Child language acquisition

overextension

applying a word to a wider collection of objects and events than is appropriate

Example of overextension (categorical)

Referring to all four legged animals such as dogs, cows and horses as cats.

Categorical overextension

extend a known word to other words in the same category (eg. dog to horse because both four leg animals)

Analogical overextension

Associating objects which are unrelated but which have one or more features in common (e.g. both being the same colour)

Example of analogical overextension

Confusing a cat with any soft material because of the way they feel

underextension

the failure to apply a new word more generally to objects that are included within the meaning of the word

example of underextension

Using 'white' to describe snow but confused when paper is described as white also

Percent of first words that are nouns

60%

Ratio of nouns to verbs in dictionary

5:1

Mismatch

Seeing a duck in a pond and then saying duck when you see a pond as you are assuming a pond must always have ducks.

Reasearcher for common development in child language acquisition (extension etc)

Leslie Rescorla (1980)

researcher for stages of negation

Ursula Bellugi (1966)

researcher for question acquisition

Ursula Bellugi

researchers for children not hearing themselves the way they hear others - fis (fish) phenomenon

Brown and Berko (1960)

researcher for phonemic acquisition

Pamela Grunwell

researcher for why children speak

Halliday

researcher for practising functions (without adults)

John Dore (1973)

researcher into necessity of form of input (Jim deaf child)

DeVilliers and DeVilliers

researcher into pronoun use

Ursula Bellugi

stage 1 pronoun acquisition

use name rather than a pronoun

stage 1 pronoun acquisition example

Violet go now for I go now

stage 2 pronoun acquisition

recognise difference between subject and object pronouns but not apply correctly,

bound morphemes

units of meaning within a word that depend on other morphemes to make sense (eg. est in greatest)

unbound morphemes

units of meaning which can stand alone, such as whole words (eg. great)

mean length of utterance (MLU)

the average number of morphemes per sentence

stage 3 pronoun acquisition

child applies subject and object pronouns correctly

Researcher for identification of three stages of child acquisition

Jean Aitchison

Three staged of child acquisition

Labelling, packaging and network building

pseudo words

fake words

packaging

Exploring what labels can apply to. Over/under extension occurs in order to understand the range of a word's meaning

network building

Making connections between words - understanding similarities and opposites in meanings

labelling

Linking words to and Understanding that objects can be labelled

Wug test

children have more sophisticated understanding of morphology than they have been explicitly taught, used pseudo words and 76% 4/5yr old children were able to pluralise the verb correctly (suggests understanding of grammar rules which are transferable)

Wug test researcher

Jean Berko (1958)

closed questions

yes or no questions

dummy auxiliary

to do

open questions

questions that allow for a variety of extended responses

stage 1 closed questions

rely on intonation to suggest question

stage 1 closed questions example

sit chair?

stage 2 closed questions

more grammar included, still rely on intonation, 3-4 words

stage 2 closed questions example

I have it?

stage 3 closed questions

more grammar included, no longer rely on intonation, dummy auxiliary appears, over 4 words

stage 3 closed questions example

Can I sit on chair?

stage 1 negation

no/not at the START of sentence, no auxiliary, no copula to be

stage 1 negation example

no catch me

stage 2 negation

no/not used INSIDE sentence, no to be, affirmative of can, will, do never appear but can't, don't, won't does, quite adult

stage 3 negation

auxiliary verbs appear in affirmative and negative, to be occurs more frequently

stage 2 negation example

he not catch me

stage 3 negation example

he can't catch me

Researcher for milestones of early development

David Crystal

Researcher for types of first words children produce

Katherine Nelson (1973)

Instrumental, Regulatory, Interactional, Personal, Heuristic, Imaginative, Representational

Halliday's 7 sentence functions

Language used to influence the behaviour of others

regulatory

language used to fulfil a need

instrumental

language used to develop and maintain social relationships

interactional

language used to convey individual and personal identity

personal

language used to learn about the environment

heuristic

language used to create an imaginary world (predominantly seen in play)

imaginative

language used to convey facts and information

representational

researcher that proved you could create conditioning around an object or event

Pavlov

Behaviorism

learning theory that actions are a response to external factors

researchers to prove children can be conditioned to respond to something in a certain way

Watson and Rayner (1920)

Watson and Rayners research

'Little Albert' experiment, react neutrally to rats, then played loud noise as touched rats which established a fear of rats

researcher for imitation of violent behaviour

Albert Bandura (1989)

Albert Bandura research

Bobo dolls experiment. Children watched violent play with bobo dolls and were then more likely to imitate the behaviour having watched it

Pavlov's research

dogs salivated when bell sound as previously offered food at bell sound

when we mean something, not explicitly described, in what we say

implicature

when we interpret what others say

inference

using the correct words and phrases to be polite

politeness

the ability to turn take, which is knowing when to speak

conversational management

IMINPOCON

pragmatics

child directed language phonetic qualities

higher pitch, more frequent questioning, slower speaking, CVCV vocal, singsong voice

child directed speech grammatical qualities

avoidance of pronouns, repeated sentence frames, recast child's language, provision of correct word

pragmatic qualities of CDS

sustaining a monologue before children speak, working very hard in the early stages to maintain conversation, frequent use of child name, keep conversation predictable, frequent use of questions

researcher who found children of mothers who talk more have large vocabularies

Clarke-Stewart (1973)

researcher who found children in holophrastic stage who were corrected on word choice/pronunciation frequently advanced slower

Katherine Nelson (1973)

Researchers found parents respond to truth of child language rather than grammatical correctness

Brown, Bellugi, Cazden (1969)

grammatical qualities of CDS

Simpler constructions, frequent imperatives, repetition, personal names, fewer verbs, modifiers and adjectives

breaks language into meaningful chunks, child feels important in address, nurturing approach that recognises language is difficult

argument for CDS for child language development

not simple for children (questions are very complex), speech communities where CDS, there are communities which never use CDS and children still fully acquire language

argument against CDS for child language development

grapheme

the letter or blend of letters that represent a sound (eg. s or ch)

phoneme

the sound of a letter or blend of letters within a word

phoneme-grapheme correspondence

the ability to connect the sound of a word with the spelling

Katherine Nelson concepts first words express

naming, actions, describing, personal words

hypernyms

words that label categories (eg. animals)

hyponyms

words that can be included in a larger, more general category (e.g. cat, dog).

researcher for inflections

Roger Brown (1973)

researcher for study of meaning relations of two word phrases

Roger Brown (1970s)

stage 1 development of grammar, syntax and morphology (15-30 months)

no bound morphemes, MLU 1.75, correct word order

stage 2 development of grammar, syntax and morphology (28-36 months)

bound morphemes start, present participle -ing, regular -s plurals start, MLU 2.25

stage 3 development of grammar, syntax and morphology (36-42 months)

possessives start, MLU 2.75, adjectives/adverbs start, articles a and the start

stage 4 development of grammar, syntax and morphology (40-46 months)

regular past tense -ed, MLU 3.5

stage 5 development of grammar, syntax and morphology (42-53 months)

compound sentences, MLU 4

stage 4 question acquisition

tag questions (used to aid conversation - children learn this pragmatic later)

daddy kick

agent+action

dad ball

agent+affected

dad big

entity+attribute

throw ball

action+affected

sit chair

action+location

chair floor

entity+location