Language Development in Children: Key Concepts and Factors

Nonliteral language

Understanding metaphors, irony, and idioms.

Accent influence

Peers impact children's accents in new environments.

Lexical development

Improvement in word formation and contextual learning.

Inflectional morpheme

Adds grammatical meaning without changing the word.

Derivational morpheme

Creates new words with prefixes or suffixes.

Compounding morpheme

Combines two existing words into one new word.

Conversational style

5th graders focus on facts; teens on emotions.

Boys' conversational style

Hierarchical, competitive for dominance in groups.

Girls' conversational style

Non-competitive groups focused on social status.

Cohesion

Linguistic devices link sentences in storytelling.

Coherence

Meaningful sequence of events in a story.

Story grammar

Structure that mainstream Western stories follow.

Noun compounding

Combining words to create a new noun phrase.

Comprehension monitoring

Evaluating one's own understanding of information.

Nonliteral example

Heart sank—feeling, not a physical action.

Phonological awareness

Predicts long-term reading and spelling skills.

Decontextualized language

Words stand alone without nonlinguistic support.

Sign languages

Natural languages with grammar like spoken language.

ASL language acquisition

Deaf children learn language like hearing peers.

Deaf language development

Methods include sign language and oralist approaches.

Reading in deaf children

Associating written words with meanings, like hearing peers.

Cochlear implants

Early implants improve language and hearing outcomes.

Blind phonological development

Fewer words for visible objects, more for sounds.

Cognitive-linguistic relationship

Cognitive impairments often lead to language delays.

Down Syndrome strengths

Strength in communicative and pragmatic development.

Autism language development

Affected communicative competence and limited conversation topics.

Specific language impairment (SLI)

Characterized by noticeable language delays in children.