CLA Theorists

‘Fis Phenomenon’

Berko and Brown: children can recognise a sound, but cannot reproduce or recognise their own error

Phonological Acquisition Sequence

Grunwell: children produce all sounds by 48 months (complex like ‘th’ and ‘dj’), the starting sounds are mostly bilabial by 24 months (‘p’, ‘b’, ‘m’ etc.)

addition of sounds

children add extra vowel sounds to create CVCV structure (e.g. doggie)

deletion of sounds

when a child deletes a (most often final) consonant phoneme, resulting in a simplified pronunciation of words (e.g. "ca" for "cat")

consonant cluster reduction

children delete phonemes within consonant clusters, which require advanced fine muscular control, in order to make words easier to pronounce (e.g. "pider" for "spider")

deletion of unstressed first syllable

e.g. "nana" for "banana"

substitution

one phoneme is swapped for a different phoneme, which is typically easier to pronounce (eg liquid replaced by glide "wabbit" for "rabbit".

O’Grady

most children have probably mastered most sounds by the age of four

holophrastic/one-word

singular words representing more complex desires (12-18mo)

two-word

beginning of introduction of syntax; verbs start to feature; rising inflection to ask questions; negatives with ‘no’ or ‘not’ preceding other words (18-24mo)

telegraphic stage

three words combined; add in question words; often omitted auxiliary; ‘no’ may be used mid-sentence (2y-3y)

post-telegraphic

children start using pronouns; auxiliary/determiner/prepositions start to appear; conjunctions; manipulation of tenses; questions with auxiliaries; longer noun phrases; negatives and understanding of implied negatives (3y+)

Bellugi’s pronoun use stages

1: child uses their own name
2: child recognises substitution of nouns for I/me
3: child accurately changes pronouns

inflectional suffix

A morpheme added to the end of a word to indicate grammatical features such as tense, number, or case.

derivational suffix

A morpheme added to the beginning or end of a word to create a new word or change its grammatical category.

Brown’s order of grammatical morphemes

1: present prog; plural; irregular past; possession
2: copular verbs; articles; regular past; third person
3: uncontracted auxiliary; contracted copulars

Brown’s overgeneralisation

discovered a ‘U-shaped’ development of correct use, where in the middle, children start to over-apply the rule in virtuous error, but then start to improve when they learn exceptions

Berko Wug Test

rules of grammar can be acquired intuitively by applying and generalising patterns.

hypernym/hyponym

category/example

Rescorla

cat. over: child uses hypernym instead of hyponym
cat. under: child uses hyponym instead of hypernym
analogical over: associating objects with similar features that aren’t the same

Aitchison vocabulary learning

1 LABELLING: attaching words to objects
2 PACKAGING: ascertaining boundaries of labels
3 NETWORK: children start to make connections between objects, recognising similarities and differences

Halliday’s language functions

• heuristic: find out more about environment

• representational: conveying information and fact

• imaginative: use language to create an imaginary world or construct narratives

• interactional: relationship-forming and contact with others

• instrumental: expresses child’s needs

• regulatory: telling others what to do

• personal: express opinions, feelings and identity

semantics and pragmatics

children in early stages of cognitive development may struggle with implicature, inference, politeness, turn-taking and Grice’s maxims of politeness.

children with more advanced understanding will grasp implicature, abstract concepts and ideas, evaluative concepts and deictic (relevant) words like here, them, now etc.

Piaget’s stages

SENSORIMOTOR (0-2): child will classify objects in the world; lexical choices usually concrete, not abstract; object permanence develops
PRE-OPERATIONAL (2-7): language and motor skills develop; language is egocentric, focused on child themselves.
CONCRETE OP. (7-11): children think logically about concrete events
FORMAL OP. (11+): abstract reasoning skills develop

behaviourism

Skinner: humans are conditioned in their behaviour, through positive reinforcement, and our environment teaches us what we know. believed language is acquired through imitation, practice and positive reinforcement

nativism

Chomsky: believed the capacity to develop speech was programmed into the human brain, calling this the Language Acquisition Device

interactionism

language develops as a combination of the innate ability of children and the environment in which they develop.
Bruner: Language Acquisition Support System to aid us in developing language

Critical Period Hypothesis

Lenneberg: there is a specific and limited time period (critical period) for the LAD to work successfully.

Vygotsky sociodramatic play

young children use props to support play, but when older they use their imagination instead

Garvey sociodramatic play

children adopt roles, identities, act out storylines and invent objects/settings as required by a role-play scenario