Unit 1 AOS2 English language SAC

Theory of Universal Grammar

Chomsky proposes that children are born with innate knowledge about the structure of language, which allows them to adopt any language. He posits that children are born with a LAD

Usage based theory

The theory that children learn language through social interaction and language learning results form accumulation of knowledge and skills gained throughout the child's life

Imitation

  Children mimic others in earlier developmental stages of language acquisition. When a caregiver points out an object, babies tend to copy gestures long before they can name an object.

Corrective feedback

Primary caregivers providing corrective feedback is important to correct language errors. Caregivers are unlikely to directly point this out, but instead recast what the child has said, but using standard grammar.

Infant directed speech

The way a caregiver speaks to a child helps their development of language. Caregivers usually use a higher pitch, exaggerated intonation, simple vocabulary and speak more slowly – all of which can help child language acquisition.

Intention reading

accumulated skills help children to intention read as they interact with adults. Intention reading occurs when a child determines the communicative goals or intentions of the adult speaker.

Pattern finding

Involves a child recognizing patterns in language which allows them to create linguistic schemas or constructions.

Analogy

Cognitive processes that involve recognizing and comparing similar characteristics in 2 different components of language.

Elision

Often when an adult word ends in a consonant, a child will simply miss out the consonant, as in ‘ca’ for ‘cat’. In words of more than one syllable the beginning of the word is more likely to be deleted than the end.

Substitution

This is where the child substitutes one sound for another. For example, when ‘cat’ becomes ‘tat’. Often children will avoid consonants that involve friction (the ‘sh’ in ‘ship’) in favour of one involving a stopped sound (the ‘t’ in ‘top’). So ‘ship’ might come out ‘tip’. This often happens when children are having difficulties with consonant clusters.

Insertion

This often involves the addition of an extra vowel sound to the end of a word. So, adult ‘egg’, might become ‘egu’

Assimilation

This happens when one consonant or vowel becomes similar to another, as in ‘gog’ for ‘dog’

Voiceless stops

This is the process of replacing a voiced stop with a voiceless one for example, swapping /g/ for /k/. Children prefer using voiceless stops at the ends of words so ‘pig’ might become ‘bik’

Voiced stops

The opposite of voiceless stops. At the beginning of words, children are more likely to voice an unvoiced consonant, as in ‘pig’ becoming ‘bik’

Reduplication

This refers to the repetition of the whole syllable, as in ‘choo-choo’. This has become a recognized feature of child talk.

Holophrastic stage - Age

1 - 1.5

Holophrastic stage - Phonological features

o   Accurately imitates some words

o   Uses most vowels and consonants(‘no’) or reduplicated consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel words(‘bye-bye’)

o   Omits some final and some initial consonants(‘boo’ for ‘boot’)

Holophrastic stage - Lexical feature

o   50% of all utterances are nouns

o   Has an average expressive vocabulary of up to 100 words by 18 months

Holophrastic stage - Syntactic feature

Mean length of utterance is only 1 or 2 words

Holophrastic stage - Semantic feature

o   Comprehends approximately 200 words by 18 months

o   Follows simple one-step commands

o   Points to recognised objects

o   Points to wanted objects

o   Begins to claim certain objects

o   Points to 1 – 3 body parts on command

o   Identifies 2 or more objects or pictures from a group

o   Perceives others’ emotions

Two word stage - Age

1.5 - 2 years

Two word stage - Phonological feature

o   Words increase in frequency

o   Use intonation when asking questions

o   Emerging use of consonant-vowel-consonant words (dog, cup, cat)

Two word stage - Morphological feature

o   Use of possessive emerging (‘nanna car’)

Two-word stage - Lexical feature

o   Approximately 33% of utterances are nouns

o   Has an average expressive vocabulary of 200 to 300 words by 24 months

o   Begins to use some verbs and adjectives

Two word stage - Syntactic feature

o   Combines 2 words into noun + verb or noun + adjective format

o   Utterances are telegraphic with few grammatical markers(the)

o   Mean length of utterance is 1.8 words

Two word stage - Semantic feature

o   Comprehends approximately 300 words

o   Says own name on request

o   Responds to yes/no questions

o   Understands and utters semantic relations, including

§  Agent – action (‘mummy go’)

§  Agent – object (‘daddy ball’)

§  Action – object (‘blow balloon’)

§  Action – location (‘come here’)

§  Entity – location (‘spoon in’)

§  Possessor – possession (‘my dolly’)

§  Demonstrative – entity (‘that puppy’)

§  Attribute – entity (‘big truck’)

Whole object assumption

o   Children often refer to the whole object, not part of it or a quality the object possesses.

Overgeneralization

o   Semantic overgeneralization is when children apply a grammatical rule (like forming past tense verbs by adding -ed) too widely (resulting in non-standard words like eated).

Undergeneralization

o   Semantic undergeneralization is when a child uses a word in a more limited way than adults do to refer to a smaller set of entities than it properly describes.

Language productivity

o   Conversion is when the word class changes but the original form doesn’t

o   To butter the bread

o   Pass me the butter

Telegraphic stage - Age

2 - 2.5 years

Telegraphic stage - phonological feature

o   Consonants mastered: p, t, k, m, n, y, h

o   May omit final consonants, reduce consonant blends; substitute one consonant for another e.g., ‘sops’ for ‘shops’

Telegraphic stage - Morphological feature

o Uses present ‘ing’ on verbal

o Regular plural forms emerging, e.g., ‘dog’ – ‘dogs’

o Irregular past tense emerging

o Uses auxiliary ‘is/am + ing’ e.g., ‘the girl is running’

o Regular past tense verbs appear e.g., ‘walk’ – ‘walked’

o Uses ‘s for possession

o Understands ‘est’ adjective marker e.g., ‘biggest’

Telegraphic stage - Syntactic feature

o   Combines 3 – 4 words in subject + verb + object format

o   Infinite complement emerges e.g., ‘I want to play’

o   Mean length of utterance is 3.1 words

Telegraphic stage - Lexical feature

o   Approximately 25% of utterances are nouns, 25% are verbs

o   Uses pronouns e.g., ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘you’ etc.

o   Emerging use of negative ‘not’

o   Uses contracted form of ‘is’ e.g., ‘she’s sleeping’

o   Adverbs of location emerge e.g., ‘here’ and ‘there’

o   Begins to use ‘do’ ‘can’ and ‘will’ (emerging future tense)

o   Comprehends third-person pronouns

Telegraphic stage - Semantic feature

o   Comprehends 500 – 900 words

o   Understands and asks questions about objects, people and basic events

o   Uses and understands ‘why’ questions

o   Follows a series of 2 related commands

o   Has a concept of ‘one’ and ‘all’; ‘big’ and ‘little’

o   Asks simple ‘who’, ‘why’, ‘where’ and ‘how many’ questions

o   Answers ‘where’ and ‘what…. doing’ questions

Telegraphic stage - Simplified syntax

o   Children use basic sentence structures with minimal grammatical complexity, often omitting function words such as articles (e.g., ‘the’ and ‘a’) and auxiliary verbs (e.g., ‘is’ and ‘are’)

Telegraphic stage - Focus on content words

Telegraphic speech primary consists of content words, such as nouns and verbs which convey essential meaning. Function words, which serve grammatical purposes, are frequently

Telegraphic stage - Limited vocabulary

o   Children’s vocabulary is limited but expanding during this stage. They typically use familiar words and phrases to express their needs, desires, and observations.

Telegraphic stage - overgeneralization

o   Children may overapply grammatical rules or patterns they have learned, resulting in errors such as using regular past tense forms incorrectly (e.g., ‘goed’ instead of ‘went’) or applying plural forms inconsistently (e.g., ‘foots’ instead of ‘feet’)

Content words

nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs

Function words

determiners, preposition, conjunctions, pronouns

Multiword stage - Age

2.5 - onwards

Multiword stage - rapid vocabulary growth

o   Vocabulary expands quickly, and children begin to use a wider variety of words, including function words to create more grammatically standard utterances

Multiword stage - Grammar development

o   Basic grammatical structures start to emerge though they are often simplified

o   Children begin to understand and use plurals, possessives, and simple verb tenses

Multiword stage - Syntax complexity

o   Children begin to use multiple clauses to express more complex ideas including clause and effect and subordination

o   Clauses are sometimes joined using conjunctions, but are sometimes ‘chained’ together

Multiword stage - Increased communication

o   Children use language more effectively to express needs, desires, and emotions, and to interact with others

Roger Brown’s stages of grammatical acquisition

o   Roger Brown’s research in the 1970s focused on the early stages of grammatical development in children, using a longitudinal approach to observe and analyze the language of 3 preschool children

Roger brown’s order

o   Present progressive

o   Preposition in and on

o   Plural inflection (adding ‘s’)

o   Irregular past tense verb forms (went, broke, brought)

o   Possessive inflection

o   Verb

o   Articles

o   Past tense inflection (jumped, bringed)

o   Regular present tense inflection

o   Irregular present tense forms

Multiword stage - sentence structure

o   Children start to produce compound and complex sentences after they have gone through the two-word stage

o   You can combine clauses via coordination or by simply jamming clauses together without a linking word

o   As children move through the multiword stage their clauses contain more clauses joined together

o   They will also start to use more functional words to make more complicated clauses