A - Level English Language - Child Language Acquisition (CLA)

0-3 months

Cooing - control of vocal cords

6 - 12 months

Babbling - Phonemic Expansion, babies produce nearly every sound they can

12 - 18 months

Holophrastic Stage - One word stage, first word usually occurs, recognises names, basic responses, speaks two words as one unit 'allgone'

24 - 30 months

Two Word Stage - Combinations of words used, signal possession, action and location

30 -36 months

Development of Grammar, Pragmatics and Pronunciation - mastered all vowels and 2/3 of consonants, over-extension decreases, use of coordinating conjunctions increases

30 - 40 months

Post-Telegraphic stage - Aquisition of inflections begins e.g. -ing, plurals, past tense, overgeneralisation of these rules

4 years

Most consonants mastered

5 years

2000 words, basic grammatical rules understood

6 years

Final consonants mastered, 4000 words

Katherine Nelson

Views language acquisition as the bridge between a child's social and cultural growth with their growing knowledge of the world.
Thinks thought precedes language and children learn words that fit into the context of a scene e.g. using 'car' when leaving the house.
Categorised the first 50 words a child learns: naming things, actions/events, personal/social, modifying things.
Largest group of words in her sample (about 60%) were naming things, smallest were personal/ social words (8%)

Levy and Nelson (1994)

Investigated children's early acquisition of casual and temporal words such as, because, tomorrow, today, morning and pretty soon.

categorical over - extension

where a child applies the same word to all items within the same category e.g. all drinks may be called milk

Analogical over-extension

where a child makes connections between items and draws analogies because they have similar characteristics

Over-extension

when a word is used more broadly to describe things other than the specific item to which the word actually applies

under-extension

the use of a word in a limited way which does not recognise its full meaning

Mismatch

when a label is applied to an object without a clear link

Weak syllable deletion

a less prominant sound within a word is not articulated e.g. 'nana' instead of 'banana'

Consonant deletion

Occurs either at the beginning or end of the word e.g. 'Bi' instead of 'big'

Consonant cluster reduction

Where several consonants appear together, the child will just pronounce one of these to reduce the physical demand of articulating all of them e.g. 'liptick' instead of 'lipstick'

Assimilation

where a sound within a word becomes more like a similar sound within a word e.g. 'babbit' instead of 'rabbit'

Substitution

where one sound is swapped for another that is easier to pronounce e.g. 'wock' instead of 'rock'

Jean Berko (1958) - The Wug test

Showed a picture of a wug to children, she then showed two pictures of a wug.
Children tended to create the plural 'wugs' when asked to complete the statement 'there are two ....'
Found that children have an internalised linguistic system that allows them to produce plurals.

Michael Halliday - Language Functions

Proposed 7 main functions that spurred a child to want to use language:
Instrumental - Fulfil a speaker's needs
Regulatory - Influence the behaviour of others
Interactional - Develop social relationships
Personal - Express personal preferences
Informative - Communicate information
Heuristic - Learn and explore the environment
Imaginative - Explore the imagination

John Dore's - Infant language functions

Identified different functions a child may use language:
Labelling
Repeating
Answering
Requesting Action
Calling
Greeting
Protesting
Practising

B.F Skinner

Behavourist approach to language learning
Suggested that children could develop languguage through positive and negative reinforcements.

Operant conditioning

The idea that either a positive or a negative response given by a care giver can influence the way a child talks in the future

Positive Reinforcement

Increasing behaviours by presenting positive reinforcers.
When a child is praised for correct language use they are likely to adopt that way of speaking

Negative Reinforcement

Correction or negative feedback which might prevent a child from repeating the same mistake in language development

Albert Bandura

Developed social learning theory in 1977 on the basis of a famous Bobo doll. Found that when children saw violent treatment of the doll prior to a period of play with the doll and other toys, they were far more likely to imitate this behaviour

Noam Chomsky

Nativist approach to child language development.
Suggested that every human has a 'Language Acquisition Device' (LAD) an in-built system whereby young children can make sense of the language they hear and the world around them.

Nativist Theory

A language learning theory that suggests an in-builty capacity to aquire language

Poverty of the Stimulus

Theory attributed to Chomsky that suggests that language to which a child is exposed is sufficient to support the development of language that occurs

Universal Grammar

Noam Chomsky's theory that all the world's languages share a similar grammatical structures which the brain is 'hardwired' to be able to decode and use

Senghas et al (1980's)

Research into deaf children in Nicaragua schools, when they met together they developed their own form of sign language (Nicaraguan Sign language), suggesting an innate capacity to create a new language with quite sophisticated grammar systems

Piaget

Cognitive development theory
Suggests that language acquisition is part of a child's wider development. Language comes with understanding.
A child cannot articulate concepts that he/she does not understand, they gain language after they have understood the concept.

Piaget - 4 stage theory of development

4 stages children go through as they gather information about the world:
Sensorimotor (18-24 months) - infants only aware of sensations
Pre-operational (18-24 months to 7 years) - children can process images, words, and concepts but can't do anything with them.
Concrete operations (7 - 12 years) children gain the ability to manipulate symbols and objetcs, but only if they are concrete
Formal Operations (12 and up) children are able to think in abstract terms about the world

Alison Gopnik (1997)

Publsihed research that contradicted Piagets notion of egocentricity.
Infants aged 14 months offered crackers to the researchers as if it was their preferred option.
Infants aged 18 months identified the researchers preference for brocolli and offered that instead.
Suggests that children from a young age are sensitive to the needs and desires of others, not entirely egocentric on their behaviour.

Jerome Bruner

Social Interational theory
Suggested that social interaction between child and carer lies at the heart of language development, to support and scaffold the language development of a child

Scaffolding

the support provided by caregivers through modelling how speech ought to take place, in order to help the child's language develop

Lev Vygotsky

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
Suggested that in order for children to learn language, a More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) would need to be present. This can move children beyond their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) encouraging them to move on from what they already know

More Knowledgeable Other (MKO)

the often older and more knowledgeable participant in an interaction who might offer support to further the child's development of language learning

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

The area between what a child can already do and that which is beyond their reach. The area in which a caregiver might enable a child to progress by offering the necessary support to facilitate learning

Bard and Sachs (1977)

Studied a boy called Jim whose parents were death. They never taught him sign language. Jim spent a lot of time watching television and listening to the radio where he heard a lot of spoken language. By age 5 his language was seriously undeveloped and attended sessions with a speech therapist where he made good progress with his speech.

Ivan Pavlov

Classical Conditioning
Dog's physical responses and behaviour were altered according to external stimulus and contextual factors.

John B. Watson

Classical Conditioning was linked to speech to suggest the pattern of stimulus and response. This led to the proposal that speech was determined by external factors

Eric Lenneberg

Critical period hypothesis
A critical period in which children's language needs to develop. Children develop language at very similar rates

Catherine Snow

Focused on the ways in which mothers talk to their children and the connection to the child's age. Notion of child directed speech was developed
(Paper entitled - ' Mother's Speech to Children's Language Learning')

Caretaker Speech

The distinctive speech adults use when they talk to young children

Michael Tomasello

Children develop language by picking up patterns and and recurring sequences out of linguistic constructions, from words that they hear around them

Genie

A girl who was locked up for 14 years and when she was found, she had missed the critical period where she could have learned language so she could not speak

Alan Cruttenden (1979)

Divided the aquisition of inflections into 3 stages:
1. Children Memorise Words
2. They show an awareness of the general rules of inflections, overgeneralistion of rules
3. Correct inflections are used

Jean Aitcheson

Identified a model of 3 stages in children's acquisition of words and their meanings:
1. Labelling - associating sounds with objects
2. Packaging - Starrting to explore the extent of the label
3. Network building - Making connections between the llables they have developed

mean length of utterance (MLU)

Calculated by dividing the number of words spoken (or morphemes) by the number of utterances

Ofer Tchernichovski

Looked at the mechanisms of song learning by studying the behaviour and dynamics of song birds.
The birds learned to imitate complex sounds during the critical period of development

Deb Roy

MIT Researcher who wanted to understand how his son used language, wired his house up with videocameras and microphones and recorded 90,000 hours of home footage

Steven Pinker

Innate Capacity to learn language, all language is evidence of a universal grammar, dissents from Chomsky's idea that evolutionary theory can explain the language instinct.

Clarke-Stewart (1973)

Found that a child's language develops depending on how much their mother spoke to them