutives: shortened form of a name, like ‘nick’ for ‘Nicholas’ concrete language simpler lexis	emphasis: accentuation of new information exaggerated intonation Repetition of words and clauses
Prosodics: - higher pitch pauses between words longer intervals between phrases and sentences	Audience participation: plural personal pronoun use tag questions frequent interrogatives vocative voice - directly addressing the child with their name recasting - rephrasing/extending of a child’s utterance framing - controlling the agenda; encouraging the child to ‘fill in the blanks’