Communication Development

Communication competence

The knowledge and implicit awareness of a language

Communicative performance

Refers to actual speech behaviors

• Phonology 

• Syntax

• Semantics

• Discourse

• Pragmatics

Linguistic competence components

Discourse

Having an understanding of a whole conversation (not sentence by sentence), staying on topic and understanding abstract aspects of a topic

• Functional

• Sociolinguistic

• Interactional

• Cultural

Components of pragmatics

1. Joint reference and attention

2. Rituals in infancy

3. Caregiver responsiveness

Early foundations that help babies gain communicative competence

simple, comprehension

In general while learning _______ precedes complex and _________ precedes expression

0-6

Between ________ months, infants develop patterns of attending to partners

6 months-1 year

Between _____________, infants learn to balance attention between objects and another person

Joint attention

The engagement of two or more individuals (in MENTAL FOCUS) on the same object or event at the same time.

Rituals

___________ of infancy give comfort, predictability, and opportunities to learn language

• Learn about patterns of speech

• Engage in joint reference and attention

• Learn and reinforce their labels

Rituals or routines are where babies can …

intentionality

Infants develop _________ between 7-12 months

0-18

Infants develop vocalizations in stages, between ___________ months.

Reflexive vocalizations (0-2 months)

Sounds of distress (crying) & vegetative sounds (coughs, burps)

Control of phonation (2-4 months)

Infants make cooing sounds, as well as “raspberries,” trills, and clicks.

Expansion (3-8 months)

Infants produce isolated vowel sounds and glides. They may start babbling. 

Basic canonical syllables (5-10 months)

Infants use consonant and vowel sounds in various combinations

Advanced forms (9-18 months)

Infants use jargon, but do not produce real worlds

reduplicated babble

Using the same consonant vowel repeatedly - ex, ma ma ma 

variegated babble

Varying the sounds and consonant vowel, different intonation patterns starting to be used

jargon

Communicating but what they’re saying isn’t meaningful - lost of intonation patterns, gestures

12 months

Infants begin to develop symbolic communication around _________

• Demonstrates intentionality

• Approximates adult form

• Uses consistently and in multiple contexts

There are 3 criteria for determining First True Words

1. Content - semantics

2. Form - morphology, syntax, phonology

3. Use - pragmatics

List the domains of language and their components

• Semantics: Expressive vocabulary, 50-100 words

• Phonology: consonant-vowel (CV) shapes (Da, Ma)

• Syntax: single words

• Pragmatics: intentional communication (request, refuse, comment)

Communication milestones 12-18 months

• Semantics: Expressive vocab, 200-300 words, overextensions/underextensions

• Phonology: Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) & 2-syllable words, speech 50% intelligible

• Morphology: basic use of morphemes

• Syntax: 2-word utterances, consistent word order (“Daddy go”)

• Pragmatics: request info, answer Q’s, acknowledge partners

Communication milestones: 18-24 months

• Semantics: understand/use Q’s about objects, people, basic events

• Phonology: awareness of rhyme

• Morphology: use -ing, plural -s

• Syntax: use “no”, “not” “can’t”, “don’t” for negation (“No eat peas”) Q’s asked w/ rising pitch only (“We go park?”). Use semi-auxiliaries (“Gonna” “wanna”)

• Pragmatics: use “Please” for polite requests, play symbolically, talk about absent objects, misrepresent reality. Narratives are “heaps”

Communication milestones: 24-30 months

• Semantics: understand/use “why” Q’s, basic spatial terms (in, on, under)

• Phonology: produce rhymes, speech 75% intelligible

• Morphology: overgeneralize past tense verbs (“He roded his bike” “I falled down.”)

• Syntax: auxiliary verbs (“He is walking”), “to be” verbs inconsistently

• Pragmatics: more language in play, narratives are sequences w/ themes but no plot

Communication milestones: 30-36 months

morpheme

Smallest unit of meaning in language

morphemes

Morphology is the study of _________

Mean length of utterance (MLU)

the average length of a child’s sentences.

Dividing total # of morphemes by total # of utterances

MLU is calculated by …

Brown, 14

__________ documented the order and ages at which children master ______ common grammatical morphemes

1

How many morphemes in the following phrase: bamp, bamp, bamp!

10

How many morphemes in the following phrase: Oh, where, there’s the joker. You can be him.

3, 5

Between _____ and ______ years old, they start mastering form, content, and use

• Semantics: understand semantic relations btw adjacent/conjoined sentences, use/understand basic concepts (colors, kinship, shapes, size), conjunctions and fast mapping

• Phonology: more intelligible

• Morphology: auxiliary verbs used correctly, use  irregular past tense, articles (“a” and “the”), and possessive –s

• Syntax: use embedded and complex sentences

• Pragmatics: request w/ more flexibility, report on past events, reason, predict, express empathy, create imaginary roles and props, and maintain interactions. Narratives are primitive, with theme and some temporal organization

Communication milestones: 36-48 months

• Semantics: learning letters, sounds, numbers, counting

• Phonology: 100% intelligible

• Morphology: use “to be” verbs, regular past tense -ed, third person –s

• Syntax: complex sentences

• Pragmatics: narratives are chains, with some plot but no climax or resolution

Communication milestones: 48-60 months

Heaps

Narrative skill of a 2 year old: Few links from one sentence to another organization based on immediate perception

sequences

Narrative skill of a 2-3 year old: Superficial but arbitrary time sequences, no causal links between events

primitive narratives

Narrative skill of a 3-4 year old: Have concrete core surrounded by set of clarifying/amplifying attributes

unfocused chains

Narrative skill of a 4-4.5 year old: Story as a whole loses its point and drifts off

Focused chains

Narrative skill of a 5 year old: Main character experiences a series of events, but no true concept present

True narratives

Narrative skill of a 5-7 year old: Theme and moral. Concrete, perceptual, or abstract bond holds story together

functional flexibility

At 5 years old ________develops where they use language for a lot of different functions and purposes (comparing and contrasting, hypothesizing, explaining, classifying, predicting)

5 years old

At what age do most children develop skills in reading and writing?

Alphabetic principle

When children learn how letters and letter combinations correspond to sounds

how print and sounds work

Learning the alphabetic principle depends on awareness of _______

Print awareness

Describes an interest and understanding that print has meaning and organization

Phonological awareness

When children develop awareness of the sounds in language

1. Learning to decode print: Kindergarten-1st grade (5-7 years)

2. Developing confidence and fluency: 2nd-3rd grade (7-8 years)

3. Reading to learn: 4th-8th/9th grade (9-14 years)

4. Complex concepts and complex text: High school (14-18 years)

5. Reading for complex purposes: Adulthood

Chall’s five stages of literacy development

1. They substitute words that are semantically and syntactically likely

2. They substitute words that are graphically similar

3. They substitute a word that is graphically similar and semantically acceptable.

3 phases in stage 1 (5-7 years) of literacy development where children learn to decode words by associating letters with sounds

Stage 2 (7-8)

AKA “learning to read stage” where children are more confident in their reading skills, become proficient in high-frequency words, improve their fluency and speed, focus less on reading and more on content

Stage 3 (9-14 years)

This is the “reading to learn” stage

Stage 4 (14-18 years)

Stage where children manage more complex texts and concepts; can consider multiple viewpoint (texts with multiple sets of facts, theories, and viewpoints)

Stage 5 (adults)

Read for complex purposes/meet needs and use advanced cognitive processes ( analysis, synthesis, and prediction) to pull meaning from text