Child Language Flashcards
Shriberg’s Early 8 (1993)
1-3 years old
m, n, j (y), b, w, d, p, h
(my nice yellow ball went down prince hill)
Shriberg’s Middle 8 (1993)
3-6 years old
t, ɳ (ng), k, g, f, v, tʃ (ch), dʒ (j)
(that thing killed greta’s fa vourite chicken James)
Shriberg’s Late 8 (1993)
5-7 years old
ʃ (sh) , ʒ (jsuh), l, r, s, z, θ (th voiceless) ð (th voiced)
(she measured lots -of- rice so zoe thinks the)
Halliday’s Functions of Speech (1975)
Imaginative - imaginary worlds, playing
Instrumental - Fulfilling needs
Interactional - Social relationships
Regulatory - Influence behaviour of others
Representational - Convey facts and information
Personal - Convey opinions and identity
Heuristic - Learn about the environment
Imagine Instruments Interact Regularly with Representatives of Persons and Humans
Cognitive Theory
Language acquisition is a part of a wider development of intellectual understanding
Language can’t be developed without prior knowledge of outside information, e.g. tense can’t be understood without an understanding of time
Piaget
Ursula Bellugi’s pronouns + questions
Brown’s morphological development
Usage Based Theory
Suggests children base their utterances on what they’ve used before and what is used with them by their carers
Suggests children follow patterns with their language
Michael Tomasello
Social Interactionism Theory
Children’s language is developed through their interaction with others, specifically adults
Jerome Bruner, proposed LASS (language acquisition support system) emphasising the importance of social interaction on children developing their language
Vygotsky suggested in order for children to learn, a more knowledgeable other MKO (e.g. a parent) needs to be present to help them move beyond their zone of proximal development (what they can do with help)
Nativism Theory
Suggests that humans have an innate ability to acquire language
Chomsky suggested children have an LAD (language acquisition device) that allows them to make sense of the world around them - The language a child is exposed to is not sophisticated enough to provide them with a full understanding of the whole language so they must already be able to process language
Behaviourism theory
Language is learnt through imitation and reinforcement
Skinner suggested that positive and negative reinforcement are critical to the conditioning process. The language a child produces can be controlled by the effect it has on the speakers around it. A child will respond to the stimuli around them and imitate this language. When a child is praised for their language, they associate talking with positive reinforcement, and the same for negative, e.g. forgetting ‘please’.
Bandura demonstrated this through play experiments
Overgeneralisation
Applying a grammatical rule where it does not need to be applied
Ursula Bellugi’s stages of pronouns
- Child uses their own name, e.g. ‘Tom play’ (I play)
- Child recognises I/Me pronouns, e.g. ‘I play toy’ ‘Me do that’
- Child is able to use pronouns in appropriate subject/object position, e.g. ‘I play with the toy’ ‘Give that to me’
Ursula Bellugi’s stages of negative formation
- Reliance on ‘no’/’not’, e.g. ‘no bed’ ‘no like car’
- Moving ‘no/’not’ inside a sentence, e.g. ‘I no want it’ ‘I not did it’
- Attaching negative to the auxiliary verb, e.g. ‘I am not doing it’, ‘I don’t want to go’
Rodger Brown’s development of questions (1973)
- Using rising intonation to indicate a question, e.g. juiCE?
- Question words appear (when/where/what/why/who/how) e.g. ‘why ben go?’’
- Auxiliary verbs and inverted syntax, e.g. ‘Is apple gone?’
Grammar development stages and ages
Holophrastic - 12-18 months
Two word - 18-24 months
Telegraphic - 24-36 months
Post telegraphic - 36+ months
Aitchinson (1987) Stages of lexical development
Labelling (1-2) - Linking words to the objects they’re referring to
Packaging (2-3) - Exploring labels and what they can apply to, over/under extension happens here
Network Building (3+) - Making connections between hypernyms and hyponyms and understanding semantics, synonyms and antonyms
Rescorla (1980 Types of overextension
Categorical overextension - Name for one member of a category applied to all, e.g. ‘apple’ for all fruits
Analogical overextension - A word for one object is extended to one in another category usually due to physical or functional connection, e.g. ‘ball’ for all round objects
Mismatch statements - One-word sentence that appears abstract, child makes a statement about one object in relation to another, e.g. ‘duck’ to an empty pond
Katherine Nelson (1973) Categorising first words
- Nouns make up 60%
- Actions and events are the second largest
- Describing/modifying 3rd largest
- Social and personal words only make up 8%
Velar assimilation
Non velar sound changes to a velar sound, due to the presence of a velar sound in the word e.g. ‘guck’ for ‘duck’, ‘gock’ for ‘sock’
Nasal assimilation
Non nasal sound changes to a nasal sound due to presence of a nasal sound in the word, e.g. ‘nunny’ for ‘bunny’
Fronting (substitution)
Sound at the back of the mouth (velar) is replaced by a sound from the front of the mouth (alveolar, labial etc.) e.g. ‘tar’ for ‘car’, ‘date’ for ‘gate’
Stopping (substitution)
Fricative and/or affricate is replaced with plosive sound, e.g. ‘dat’ for ‘that’, ‘bery’ for ‘very’
Gliding (substitution)
Replacing liquid sound (r/l) for glide sound (w/y) e.g. ‘wabbit’ for ‘rabbit’
Consonant cluster reduction
Cluster is simplified to a single consonant, e.g. ‘top’ for ‘stop’
Weak syllable deletion
Unstressed syllable is deleted, e.g. ‘nana’ for banana, ‘tato’ for potato
Final consonant deletion/clipping
Deletion of the final consonant in a word e.g. ‘tree’ for ‘treat’
Reduplication
Repetition of a particular sound, syllable or structure, e.g. ‘doggie’, ‘choochoo’
