Child Language Acquisition

Child language Acquisition

stage occurs from around birth to six months of age. During this time babies begin to communicate in a basic form. They cry to signal needs such as hunger, discomfort and pain. As babies develop more control of airflow to make sounds, they begin to cough, gurgle and coo. They can recognise a primary caregiver’s voice and distinguish differences in tones of voice.

Stages of CLA

• prelingustic

• babbling

• holoprastic

• two-word stage

• telegraphic stage

• multiword stage

Prelingustic

stage occurs from around birth to six months of age. During

this time babies begin to communicate in a basic form. They cry to signal needs

such as hunger, discomfort and pain. As babies develop more control of airflow to

make sounds, they begin to cough, gurgle and coo. They can recognise a primary

caregiver’s voice and distinguish differences in tones of voice.

Babbling

uBabies start to experiment with sound between five and seven months

uThe sounds they produce are varied at first and not necessarily those of their language community; babies around the world produce similar sounds

uEventually, the range of sounds narrows to those they hear around them

uIntonation patterns also emerge at this stage, as infants mimic the changes in pitch they hear in adult speech

uBabbling seems to be innate: deaf children do it too

Holophrastic

uAt around 12 to 18 months, infants begin to produce sounds that resemble words, as they discover that sounds have meaning

uThe first meaningful words are usually concrete, everyday objects that the child encounters: spoon, cat, bath etc

uBy 18 months, most children can produce around 50 words, but understand many more

Two-word stage

uAt around 18 to 24 months, children begin to combine words

uAt this stage, utterances contain only content words: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs that have meaning on their own

  Mama go, dog big, bye-bye train

uThere are no function words (like the, on, this) or function morphemes (like –ed for past tense or –s for plural nouns)

uHowever, some grammar is emerging, such as putting subjects and objects in the right places (Dada eat, go zoo)

Telegraphic stage

stage of language development at approximately twenty-four to thirty months of age.

At this stage they communicate meaning by combining content words (words that possess meaning) while omitting grammatical function words;

for example, ‘I want patdoggy’ and ‘I go shops’.

Multi-word stage

stage occurs at around thirty months of age, when children begin to use grammatical function words along with content words.

Their sentences become more complex, demonstrating that their syntactic knowledge has increased.

Phonological development

Morphological development

Lexical development

Syntax development

Semantic development

Discourse development

Morphological overgeneralisation

Semantic overgeneralisation

Universal grammar - Noam Chomsky

Usage Based theory - Micheal Tomasello

Role of the parent

Critical Period Hypothesis

7 functions of child speech

•INSTRUMENTAL – language used to fill a need (I want).

•REGULATORY – language to influence behaviour (Do what I say).

•INTERACTIONAL – language to develop relationships (I love you).

•PERSONAL – language to express identity (I like dogs).

•INFORMATIVE – language used to relay information (I have a story).

•HEURISTIC – language used to explore (Why?).

•IMAGINATIVE – language for imagination (Let’s pretend).