Child Language Acquisition Theorists

Theorists and their Theories

What is Jean Berkos’ Wug Test?

A test sought by Berko to investigate whether children have a better understanding of linguistic morphology than they have been taught.

How did the test Wug Test work?

It used pseudo words such as ‘wug’ to ensure the child had not seen them before. It then asked them to apply the pluralisation rules to the ‘wug’. The test also looked at other inflections such the the ‘quirky dog’, which aims to show the way in which adjectives may be formed from nouns.

What did the Wug Test find out?

That children are able to deduce what the plural of a noun would be (76% of 4-5 year olds responded correctly).

What are Ursula Bellugi’s 3 acquisitions?

1- Pronoun Acquisition

2- Question Formation

3- Negative Acquisition

What was Bellugi’s Pronoun acquisition?

Categorized the development of pronoun acquisition in terms of complexity, which she broke down into 3 stages.

What is the 1st stage of Bellugi’s Pronoun Acquisition?

1- The child will use a name rather than a pronoun.

E.g: “Rachel go now”, as opposed to “I go now”.

What is the 2nd stage of Bellugi’s Pronoun Acquisition?

2- Child recognises there is a difference between subject and object pronouns, but will not be able to use them correctly.

What is the 3rd stage of Bellugi’s Pronoun Acquisition?

The child will now correctly apply subject and object pronouns.

E.g: “You do love me mummy.”

What is Bellugi’s Negative Acquisition?

Proposed 3 stages in a child’s acquisition of negatives.

What is the 1st stage of Bellugi’s Negative Acquisition?

1- The child’s 1st attempt will be to place a negative word at the beginning of an utterance.

E.g: “No like book.”

What is the 2nd stage of Bellugi’s Negative Acquisition?

2- We see the negative word move within the body of an utterance.

E.g: “Me not going.”

What is the 3rd stage of Bellugi’s Negative Acquisition?

3- The child will master the capability to attach negatives to auxiliary verbs, or the copula verb, ‘to be’.

E.g: “I’m not going.”

What is Bellugi’s Question Formation Theory?

Where a child will develop questioning skills in a given way. This is split up into 4 stages.

What is the 1st stage of Bellugi’s Question Formation?

1- The use of a rising intonation of single words, then multiple words.

E.g: “Bedtime?”

What is the 2nd stage of Bellugi’s Question Formation?

2- The inversion of auxiliary verbs occur to signify a question.

E.g: “Are you coming?”

What is the 3rd stage of Bellugi’s Question Formation?

3- Formulaic ‘wh’ questions begin to occur.

E.g: “What that?”

What is the 4th stage of Bellugi’s Question Formation?

4- Use of tag questions occur.

E.g: “You didn’t see, did you?”

What is Vygotsky’s Scaffolding Approach?

The importance of ‘doing’ for a child to be able to develop, as well as the importance of the caregiver to act as the more knowledgeable other.

Through supporting the child from an area of more knowledge, the caregiver can direct the the child to move within a zone of proximal development.

The caregiver can provide ‘scaffolding’ to allow the child to venture just beyond their current language level of ability.

What is Nelson’s 1st Word Theory?

Nelson observed that children’s’ 1st words tended to fall into 4 categories.

What are the 4 categories that Nelson identified?

-Naming things and people

-Action/Events

-Describing and modifying things

-Personal/Social words