Child Language Development: Theories, Phonology, and Environmental Influences

Comprehensive practice flashcards defining key theoretical models, phonological processes, environmental factors, and stages of child language acquisition covered in the lecture notes.

Articulatory Ease

The degree of physical ease or difficulty a child experiences when moving their speech apparatus to produce specific vocal sounds.

Perceptual Discriminability

How easily and distinctly a child can hear, recognize, and differentiate specific sounds from one another.

Early, Middle, and Late 8 Sounds

A developmental ordering of consonant sounds: Early 8 ($m, b, j\,(y), n, w, d, p, h$ by age 3), Middle 8 ($t, \eta\,(ng), k, g, f, v, t\int\,(ch), d\zeta\,(j)$ by age 4–5), and Late 8 ($\int\,(sh), \theta, \eth\,(th), s, z, l, r, 3\,(zh)$).

Reduplication

A phonological process in early speech where a child repeats a syllable to create a word (e.g., 'baa baa' for blanket, 'du du' for dummy, or 'moo moo' for cow).

Diminutives

Words altered to reduce the scale of an item or make it phonologically simpler and appealing to young children, often by adding an '-ie' or '-y' ending (e.g., 'doggie', 'ducky').

Addition

Adding a sound or suffix to the end of a word to alter its pronunciation and tone, often heard in Child Directed Speech (e.g., 'mummy' and 'dolly' instead of 'mum' and 'doll').

Assimilation

A phonological error where a child swaps one consonant or vowel for another sound that already exists within that word (e.g., 'bus' becomes 'bub', 'rabbit' becomes 'babbit').

Consonant Cluster Reduction

Simplifying phonologically complex clusters of consonants into single consonant sounds (e.g., 'fis' for 'fish', 'ba' for 'ball').

Deletion

The omission of a particular sound or syllable within a word (e.g., 'jamas' for 'pyjamas', 'mote' for 'remote').

Metathesis

The unintentional swapping of the sequential order of two sounds or syllables within a word (e.g., 'aminal' for 'animal', 'tigar' for 'guitar', 'pasghetti' for 'spaghetti').

Substitution

Replacing one sound with another sound that is easier for the child to pronounce (e.g., 'wocket' for 'rocket', 'lellow' for 'yellow').

Proto-word

An invented word or consistent sound combination (typically emerging around 9–12 months) that a child uses to refer to a specific object or function before learning conventional vocabulary (e.g., 'dudu' for dummy, 'blankie' for blanket).

Contingent Talk

A responsive communication practice where an adult caregiver responds directly to, shares focus with, and elaborates on a child's current attention, action, or vocalization.

Recasting

A caregiver strategy of repeating a child's grammatically incomplete or incorrect utterance in an expanded, correct form without overt negative criticism (e.g., Child: 'I runned'; Caregiver: 'You ran?').

Decontextualised Language

Language that refers to people, objects, ideas, or events outside the immediate physical environment and the present moment ('here and now').

Phonological Awareness

The ability to recognize, isolate, and manipulate the spoken sound structures of words, syllables, and individual phonemes.

Behaviourism (B.F. Skinner)

The theoretical model arguing that language is learned through environmental conditioning, imitation, and positive and negative reinforcement from caregivers.

Nativism (Noam Chomsky)

The theory proposing that children possess an innate, biological predisposition to acquire language governed by universal grammatical rules.

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

Chomsky's proposed hardwired neurological mechanism containing universal grammatical principles that activate upon natural language exposure.

Poverty of the Stimulus

Chomsky's claim that natural language input received from caregivers is too fragmented, degenerate, and incomplete to account for the speed and accuracy of language mastery without innate knowledge.

Virtuous Error

A grammatical mistake made when a child applies a regular linguistic rule to an irregular exception (e.g., 'mouses' for 'mice', 'goed' for 'went', 'hurted' for 'hurt'), proving non-imitative rule learning.

Cognitivism (Piaget and Vygotsky)

The perspective asserting that linguistic competence cannot develop ahead of general cognitive understanding; children must understand conceptual relationships before verbalizing them.

Object Permanence

Jean Piaget's concept of recognizing that objects continue to exist even when hidden from view, considered an essential cognitive precursor to word acquisition.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Lev Vygotsky's term for the developmental gap between what a child can achieve independently and what they can achieve with guidance from a More Knowledgeable Other (MKO).

More Knowledgeable Other (MKO)

Vygotsky's term for a caregiver, teacher, or older peer who has a better understanding or higher ability level than the learner and helps bridge their cognitive gap.

Interactionism (Jerome Bruner)

The theory stating that children acquire language through social interaction and scaffolded environmental input, rejecting both pure nativism and simple imitation.

Language Acquisition Support System (LASS)

Jerome Bruner's concept describing the structured social scaffolding, routines, and communicative support provided by caregivers to help children acquire language.

Child Directed Speech (CDS)

The modified speech patterns adopted by caregivers talking to children, characterized by higher melodic pitch, slower tempo, repetition, simpler syntax, diminutives, expansion, and recasting.

Motherese / Parentese

A term coined by Catherine Snow describing the distinctively responsive linguistic register mothers and caregivers use to scaffold communication with infants.

Mitigated Imperative

A command or directive disguised as a polite inquiry or question in Child Directed Speech (e.g., 'Shall we get this homework done then?').

Expansion

A caregiver technique where an adult takes a child's brief utterance and repeats it with added grammatical and semantic detail to model correct syntax.

Kaluli Tribe Study (Schieffelin and Ochs, 1984)

A cross-cultural anthropological study showing that Kaluli caregivers in Papua New Guinea do not utilize Child Directed Speech, yet children develop language normally, disproving CDS as a universal necessity.

Critical Period Hypothesis

The hypothesis (Penfield & Roberts, 1959; popularized by Lenneberg, 1967) that first-language acquisition relies on early neuroplasticity and must occur before a biological cut-off (around puberty) for native-like fluency.

Genie (Case Study)

A girl isolated and deprived of linguistic input for her first 13 years who learned substantial vocabulary once rescued but never mastered standard grammatical and syntactic structures, supporting the Critical Period Hypothesis.

Jim (Bard and Sachs, 1977)

A hearing child of deaf parents who received passive language input via television and radio but failed to acquire speech until interactive sessions with a speech therapist began, proving passive media exposure alone cannot teach language.

The Wug Test (Jean Berko, 1958)

An experiment presenting pseudo-words ('wug', 'kazh', 'gutch', 'spow') to show that children infer and apply abstract morphological rules (e.g., adding regular plural '-s' or past-tense '-ed') rather than relying solely on imitation.

Jean Berko Gleason (1975)

A parental interaction study finding that fathers used more imperatives, teased more, and referred domestic needs to mothers, whereas mothers utilized simpler constructions and demonstrated greater conversational sensitivity and responsiveness.

Fatherese (John Snarey, 1993)

A paternal behavioral and linguistic style involving roughhousing, higher volume, less speech simplification, and challenge-driven communication that promotes self-control and independence.

Pragmatics

The study of implied, context-dependent meaning in language, examining how speaker intention, prior knowledge, inference, and social conventions convey subtext.

Face Theory (Erving Goffman, 1955)

A sociological theory defining 'face' as the positive public self-image that individuals deliberately seek to establish and preserve during social interaction.

Grice's Conversational Maxims

Four rules of cooperative conversation: Quantity (appropriate detail), Quality (truthfulness), Relevance (staying on-topic), and Manner (avoiding obscurity and ambiguity).

IRF Exchange (Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975)

A three-part conversational structure common in early educational and caregiver discourse consisting of Initiation (question), Response (answer), and Feedback (evaluation or praise).

Halliday's Functions of Language (1975)

Seven functional motivations for early speech: Instrumental (fulfilling a need), Regulatory (influencing behavior), Interactional (building bonds), Personal (expressing views), Heuristic (exploring surroundings), Imaginative (creative play), and Representational (relaying facts).

Pre-Verbal Stage

The developmental phase (0–12 months) encompassing crying (0–4 months), cooing (around 2–4 months), babbling (6–12 months, split into reduplicated and variegated types), and proto-words (9–12 months).

Holophrastic Stage

The single-word stage (12–18 months) where one word (primarily a concrete noun) conveys an entire sentence's worth of meaning alongside non-verbal gestures.

Two-Word Stage

The developmental stage (around 18–24 months) where children combine two words (e.g., subject + verb) and experience a 'naming explosion' or vocabulary spurt.

Telegraphic Stage

The stage (24–36 months) where utterances expand to three or more words containing vital content words while omitting auxiliary verbs, prepositions, and determiners.

Post-Telegraphic Stage

The language stage (36+ months) where speech increasingly resembles adult syntax, incorporating grammatical function words, complex sentence structures, contractions, and accurate inflections.

Catherine Garvey (1977)

Researcher who published 'Play, the Developing Child', demonstrating how pretend and dramatic play directly expands vocabulary and communicative competence.

Susan Ervin-Tripp (1991)

Author of 'Play in Language Development', who argued that peer interaction requires collaborative language negotiation not found in adult-child dialogue, fostering linguistic experimentation.

Melanie Glenwright (2007)

Researcher who established that while children begin to identify sarcastic statements around age 6, they do not fully comprehend the underlying humor and intent until around age 10.