Child Language Acquisition Flashcards
Skinner
Behaviourist theory:
- positive and negative reinforcement
- when children use correct utterances, which are reinforced by an adult, they are more likely to repeat the utterance
Chomsky
LAD:
- children must have an innate device (language acquisition device), to learn language as they receive impoverished language input from adults
Bruner
Interactionist theory:
- language is learnt through interaction with other people (they are the child’s LASS - language acquisition support system).
Halliday
7 functions of language
Heuristic function
Helps children find out more about their environment
Imaginative function
Imaginary world children use in play
Interactional function
Formation of relationships with others
Instrumental
used to express needs
Personal
Opinions, feelings, identity
Regulatory
Used to tell others what to do
Representational
Used to convey facts/info
Roscorla
types of extension
Overextension
Giving an object a wider meaning than it actually has
Categorical overextension
The name for one member of a category is used for all members of the category
e.g. apple is used for all fruits
Analogical overextension
A word for one object is extended to one in a different category
e.g. ball for an orange
Predicate overextension
A word used for something despite an absence of the object
e.g. pointing at a pond and saying duck
Underextension
Giving an object a narrower meaning than it actually has
Brown
Typical order of morphological acquisitions
1. -ing
2. -s (plural)
3. -‘s (possessive)
4. a, the
5. -ed
6. -s (third person singular verb ending)#
7. be (primary auxiliary)
Jean Aitchson
Labelling, packaging, network building
- labelling
Linking words to objects to which they refer
- packaging
Exploring labels and what they can be applied to - where over/under extensions occur
- network building
Making connections between words, understanding similarities and opposites
Garvey
Pretend play:
- studied pairs of children to find that children adopt roles and identities, and invent settings and objects during pretend play
Berko and Brown
Fis phenomonon:
- children understand the words meaning, but have a wider receptive vocab than productive vocab so can’t voice the word
Bellugi
Stages of negative formation:
1. no or not, start of sentence
2. no or not inside sentence
3. attaches negative to auxiliary verbs and copula ‘be’
Preverbal stage:
1. vegetative
0-4 months, sounds of comfort and reflexes
Preverbal stage:
2. cooing
4-7 months, vocal play using open mouth vowel sounds
Preverbal stage:
3. babbling
6-12 months, repeated patterns of (both consonant and vowel) sounds
Preverbal stage:
4. proto words
9-12 months, word like vocalisations not matching actual words but used for the same meaning each time
Phonemic expansion and contraction
When babies start to babble, the number of different phonemes they can produce increases – phonemic expansion
Later in the babbling stage they reduce the number of phonemes they use to just the relevant ones (phonemic contraction)
Manner of articulation:
plosives
Airflow briefly blocked
Manner of articulation:
fricatives
Airflow partially blocked
Manner of articulation:
affricatives
Plosives and fricatives together
Manner of articulation:
nasals
Air moving through nose
Manner of articulation:
laterals
Tongue placed on ridge of teeth and air moves down the side of the mouth
Manner of articulation:
approximants
Minimal blockage
Place of articulation:
labial consonants
P,F,B,V
Place of articulation:
alveolar consonants
D,T,S,Z
Place of articulation:
velar consonants
G,K
Holophrastic stage
12-18 months
Single words
Two word stage
18-24 months
Two word utterances:
S+V
V+O
What age is the telegraphic stage?
24-36 months
Telegraphic stage:
Aitchison
labelling, packaging, network building
Telegraphic stage:
syntactical development
ordering of words into sentences and clauses becomes more accurate
Telegraphic stage:
morphological advances
add inflections to words to alter tense, possession and plurals
prefixes and suffixes to alter word classes
Telegraphic stage:
increasingly complex structure e.g…
S+V+O
S+V+C
S+V+A
Telegraphic stage:
forming yes/no interrogations
first stage when yes/no interrogations are constructed with auxiliary verbs and changing word order
Telegraphic stage:
Bellugi (negative formation)
stages of negative formation:
1. no or not at start of sentence
2. no or not inside sentence
3. attaches no or not to auxiliary verbs and copula be
Telegraphic stage:
Bellugi (pronoun use)
- child uses own name
- child uses pronouns in incorrect position
- uses them correctly
Telegraphic: More content words than?
More content words than function words
What, where, when, why
usually appear correctly at the beginning of the sentence but inversion of subject and copula/auxiliary verb don’t occur until later
What age is the post telegraphic stage?
36+ months
Post-telegraphic stage:
conjunction use
child can form compound and complex utterances using conjunctions
Telegraphic stage:
Roger Brown
typical order of acquisition of inflections
assimilation
changing one consonant sound for another near it
addition
adding a vowel to the end of words to create a CVCV pattern
substitution
substituting one sound for another
deletion
omitting final consonant in words
reduplication
repeating a whole syllable
consonant cluster reductions
reducing clusters of consonants to single units
deletion of unstressed syllables
e.g. nana for banana
virtuous errors
mistakes children make as they develop grammatically
Features of CDS
scaffolding
framing
repetition
high pitch/raised intonation
child’s name rather than pronouns
short sentences
downward convergence
Sociodramatic play
role playing, helps practice social interactions and negotiation skills while using field specific lexis
Structure of CLA answer
intro: age, stage, context
phonology
grammar
lexis
meaning
receptive vocab
words you understand
productive vocab
words you can say
agent and affected
someone does something to object
agent and action
someone performs an action
entity and attribute
person or object described
action and affected
action affect object
action and location
action occurs in a place
entity and location
object located somewhere
possessor and possession
object has a possessor
nomination
person or object labelled
recurrence
event repeated
negation
something denied
