Child Langauge Acquisition

Question 1

Define ‘protowords’.

Answer 1

‘Made up’ words that a child will use to represent a word they might not yet be able to pronounce.

Question 2

Give the order of stages of language development in the average child.

Answer 2

They learn to:
-create individual phonemes and phonetic combinations (phonology)
-use a vocabulary of words and understand their meanings (lexis and semantics)
-combine words in a variety of sentence constructions, changing word formations to express different word classes (syntax and morphology)
-use prosodic features such as pith, volume, speech, and intonation to convey meaning (phonology)
-structure interactions with others (discourse)
-the subtleties of speech such as politeness, implicature, and irony (pragmatics).

Question 3

Define non-verbal communication.

Answer 3

Using facial expressions

Question 4

Define ‘holophrase’.

Answer 4

The term given to single words which may convey a multitude of messages. A child may convey a whole sentence worth of meaning in just a single word/ labels things in the environment around them.

Question 5

Give an example of a holophrase.

Answer 5

A child may use ‘milk’ to mean “I would like some milk”, “I’ve spilt my milk”, “Where is the milk?” or as a label. The meaning is derived from contextual requirements such as grabbing hands, pointing, looking distressed/ crying, banging on the table.

Question 6

What happens in the holophrastic stage?

Answer 6

The average child speaks their first word at around 1, between a year and 18 months the child will speak in single-word utterances (e.g. ‘mummy’, ‘teddy’).
Occassionally, the child may use multiple words which have been learnt as a single word unit (e.g. ‘wassat’, ‘allgone’).
Much of what is first learnt serves a naming funtion (e.g. ‘juice’, ‘biccy’, ‘daddy’).
However, sometimes a single word may convey multiple meanings (holophrases).

Question 7

What conclusions can be drawn about a child’s understanding in the holophrastic stage?

Answer 7

They are able to understand more words than they are able to pronounce.

Question 8

What purpose does speech serve in the holophrastic stage?

Answer 8

Expressing wants/ labelling, no complex purpose, function of naming, experimentation.

Question 9

What is required for understanding a child in the holophrastic stage?

Answer 9

Non-verbal communication, context clues (where they are, who they’re with, the time of day, their age).

Question 10

What is the importance of the caregiver at this stage?

Answer 10

Influence attachments of sounds and concepts, pick up common words through association.

Question 11

What happens during the two-word stage?

Answer 11

(The beginning of syntax)
A child’s understanding of language is much more advanced than their spoken language suggests.
Between 12-18 months- respond to 2-word instructions (e.g. ‘kiss teddy’, ‘tickle daddy’).
2-word sentences usually appear at around 18 months (the 2-word stage).
The 2 words are usually in a standard grammatical sequence (e.g. subject/ verb, verb/ object, subject/ object, subject/complement; ‘Stephen sleep’, ‘draw mummy’, ‘Louis juice’, ‘dolly dirty’). When a child repeats adult utterances, some words may be missed out.
Grammatical structure usually mimics that of the caregiver. The words uttered usually carry out meaning (content words).
Adult: “Danielle is playing in the garden”
Child: “play garden”

Question 12

What are the five groups Nelson groups words into?

Answer 12

-classes of object (e.g. ‘car’)
-specific objects (e.g. ‘mummy’)
-actions/ events (e.g. ‘give’)
-modifying things (e.g. ‘dirty’)
-personal/ social (e.g. ‘bye-bye’)
The biggest of these groups is classes of object- it is easier to describe things they can touch, see, or smell.
(Nelson studied the first 50 words produced by 18 children in 1973).

Question 13

How many words will the average child be able to use and understand at 18 months?

Answer 13

Actively use- 50
Understand- around 250

Question 14

How many words can the average 2 year old use?

Answer 14

300

Question 15

How many words can the average 5 year old use?

Answer 15

around 3000

Question 16

How many words can the average 7 year old use?

Answer 16

around 4000

Question 17

What is the estimated vocabulary of an 11 year old?

Answer 17

around 40 000

Question 18

Define under-extension.

Answer 18

When a child uses a word in a very restricted way. For example, when they say ‘hat’ they may only mean the hat that they wear, not just any hat.

Question 19

Define over-extension.

Answer 19

When a child uses a word to refer to several different but related things. For example, they might use the word ‘cat’ to refer to any animal with four legs (e.g. foxes, dogs, etc.)
This is more common than under-extension.

Question 20

What are the two types of over-extension defined by Rescorla (1980)?

Answer 20

Categorical- when a word is used to refer to things in a similar category (e.g. the word ‘car’ is used to refer to buses, trucks, and other forms of four-wheeled vehicle).
Analogical- when a word is used to refer to things that aren’t clearly in the same category but have the same physical or functional relation to each other (e.g. the word ‘hat’ is used to refer to anything connected with the head).

Question 21

What were the three development processes suggested by Aitchison (1987)?

Answer 21

Labelling- when a child links a sound to an object- they are able to correct name.
Packaging- when a child begins to understand the range of meaning a word might have. They recognise that the word ‘bottle’ can cover different shapes and sizes, but that they all have a similar function.
Network building- when a child starts to make connections between words (e.g. they understand that words have opposites like ‘big’ and ‘small’, or know that ‘little’ and ‘small’ are synonyms).

Question 22

What happens in the telegraphic stage?

Answer 22

At around 2 years old, children start to use 3-4 word combinations.
Utterances are formed according to grammatical rules (subject/verb/complement, subject/verb/object, verb/object/object; ‘doggy is naughty’, ‘Jodie want cup’, ‘give mummy spoon’).
Children still focus on content words which carry the most meaning, and omit functional words (e.g. prepositions, auxiliary verbs, and determiners).

Question 23

Which grammatical constructions are children likely to use at age 5?

Answer 23

• Coordinating conjunctions to link separate utterances.
  -Negatives involving the auxiliary ‘do’ (e.g. ‘don’t like it’)
  -Questions formed with ‘who’, ‘where’, ‘what’
  -Inflections like -ed for past tense, -ing for present participles, and -s for plurals.

Question 24

What are the stages of the pre-verbal stage?

Answer 24

Vegetative
Cooing
Babbling
Proto-words

Question 25

Give features of the vegetative stage.

Answer 25

Sounds of discomfort or reflexive actions (e.g. sickness/ gagging, yawning, coughing, crying)
(around 0-4 months)

Question 26

Give features of the cooing stage.

Answer 26

Comfort sounds and vocal play (e.g. ‘oooh’, ‘aahhh’).
(around 4-7 months)

Question 27

Give features of the babbling stage.

Answer 27

Extended sounds resembling syllable-like sequences. Repeated patterns.
(Reduplicated- ‘babababababa’
Variegated- ‘daba’, ‘manamoo’)
(Around 6-12 months)

Question 28

Give features of the proto-words stage.

Answer 28

Word-like vocalisations. (e.g. ‘ray rays’= raisins)
(Around 12 months)

Question 29

At what age does the post-telegraphic stage occur?

Answer 29

36 months
(more grammatically complex combinations)

Question 30

What term means the ability to form understandable utterances using the grammar system?

Answer 30

Communicative competence.

Question 31

Which three subsections may the pre-verbal stage be broken down into?

Answer 31

Vegetative, cooing, and babbling.

Question 32

How long (on average) does the pre-verbal stage last?

Answer 32

Between 0-12 months.
Vegetative- 0-7 months.
Cooing (distinct from crying, but before production of vowels/ consonants)- 4-6 months.
Babbling (child begins to produce phonemes)- 6-12 months.

Question 33

Between what ages does the holophrastic stage frequently occur?

Answer 33

12-18 months

Question 34

Define noun bias.

Answer 34

The frequency of nouns exceeds that of other word classes in early vocabulary.

Question 35

Define Gestalt expression.

Answer 35

Compressing a string of words into a single utterance as they have not been able to segment a phrase (e.g. “wassat” for “what’s that?”). It is also argued that these are constructions which the child is using as units of language.

Question 36

Give two types of babbling.

Answer 36

Reduplicated (e.g. bababababa)
Variegated (e.g. dabadabadaba)

Question 37

Between what ages does the two-word stage commonly occur?

Answer 37

18-24 months

Question 38

Define productive vocabulary.

Answer 38

The language which a child can use (they will understand far more than this).
18 months- 50 words
24 months- 200 words
36 months- 2,000 words

Question 39

Define naming insight.

Answer 39

Children begin to realise that everything around them has a name (two-word stage).

Question 40

Define vocabulary spurt.

Answer 40

A child displays a sudden growth in their vocabulary between 24 and 36 months; they switch from learning approximately 2 new words a week to roughly 20.

Question 41

Define MLU.

Answer 41

Mean Length of Utterance- measured in morphemes (not syllables).
Roger Brown found that between 12 and 26 months, children are expected to have MLUs of about 1.75.

Question 42

At what age does the telegraphic stage usually occur?

Answer 42

24-36 months.

Question 43

Define syntactic inversion.

Answer 43

Reversal of regular word order in a sentence, learnt when forming a question (“I can eat the cake” (S MAV V O) becomes “Can I eat the cake?” (MAV S V O)).

Question 44

At what age does the post- telegraphic stage tend to occur?

Answer 44

36 months +

Question 45

Define normal non-fluency.

Answer 45

Hesitattion whilst mental processing occurs, especially when attempting more complex constructions or recounting stories (e.g. “she runned after it- and- and- and the bird”).

Question 46

Give the ‘early eight’ phonemes (aged 1-3).

Answer 46

/m n j b w d p h/

Question 47

Give the ‘middle eight’ phonemes (aged 3-6.5).

Answer 47

/t ŋ k g f v tʃ dʒ/

Question 48

Give the ‘late eight’ phonemes (aged 5-7.5).

Answer 48

/ʃ ʒ l r s z θ ð/ + clusters

Question 49

Define metathesis.

Answer 49

Swapping sounds in a word (e.g. “revelant” for “relevant”).

Question 50

What is the difference between reduplication and reduplicated words?

Answer 50

Reduplicated words- repeating words (e.g. “bye bye” “moo moo”).
Reduplication- repeating consonant or vowel clusters in a word (e.g. “snowowowman”).

Question 51

Define order of mention.

Answer 51

The sequence of clauses paralells the sequence of events- children find this easy to follow (“A happened, then B happened, then C…”).

Question 52

Define reverse order of mention.

Answer 52

When the sequence of clauses does not parallel the sequence of events- often achieved using conjunctions such as before/ after, and time adverbials (“Before you go outside, put your books away.”). Some children find this hard to decode.

Question 53

What did Petitto and Holowka (2002) find about babbling?

Answer 53

Most babbling came from the right side of the mouth which is controlled by the left side of the brain, which is responsible for speech production. This suggests that babbling is a form of preliminary speech.

Question 54

What did Desmond Morris (2008) find about babbling?

Answer 54

For the first 6 months, babbling will be the same regardless of nationality or quantity of parental input. Deaf children also produce these sounds. By 6 months these sounds will begin to resemble those of the language spoken around them.

Question 55

What did Katherine Nelson (1973) find?

Answer 55

60% of a child’s first 50 words were nouns.
She categorised the early words into four categories: naming, action, social, and modifying.

Question 56

How did Bloom (2004) contest noun bias?

Answer 56

It merely reflects the frequency of nouns in our language. Nouns outnumber verbs 5:1 in dictionaries. Invalidates the “naming explosion”.

Question 57

What three stages did Aitchinson identify as occuring during a child’s acquisiton of language?

Answer 57

Labelling- understanding the concept of labels and linking words to things.
Packaging- starting to explore the label.
Network building- Making connections between the labels (understanding opposites, similarities, relationships, and contrasts).

Question 58

What two criteria is overextension based on, according to Eve Clark (1973)?

Answer 58

The semantic hypothesis- overextension on the basis of features that combine to give an object meaning (e.g. colour, shape, sound, and movement). In this way, any moving thing with four legs could be called ‘cat’.
The functional similarities hypothesis- overextension results from similarities in the uses which objects are put to. In this way, anything used to hold liquid may be ‘cups’.

Question 59

What three categories of overextension does Leslie Rescorla (1980) give?

Answer 59

Categorical- most common type of overextension which occurs by the mixing of hyponyms with hypernyms.
Analogical- Found in about 15% of overextensions. Relates to the ‘packaging’ element of an object and its properties. A scarf might be called a ‘cat’ because it is soft.
Mismatch/ Predicate- Found in about 25% of overextensions. Convey abstract information and show a high level of awareness of the connections between objects that aren’t always obvious to the listener. For instance, a cot may be called ‘doll’ if a doll is often found in the cot.

Question 60

What did John Braine suggest about the two-word stage?

Answer 60

Children use patterns of two word utterance which revolve around certain words. He calls this a pivot schema, as children use key words as a ‘pivot’ to generate utterances (e.g. “allgone”- “allgone dinner”, “allgone milk”).

Question 61

What did Roger Brown (1973) state about question development stages?

Answer 61

1. Only prosodic features (rising intonation) indicate the interrogative mood (e.g. “Daddy come…?”).
2. Interrogative pronouns (when, where, what, who, how) are used at the start of utterances (e.g. “Where baby..?”).
3. Syntactic inversion of the auxiliary verb (can, is, did- tense occassionally incorrect) and the subject of the sentence (e.g. “You”, “Daddy”) produce the correct form (e.g. “Is Daddy gone?”).

Question 62

Give the morpheme acquisition stages according to Roger Brown (1973).

Answer 62

Inflection -ing (playing)
Plural -s (trains)
Possessive -s (Billy’s book)
Definite and indefinite articles (the/ a)
Past tense -ed (walked)
Third person singular inflection (she walks)
Contraction of the verb ‘be’ (he’s happy)

Question 63

Give the negation development stages according to Ursuala Bellugi (1967).

Answer 63

Uses ‘no’ or ‘not’ at the beginning or end of the sentence (e.g. “No shoes!”).
Puts ‘no’ or ‘not’ inside the sentence (e.g. “I no wear shoes!”).
Attaches negatives to auxiliary verbs (e.g. “I won’t wear shoes!”). (The main verb is not always yet in the correct tense).

Question 64

Give Halliday’s 7 functions.

Answer 64

1. Heuristic- explore environment
2. Imaginitive- used to play/ pretend
3. Instrumental- expressing needs/ wants
4. Interactional- establishing interpersonal contact
5. Personal- expressing feelings/ personal preferences
6. Regulatory- requesting/ asking for things
7. Representational- used to communicate information

Question 65

Which of Halliday’s functions (1978) are used most frequently?

Answer 65

Instrumental and regulatory, learnt at a young age along with interactional and personal.

Question 66

When is the representational function used?

Answer 66

6-8 years +

Question 67

How does John Dore describe the functions of language?

Answer 67

Through categorising individual functions.
Answering
Calling
Greeting
Labelling
Practising- using language without adults present
Protesting- objecting to requests
Repeating- an adult word or utterance
Requesting Action

Question 68

Define positive and negative face (Brown and Levinson).

Answer 68

Positive face- an individual desires social approval and inclusion.
Negative face- an individual asserts need for independence and ability to make own decisions.

Question 69

Give Piaget’s stages of child development.

Answer 69

Sensorimotor (up to 2)- experiences the physical world through the senses and begins classifying the things in it; lexis tends to be concrete; object permanence develops.
Pre-operational (2-7)- Language and motor skills develop; language is ego-centric.
Concrete operational (7-11)- Begins thinking logically about concrete events.
Formal operational (11+)- Abstract reasoning skills develop.

Question 70

Define intrapersonal speech.

Answer 70

Also termed private speech, this is communciation that a person directs towards themself- typical from age 3.

Question 71

When does silent inner speech typically develop?

Answer 71

Around age 7.

Question 72

Define intention reading.

Answer 72

When langauge is spoken, children understand the meanings and intentions around them from the language and gestures being used (e.g. children identify the words communicating the most meaning and use these in the holophrastic stage).

Question 73

Define pattern reading.

Answer 73

On reaching the two-word stage, a child can understand the effect of particular word pairings and patterns (e.g. “more” + noun), developing grammatical accuracy.

Question 74

Define slot-and-frame constructions.

Answer 74

Constructions with a reliable pattern which can be populated with different variables (e.g. “It’s an X”, “Where’s X?” with X being the variable that can be filled with different items).

Question 75

What experiment did Skinner (1957) conduct to apply the theory of behaviourism to language development?

Answer 75

He experimented with positive and negative reinforcement on rats and concluded that his findings may be extended to language development.

Question 76

Give a criticism of Skinner’s behaviourism.

Answer 76

Chomsky: questioned the validity of experiments on rats and pigeons to offer comment on human capacity for language learning.

Question 77

Give a theory supporting B.F Skinner’s behaviourism.

Answer 77

Albert Bandura (1989)- Bobo Doll experiment. Bandura explicitly emphasised the importance of language modelling- the language to which a child is exposed is likely to be imitated by the child in the same way as behaviour.

Question 78

Give a criticism of Chomsky’s nativism.

Answer 78

Tomasello: Chomsky is an “armchair linguist” as his ideas were only speculative.

Question 79

Give statistics of Berko-Gleason’s Wug test.

Answer 79

76% of four to five year olds formed the regular -s plural.
97% of seven to nine year old formed the regular -s plural.

Question 80

What did the case study of Nicaraguan Sign Language (1980s) suggest about CLA?

Answer 80

Deaf children in Nicaragua spotaneously collaborated to form their own sign language, suggest innate capacity to create language with complex grammar forms. (Nativism).

Question 81

When must a child learn language, according to Lenneberg’s critical period hypothesis?

Answer 81

Before the onset of puberty.

Question 82

Summarise the case study of Genie (1961).

Answer 82

A 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles had been locked away from all social interaction. Following her rescue, attempts to teach her English were only partly successful and she never achieved full grammatical competence.

Question 83

Summarise the case stufy of Oxana (1991).

Answer 83

An 8-year-old who had lived with a pack of dogs. When she was found she ran on all fours and could barely speak, instead, barking. When she was taught language, her speech was odd, without rhythm, inflection, or tone. She spoke flatly and was still able to communicate through barking.

Question 84

Summarise Piaget’s cognitivist theory.

Answer 84

Children must develop mental abilities before they can acquire particular aspects of language.
Until around 18 months, children are egocentric, then they begin to realise object permanence.
He proposed four stages: sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational.

Question 85

Give a criticism of Piaget’s cognitivist theory.

Answer 85

People with learning disabilities may still be linguistically fluent, suggesting cognitive development is not as closely connected to language development as Piaget suggests.

Question 86

Give support for Piaget by Lewis and Ramsay (2004).

Answer 86

Pronoun development during a child’s second year will depend on the extent to which the child has a sense of identity and can recognise the notion of self, particularly within the context of imaginitive play.

Question 87

Give a criticism of Piaget’s egocentricity by Repacholi and Gopnik (1997).

Answer 87

Broccoli and crackers were offered to infants aged between 14 and 18 months old, who expressed preference for the crackers. When offering a snack to the researcher:
The 14 month-old would offer the cracker, irrespective of whether the researcher had expressed a preference for broccoli or crackers.
The 18 month-old was able to identify when the researcher had suggested a preference for broccoli and offered this.
This suggests that children are sensitive to the needs of others from a young age and are not entirely egocentric in their behaviour.

Question 88

How does Vygotsky develop the cognitivist theory?

Answer 88

He believed that sociocultural environment plays an important role in how children develop cognitively. He believed that when children discover talking aloud is culturally abnormal, their intrapersonal speech becomes “silent inner speech”.

Question 89

Give a usage-based theory by Tomasello (2009).

Answer 89

Proposed focus on the interconnectedness of language development with intention reading and pattern finding.

Question 90

Give a usage-based theory by Ibbotson (2012).

Answer 90

Instead of picking up individual words and then learning to combine them according to pre-programmed sets of grammatical rules, children pick up rules which they are then able to adapt.

Question 91

What did Berko and Brown (1960) discover about children’s comprehension?

Answer 91

‘Fis’ phenomenon.

Question 92

What study did Bard and Sachs conduct? (Interactionism)

Answer 92

Studied a boy called ‘Jim’ who was the son of two deaf parents. Although he was exposed to TV and radio, his speech development was severely delayed. It demonstrated that exposure to language alone was not enough to develop language; interaction was required.

Question 93

What did Patricia Khul (2011) find about interaction and language development?

Answer 93

Babies learn language best in social settings and TV is not a substitute for interaction. In experiments with American and Japanese babies, those only watching TV or listening to audio did not show the ability to distinguish sounds in the same was as those who engaged with social interaction.
She also attested the existence of a critical period which ends at roughly 7 years old.
From 6-12 months, babies have an incredible ability to distinguish sounds regardless of language.

Question 94

What did Clark-Stewart (1973) find about social interaction with caregivers?

Answer 94

Children whose mothers talk more have larger vocabularies.

Question 95

What did Macnamara suggest about the LAD?

Answer 95

Rather than having an in-built language-acquisition-device, children have an innate ability to find meaning in social situations; it is this that means they are capable of understanding and learning language, not the LAD.

Question 96

What did Cruttenden (1974) suggest about pragmatic development?

Answer 96

Cruttenden compared adults and children to see if they could accurately predict football scores from listening to the score. He found that adults could accurately predict the winners based on the intonation placed on the first team, but children (up to age 7) were less successful.

Question 97

Summarise Vygotsky’s Interactionist theory.

Answer 97

Children need an MKO who supports them in learning and moving beyond the ZPD, encouraging them to move beyond what they already know to what is not yet known by the means of scaffolding and support.
(+ importance of play).

Question 98

What did Catherine Garvey state about the imaginitive function?

Answer 98

Sociodramatic play usually begins when the child is around four years oldand fulfills Halliday’s imaginative function. In their re-enactments they use specific lexis and formulate them in ways that adults may in real-life situations, suggesting they can observe and imitate adult behaviours.

Question 99

What did David Crystal state about langauge and play?

Answer 99

80% of interaction between parent and child in the first year is language play (e.g. lullabies, nursery rhymes). Early play routines also demonstrate how language complements the patterns of visual and tactile contact (e.g. nuzzling, tickling, finger walking, peeping sequences, bouncing games). He believes this language play continues through life as children experiment with phonetics, prosodic variations, rhyming, nonsense words, and morphological variations.

Question 100

Summarise Bruner’s interactionist theory.

Answer 100

Language learning is an innate ability but it needs activating through the LASS. This is exemplified by how parents often use books and images to develop their child’s naming abilities and their ability to get involved in conversation:
- Gaining attention (drawing the baby’s attention to a picture)
- Query (asking the baby to identify the picture)
- Label (telling the baby what the object is)
- Feedback (responding to the baby’s utterances)

Question 101

Summarise Catherine Snow’s (1970s) proposition of CDS.

Answer 101

Her research focused on the way mothers talk to their children and the connection to the child’s age. She initially proposed the idea of child-directed speech or motherese.

Question 102

What distinction did Mark Vandam (2015) introduce to CDS?

Answer 102

He made a distinction between ‘motherese’ and ‘fatherese’ byt stating that male talk to children is more likely to resemble that used to other adults and is less likely to have the singsong intonation and simplification more attributable to the female caregiver.

Question 103

What did Hirsh-Pasek and Treiman (1982) conclude about CDS?

Answer 103

Even four-year-olds adjust their language when speaking to a two-year-old and that the way adults talk to babies is similar to the way they talk to dogs.

Question 104

What did Schatz claim about truth value?

Answer 104

Only 4% of child’s linguistic errors are corrected by caregivers. (Link Aitchinson).

Question 105

What did Bryant and Clark Barrett (2007) find about CDS?

Answer 105

Intentions can be recognised in CDS regardless of whether meaning is understood. For example, Shuar adults (South America) were able to successfully differentiate between child-directed and adult-directed speech even if the language being used was unknown. They could sense whether the utterance was intended to prohibit, approve, comfort, or provide attention.

Question 106

Give two criticisms of CDS.

Answer 106

Papua New Guinea- the Kaluli tribe in Papua New Guinea, adulta speak to children as they would an adult and children acquire language at the same rate they would elsewhere.
Samoa- some tribes of Samoa, adults do not speak to children until they reach a certain age. These children still go through the developmental stages at roughly the same time provided there is exposure to language.