Paper 3, Child Language Acquisition - Bruner, Aitchinson, Crystal and Halliday's theories flashcards

Look at Crystal's Foundation Year and read through booklets again as supporting material

Bruner’s Three modes of representation

Enactive representation, iconic representation, and symbolic representation

Enactive Learning (Bruner)

Learning through movement or action, e.g. playing with a book

Iconic learning (Bruner)

Learning through images or icons, e.g. looking at pictures

Symbolic learning (Bruner)

Learning through abstract symbols, e.g. reading for research

Culture and Cognitive Growth (Bruner)

Members of different cultures, because of the unique demands of their environments, make sense of their experiences in different ways

David Crystal’s Theory

Children learn in amorphous stages through trial and error to successfully learn the language and they learn in stages of grammar, different types of questioning, intonation and recognising the rhythm of voices

Stage One (David Crystal)

Children say things for three purposes: to get something they want, to get someone’s attention or to draw attention to something. They also begin to make basic statements such as “daddy car”, starting by naming things with single words and then moving on to relating objects with other things, places, and people, or even events. Children use intonation to ask questions due to a lack of vocabulary

Stage Two (David Crystal)

Children usually ask questions beginning with interrogative pronouns or adverbs, ‘where’ (interrogative adverb) questions come first then children become concerned with naming and classifying things by frequently asking “Wassat?”. Children also begin to talk about the characteristics of things and are taught to learn things in opposite pairs

Stage Three (David Crystal)

Children ask lots of different questions but often signal that they are questions with intonation alone, children begin to express more complex wants by using more grammatically correct language and verbs such as ‘listen’ and ‘know’ are used. Children refer to events in the past and less often to events in the future, they usually talk about continuing action

Stage four (David Crystal)

Children use increasingly complex sentence structures and begin to explain things, ask for explanations using the word ‘why?’ and make a wide range of requests. Children are able to use abstract, auxiliary and modal verbs and have greater comprehension of language, and are able to use complex sentence structures to express a wide range of meanings as well as use their pragmatic understanding to suit their utterances to context or situation.

Stage five (David Crystal)

Children regularly use language to do all the things they need it for, are able to talk about things hypothetically and conditionally, are able to explain conditions required for something to happen; are able to make general and specific references to past and future and are very comfortable with all questions that have a subject-verb inversion

Stages of Grammatical Growth (David Crystal)

Earliest stage consists of one word utterances, then progresses to holophrases where a single word represents a full sentence, then the two-word stage is achieved with two words being used in the sentence structure, then extra elements of clause structure are used and elements are made more complex, until the telegraphic stage is reached where sentences are understood but simple words are left out

Use of Active and Passive (David Crystal)

Around 3 years old, no children produced a passive sentence, however as he tested older children, they were beginning to use more passive sentences and at 7, the ability to use passive voice dramatically increased. Passive sentences are more wordy and nuanced and thus develop later

Aitchinson’s Theory

Language has a biologically organised schedule and children everywhere follow a similar pattern, completing stages such as labelling, packaging, and network building, which contribute to their understanding of language and its nuances.

Labelling (Aitchinson)

The first stage in Aitchinson’s theory, where children make the link between the sounds of particular words and the objects to which they refer

Packaging (Aitchinson)

The second stage in Aitchinson’s theory, where children understand a word’s range of meaning. This is when over-extension and under-extension become an issue in language development

Under-extension (Aitchinson)

A common semantic error by children where a word is given a narrower meaning than it has in adult language

Over-extension (Aitchinson)

A common semantic error by children where a word is given a wider meaning than it has in adult language, this happens more frequently than under-extension

Link between over-extension and under-extension (Aitchinson)

Over-extension and under-extension can occur at the same time, e.g. all furry creatures are kitties, but a hairless cat is not

Network-building (Aitchinson)

The third stage in Aitchinson’s theory, it involves grasping the connections between words and understanding that some words are opposite in meaning

Speed of learning (Aitchinson)

There are no exact dates which a child reaches a certain stage of learning language and the speed of learning is influenced by both innate abilities and environment. Language is partly learned by imitation so parents and siblings play a role in the acceleration of learning language while baby talk whilst learning to speak could hinder the child in learning to speak later on

Aitchinson’s Timetable of speech

A framework outlining the stages of children's language development running from birth to ten years old. At 12 months children grasp the use of single words; at the age of 2, the understanding of word endings begins to appear although children are not always correct, additionally negatives and the ability to ask questions is developed; at age 5 the child is able to speak using complex constructions and rarely faults

Language Acquisition (Aitchinson)

Naturally, children will vary individually when they reach each stage. but there is little variation in the sentence of language learning, by the end a child will have a basic lexicon of several thousand words and from then on, what is learned is retained and increasingly dependent upon experiences and environment - on opportunities to use language and hear it used, for a wide range of purposes and audiences in a wide range of contexts

Halliday’s Seven Function of a child’s language

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

Instrumental function (Halliday)

the use of language to fulfil a need, such as to obtain food, drink or comfort. This typically includes concrete nouns

Regulatory function (Halliday)

the use of language to influence the behaviour of others including persuading, commanding or requesting

Interactional function (Halliday)

the use of language to develop relationships and ease interaction. This could include phrases like “I love you mummy” or “Thank you”

Personal function (Halliday)

the use of language to express personal opinions, attitudes and feelings including a speaker’s identity

Representational/Informative function (Halliday)

the use of language to relay or request information

Heuristic function (Halliday)

the use of language to explore, learn and discover. This could include questions or a running commentary of a child’s actions

Imaginative function (Halliday)

the use of language to tell stories and create imaginary constructs. This typically accompanies play or leisure activities