child language wk 1

what are the seven development stages of children’s language acquisition?

2m - discriminate native vs foreign language

6m - babble

8m - comprehension of 15 words

10-15m - producing first words

18m - understand SVO, two-word utterances

24-30m - multiword stage, telegraphic speech (omitting certain words)

30m+ - creativity e.g. breaked

is it true that children’s speech acquisition is uniform?

yes, this is true

what is MLU and why do we use it as a measure of speech development?

MLU is “mean length utterance”. it is measured by the ratio of morphemes to the utterance - higher MLU = more advanced speech ability.

we use it to measure speech development as age is an unreliable measure of a child’s speech ability since they undergo development at different rates.

how to researchers assess language knowledge?

1. standardised tests

2. corpus

3. experiements

what are three standardised tests researchers use to assess language knowledge in children?

1. CELF-P2

   • preschool 2 students

   • tests a broad range of language aspects

   • child is presented pics, objects, or verbal instructions

2. PPVT

   • four pics and one word

   • child points to corresponding pic upon hearing the word

3. TEGI

   • targets grammatical morphemes

   • child is asked to describe action-based pictures

   • tests how well a child can add the necessary grammatical markers to verbs in specific situations to form correct sentences,

what is the main corpus used in this field?

CHILDES

what is the truth value judgement task?

• unreliable puppet is asked to recount an event

• child’s task is to determine whether the puppet speaks correctly or incorrectly

what is elicited imitation?

• child is asked to repeat the experimenter

• underlying assumption: repetition of utterance requires speaker to analyse using their own grammar

• limits: memory and boring

what is elicited production?

• experimenter gives feed in sentence (can be through the puppet)

• child finishes the feed in sentence

• input and output is more controlled

• can test for do-support (yes/no Qs)

• experimentor will asks the child to ask if the puppet has legs

• child will hopefully understand do-support and ask in a manner that demonstrates this knowledge

• e.g. “DOES the puppet have legs"?”

what are feclitiy condiitons?

circumstances must be met for speech act to be useful and to achieve its purpose

distinguish between competence vs performance

• comp = the grammatical knowledge that we have internalised in our mental grammar

• perf = use of competence in production and comprehension