3.01 English: Child Language Development Flashcards
Language has a critical period for learning (0-7 years)
• Then there’s a systematic decline to learn language
Babies are ‘citizens of the world’ - they can discern sounds from any language
Before their first birthday, they decide what language they’re going to speak
Adults are culture-bound listeners
Babies listen to the statistics of language
• Become more receptive to the statistics of their own language
• It takes a human being for babies to take on these statistics
Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies
Involves experimenting with noises and sounds
First stage of development: Pre-verbal stage (0-12)
2-6months
Open mouth vowel sounds: oo, aa, ee
These experimental noises are distinct from crying
Desmond Morris (2008):
Suggests these gurgles and babbles will be the same, regardless of the baby’s nationality or the amount of parental impact they’ve had
First stage of development: Pre-verbal stage (0-12) - Cooing
Consonant vowel combinations (CVCV): gaga, baba etc.
Two types:
Reduplicated: simpler, appears first and involves a child creating the same sound repeatedly - EG: babababa
Variegated: Emerges slightly later and involves variation in the consonant and vowel sounds being produced - EG: bada, manamoo
First stage of development: Pre-verbal stage (0-12) - Babbling
Appears around 12-18 months
Ability to say one word
Child conveys a whole sentence of meaning in just one word or labels things in the world around them
Large proportion of first words are nouns
Second stage of development: Holophrastic stage
Adding an extra vowel sound to create a CCVC structure
EG: Horse becomes ‘horsey’, dog becomes ‘doggie’
Holophrastic stage: Phonological simplification strategy - Addition
Leaving out the last consonant of a word
EG: Cat becomes ‘ca’, pig becomes ‘pi’
Holophrastic stage: Phonological simplification strategy - Deletion
Repetition of a phoneme
EG: Choo choo, wee wee
Holophrastic stage: Phonological simplification strategy - Reduplication
One sound is swapped for another, easier sound
EG: Rabbit becomes ‘wabbit’, sing becomes ‘ting’
Holophrastic stage: Phonological simplification strategy - Substitution
Consonant clusters are reduced to single consonant sounds
EG: Dry becomes ‘dai’, frog becomes ‘fog’
Holophrastic stage: Phonological simplification strategy - Consonant cluster reduction
Removal of an entire unstressed syllable from a word
EG: Banana becomes ‘nana’, pretending becomes ‘tending’
Holophrastic stage: Phonological simplification strategy - Deletion of unstressed syllables
Substitution - but the sound changes to a sound already in the word
EG: Doggie becomes ‘goggie’, lorry becomes ‘rorry’
Holophrastic stage: Phonological simplification strategy - Assimilation
• Child referred to his toy fish as a ‘fis’
• When adults asked him, “Is this your fis?” he rejected the statement
• When they asked him, “Is this your fish?” he responded, “Yes, my fis”
Showed that although the child couldn’t produce the /sh/ phoneme, he was able to perceive it as being different from the /s/ phoneme
Demonstrates that perception of phonemes occurs earlier than the ability for them child to produce them
Holophrastic stage: Berko and Brown - ‘Fis’ phenomenon study (1960)
Found that first words were most commonly nouns (60%) followed then by:
• Action words (EG: verbs)
• Modifiers (EG: Adjectives/adverbs)
• Social/personal words (Bye-bye, please etc.)
Diminutives may also be common at this stage (EG: kitty, dolly, doggie)
Holophrastic stage: Katherine Nelson (1973)
Around 9-12 months - children will begin to communicate in a way that makes their meaning clear
• Through individuals words accompanied by non-verbal communication
He proposed seven reasons why language is initially used - pragmatics
Holophrastic stage: Michael Halliday - Functions of early language (1973)
Language used to try to fulfil a need
EG: ‘Nana’ - gesturing for more banana
Holophrastic stage: Michael Halliday’s functions of early language - Instrumental
Language used to influence others - to command or persuade
EG: ‘Come’ - when wanting to enter a playground with caregiver
Holophrastic stage: Michael Halliday’s functions of early language - Regulatory
Language used to build and strengthen social relationships with others
EG: ‘Love you’ - aimed at sibling
Holophrastic stage: Michael Halliday’s functions of early language - Interactional
Language used to develop a sense of self, express preferences and opinions etc.
EG: ‘No like it’ - describing a new food
Holophrastic stage: Michael Halliday’s functions of early language - Personal
Language used to request information from, or give information to, another participant
EG: ‘I eating all my dinner’
Holophrastic stage: Michael Halliday’s functions of early language - Representational
Language used to explore the world around oneself
EG: ‘Who that?’ - when hearing a knock at the door
Holophrastic stage: Michael Halliday’s functions of early language - Heuristic
Language used to play and be imaginative
EG: ‘Dragon’
Holophrastic stage: Michael Halliday’s functions of early language - Imaginative
Around 18-24 months
Child puts two words together to convey meaning
Shows understanding of grammar for the first time - see relationships between two words
The two words uttered will usually be content words - that convey essential meaning, rather than grammatical words - that indicate relationships between content words
Third stage of development: Two word stage
Suggested that syntactical structures of two word utterances follow a limited range of patterns
Two word stage: Roger Brown (1973)
EG: Daddy go
Roger Brown: Agent + action
EG: Make cake
Roger Brown: Action + object
EG: Billy bike
Roger Brown: Agent + object
EG: Run garden
Roger Brown: Action + location
EG: Teddy chair
Roger Brown: Object + location
EG: Granny gloves
Roger Brown: Possessor + possession
EG: Coat soft
Roger Brown: Object + attribute
EG: Here chair
Roger Brown: Demonstrative + object
Usually between 2-3 years old
Longer, more complex utterances - clear meaning
Includes key content words and omits grammatical words
EG: ‘Me going to sleep’ instead of ‘I am going to sleep’
Fourth stage of development: Telegraphic stage
Usually around age 3
Increasingly like adult speech
Grammatical words alongside content words
• Subtle nuances: irregular verbs etc.
Child will be gaining confidence with inflectional functions and understand the ways in which particular words have different endings
• According to quantity, scale or time
Sentences will be mainly grammatically standard, with occasion ‘virtuous errors’
Fifth stage of development: Post-telegraphic stage
Nurture theory
Language is learnt through positive/negative reinforcement (also known as operant conditioning) and imitation
Positive reinforcement: Successful utterances are rewarded by parents and therefore reinforced, whilst unsuccessful ones are forgotten
Skinner: Behaviourism
Arguments for:
• Any given language is a behaviour
Arguments against:
• Poverty of stimulus
• Linguistic universals
• Ineffectiveness of correction
• Conflicts with Chomsky’s LAD
• Doesn’t account for cognitive factors in language development
Skinner: Behaviourism evaluation
Nature theory
LAD (Language Acquisition Device): Children are born with the innate ability to understand and produce language
This is based on the idea of a ‘universal language’
• Functions for a limited critical period
May occasionally get verb tenses wrong for example - he calls these ‘virtuous errors’
Doesn’t say environment doesn’t matter, just that the LAD is more important
Chomsky: Nativism
Arguments for:
• WUG test
• Stroke victims
• Formation of creole varieties
• Studies of sign language
Arguments against:
• Skinner: no innate ability, purely imitation
• Why are mistakes still made if it’s built in?
• The term ‘universal grammar’ is vague - different languages have different structures
Chomsky: Nativism evaluation
Children were shown an imaginary animal - a ‘wug’ and asked to produce the plural version
Children produced the word ‘wugs’ - shows an innate understanding of grammar rules
Jean Berko Gleason: The WUG test (1958)
Nature theory
Says language development will never be greater than cognitive development - always match
Language development is dependent on cognitive development
Piaget: Cognition
When children can compare
Piaget: Cognition - Seriation
The child’s realisation that objects exist regardless of perception
Piaget: Cognition - Object permanence
Only think about themselves when using language
Piaget: Cognition - Egocentric
Aged 0-2
We develop the five senses through movement and experiences
Labelling takes off
Object Permanence
Egocentric
Increased physical ability increases our cognitive ability - leads to linguistic development
Piaget: First stage of cognitive development - Sensori-motor stage
Aged 2-7
Imaginative function role
Learning symbolic meaning/functions of language
Thinking is still egocentric
Roleplay
Around age 4: Intuative age - start asking lots of questions
Piaget: Second stage of cognitive development - Pre-operational stage
Aged 7-11
Finally discover logic
Inductive reasoning
Brain learns to reverse actions
Learning operations have certain cause and effects
Gain empathy
Piaget: Third stage of cognitive development - Concrete operational stage
Aged 11-16
Gain the ability to think and reason in more abstract, idealistic and logical ways
No longer dependent on concrete manipulation
Piaget: Fourth stage of cognitive development - Formal operational stage
Arguments for:
• Some linguistic development seems to match cognitive development
Arguments against:
• Too much reliance on cognitive ability
• There isn’t always clear cohesion between language and cognitive development
• Small sample size
Piaget: Cognition evaluation
Nurture theory
Parents and caregivers (more knowledgeable others) are key players in children’s language development
Child-directed speech
MKO’s scaffold children’s language by supporting their language development
LASS (Language Acquisition Support System) - In response to Chomsky’s LAD
Bruner: Input and interaction
Features include:
• Higher pitch and exaggerated intonation
• Repeated grammatical structures
• Repetition of the child’s name
• Use of many questions and commands
• Use of concrete nouns
• Fewer verbs, adjectives and function words
• Shorter overall mean length of utterance
• Recasting - reconstructing the child’s utterance to make it more accurate and developed
Bruner: Input and Interaction - Child Directed Speech features
A more knowledgeable other (MKO) needs to be presents for children to be able to learn language
The MKO can move children beyond their zone of proximal development (ZPD) through scaffolding and supporting their language development
Child’s ZPD will then broaden - meaning learning can continue to progress
Vygotsky: Input and interaction
Arguments for:
• It seems like a child will learn quicker with frequent interaction
Arguments against:
• There are cultures where adults don’t adopt special ways of talking to children - meaning CDS may be useful but not essential
Bruner: Input and interaction evaluation
Language development and cognitive development are co-dependent
Tomasello: Usage based
When the child understands the semantic meaning of words
EG: Understanding ‘more milk’ means drink more milk
Tomasello: Usage based - Intention reading
When the child understands the grammatical meaning of words
They understand that they need to put words in a certain order to convey meaning
EG: “more milk” in this order conveys to the other person that they want more milk
Tomasello: Usage based - Pattern finding
Says babies are born ready to learn
Children living in poverty are behind 2 years
Brain neurons are affected by poverty environment (Social economic status - SES)
Evidenced a strong correlation between the number of CDS heard by babies and the vocabulary developed by them
Anne Fernald
Victim of severe abuse, neglect and social isolation
• Kept in a locked room at approx. 20 months old by father and was tied to either a toilet or crib
Little to no interaction with anyone
Found at approx. 13 years 6 months
Genie (1970 - America)
Her rate of grammar acquisition was much slower than normal, her vocabulary was okay
Linguists determined she was unable to full acquire a language, she was only able to acquire some
Supports: Bruner
Challenges: Chomsky
HOWEVER,
She did learn some - proves necessity of both nature and nurture?
Genie findings (1970 - America)
