Child Lanaguge Acquistion Flashcards
What is the Holophrastic Stage?
1-1.5 years old
Holophrases are single words and usually nouns
A single word can have many meanings such as a child shouting dog can mean:
- Where’s the dog? (Interrogative)
- There’s the dog. (Declarative)
- Come here, dog! (Exclamative)
The child may add intonation, so if they say ‘dog’ their voice rises at the end, suggesting they are asking a question.
What is the Two-Word Stage?
1.5- 2 years
The child is now using 2 words
Verb start to emerge more
The child starts to use syntax correctly:
- Subject and verb= Milo woof
- Verb and object= bark dog
- Noun phrase= soft Milo
- Verb phrase= walk dog
What is the Telegraphic Stage?
2-5 years
When there is enough words to communicate successfully
Massive increase in vocabulary
Word classes are involved like pronouns and prepositions
- Milo is dog
- Milo go(es) woof
- Where dog go?
What is Post-Telegraphic Stage?
The child can use many advanced features of English, including contractions and irregular verbs.
What are the 5 mistake categories children make?
- Addition
- Deletion
- Consonant cluster reduction
- Substitution
- Assimilation
What is addition?
The child adds something completely new into the pronunciation
For example, ‘cat-o’
Diminutisation is a process of addition where a child adds a ‘y’ onto the end of words to make them diminutives.
For example, ‘doggy’
What is deletion?
The child removes a sound from the word altogether.
For example, ‘ca’ (instead of cat)
What is consonant cluster reduction?
The child removes some consonant sounds from the word.
For example, ra-it’ instead of ‘rabbit’
What is substitution?
The child substitutes an easier phoneme in place of an easier one.
For example, ‘logurt’ instead of yoghurt
What is assimilation?
The child uses a sound from earlier or later in the word as it is easier to say.
For example, ‘lellow’ instead of ‘yellow’
What are Halliday’s 7 core functions that children use language for?
- Instrumental
- Regulatory
- Interactional
- Personal
- Heuristic
- Imaginative
- Representational
What is the instrumental function?
The child needs something
For example, ‘want drink’ or ‘need toilet’
What is the regulatory function?
The child wants something to happen
For example, ‘pass me juice’ or ‘come here’
What is the interactional function?
The child interacts with others
For example, ‘doggy play?’ or ‘love you mummy’
What is the personal function?
The child wants to express themselves
For example, ‘doggy good boy’ or ‘me no like cheese’
What is the heuristic function?
The child wants to learn about the world
For example, ‘what dog doing?’ or ‘where dad going?’
What is the imaginative function?
The child wants to be creative with language, including telling stories
For example, ‘me a doggy too! Wood woof!’ or ‘one day when I was…’
What is the representational function?
The child wants to relay facts
For example, ‘I am 2’ or ‘dog is on sofa’
What is Berko and Brown’s theory?
Fish- Fis phenomenon
Children notice when caregivers make mistakes but are unable to see that they are making a mistake.
A child saying ‘fis’ and asked if they meant ‘fis’ they said no, but if they asked if they meant ‘fish’ they said yes.
What is the behaviourism theory?
Skinner
Nurture debate
They argue that children learn through positive and negative reinforcement.
When a child says something right, their caregivers will praise them and when they say something wrong, they will tell them they are wrong and correct them
What is the interactionalism theory?
Bruner
They argue that child are born with nothing (tabula rasa) and learn language from the social environment they are in- this includes caregivers providing support.
Bruner developed the Langauge Acquisition Support System (LASS)- which is designed for caregivers to scaffold and support a child’s language to help them get it correct.
When using langauge to talk to a child, we call this Child Directed Speech (CDS) This includes labelling, over-articulation, echoing, expansion, expatiation, and reformulation.
What is nativism theory?
Chomsky
They argue that there is some form of in-built language learning device
Chomsky argues that children do not learn through imitation and that even if they did caregivers do not provide a good enough source of English- he calls this poverty of stimulus.
He also argues that children have a Langauge Acquisition Device (LAD) in their brains which helps them to acquire language and contains a set of rules about how grammar and that as children become more exposed to langauge, different parts of the LAD activate- this is called universal grammar.
He furthers his theory by saying that children say things with mistakes that an adult would never have said, which means they cannot be imitating. For example, ‘I threwed a ball’. He calls these virtuous errors- errors where you can see why they have this wrong.
What is the Wug Test?
Berko-Gleason
Children were shown pictures of fictional things and actions and asked to form the object or action using an inflected ending.
For example:
There is one WUG.
There are two ___.
The majority (75%) of children ages 4-5 were bale to chose the correct ending.
This means children do not learn through imitation.
What is the cognitive theory?
They argue that children need to be cognitively adept to talk about things; they cannot express what they do not understand.
Piaget argues that until children learn the rule of object permanence (things still exist even when you can’t see them), they struggle to name things; hence why children’s language starts to be acquired properly at around a year.
What is Vygotsky’s theory?
He argued that children have a cognitive deficiency.
They need to understand things and have a gap of knowledge- this is called the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).
Also the role of the caregiver is seen as the More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) who is to fill the cognitive gap.
What is Snow’s theory?
Support the Interactionist theory.
He coined the term ‘motherese’ to describe the way mothers talk to their children.
This includes:
- Higher pitch
- Greater range of intonation
- Frequent use of the interrogative and declarative mood
- Repetition of syllables and phrases
What is the case study for Genie?
Genie was a child who was abused until the age of 13- shut away and deprived of human contact.
Linguists worked with her, but since she had passed the critical period, she couldn’t learn language.
This suggests that there must be some form of internal structure as caregivers were unable to help Genie to acquire language
What is the social constructivism theory?
They argue that children learn the rules of language and learn to construct it.
Tomasello argued that children listen to language and find patterns and develop plans on how language is used (schemas).
Braine argued that children learn to use slots and frames. As Tomasello says, these schemas are developed from listening to adults.
For example:
When a child talks about themselves completing an action they may say ‘I (slot)ed’
Verbs that can be added into the slot can be I liked, I played, I jumped and I threwed
What is the case study of Jim?
Bard and Sachs
A boy with two deaf parents.
They exposed him to TV and radio to hear language, but he didn’t learn how to speak.
However, interactions with speech therapists allowed him to acquire language, thus proving the importance of interaction.
