child language acquisition

Question 1

stages of cla

Answer 1

-preverbal
-babbling
-holophrastic
-two-word
-telegraphic
-multiword

Question 2

what are preverbal and babbling stages believed to be?

Answer 2

-hardwired in human instinct
-unlearned
-universal and uniform in expression

Question 3

ages and traits of preverbal stages

Answer 3

crying
-birth-6 months
-sole mechanism for communication

cooing
-2-3 months
-baby starts to utter vowel sounds and recognise tone of voice

Question 4

ages and traits of babbling stage

Answer 4

-6-12 months
-baby starts to utter consonant sounds along with vowels
-can blend consonant/vowel sounds
-can pick up prosodics (eg volume, rhythm) and use physical gestures

Question 5

ages and traits of holophrastic stage

Answer 5

-12-18 months
-uses one word as a whole sentence (holophrase)
-overgeneralises lexemes and applies one word to cover a range of nouns

-signed + spoken
-uses lexemes (1 per utterance)
-no syntax

Question 6

ages and traits of two-word stage

Answer 6

-18-24 months
-babies begin to develop a greater understand of syntactic and semantic relations
-begins to combine words, especially verb and noun combos

-signed + spoken
-uses lexemes (2 per utterance)
-yes syntax

Question 7

ages and traits of telegraphic stage

Answer 7

-24-30 months
-child can communicate using content words (eg nouns, verbs) and can speak in almost full sentences, but misses important articles, conjunctions etc

-signed + spoken
-uses lexemes (3+ per utterance)
-yes syntax

Question 8

ages and traits of multiword stage

Answer 8

-30 months
-begins to use overregularization (children include rules that don’t apply to rules of grammar)
-sentences becomes more complex as they apply syntactic rules

Question 9

phonological development - early sounds

Answer 9

-vowels tend to be acquired before consonants
-initial consonants in a word tend to be easier to master than final ones
-many consonant sounds children make are universal
-most common consonant sounds are b d m n h
-by 4, only few consonant cause problems
-by 6/7, child is confident with both vowels and consonants

Question 10

what is the universal grammar theory?

Answer 10

-humans are born with an innate ability to learn language

Question 11

key points of universal grammar theory?

Answer 11

-humans are born with an innate language device/faculty
-there are underlying linguistic structures that are common to all languages
-language acquisition relies on a specific set of rules that are hardwired in the brain

Question 12

what is the usage-based language acquisition theory?

Answer 12

• language acquisition is based on the way language is used in everyday communication

Question 13

key points of usage-based theory

Answer 13

-language learning is driven by exposure and patterns
-language learning involves constructing knowledge based on real language use
-grammar and language structure emerge from the patterns and use of language in context

Question 14

language problem core issues

Answer 14

-overgeneralisation
-the segmentation problem
-grammar acquisition
-pragmatic development

Question 15

overgeneralisation

Answer 15

how children apply learned grammatical rules to new words and sentences, and how they deal with exceptions to rules

Question 16

the segmentation problem

Answer 16

the challenge of how children can identify individual words within a continuous stream of spoken language

Question 17

grammar acquisition

Answer 17

how children grasp rules for combining words into sentences

Question 18

pragmatic development

Answer 18

how children learn to use language appropriately in different social contexts and nuances (sarcasm etc)

Question 19

whole object assumption

Answer 19

for children, a new word usually refers to a whole object, not a part of it or a quality the object possesses

Question 20

mutual exclusivity assumption

Answer 20

the belief that an object cannot be two things at once

Question 21

phonological errors

Answer 21

simplification strategies including:
-deletion of sounds (drip—dip)
-substitution (frog—fwog)

Question 22

lexical/morphological overgeneralisation

Answer 22

occurs with:
-irregular inflections (plurals such as sheeps, meese, tooths)
-tenses (goed, eated)

Question 23

positives of universal grammar theory

Answer 23

-children experience same stages of development at the same time
-children resist correction
-children create a form of language that adults don’t use
-children produce ‘virtuous errors’ - which are understandable, but not grammatically correct

Question 24

negatives of universal grammar theory

Answer 24

-children stop overgeneralising and learn to use language correctly
-children who have been deprived of social contact can’t achieve complete communicative competence - genie
-children need input to give them more skills than grammar - eg pragmatics

Question 25

positives of usage-based theory

Answer 25

-children stop overgeneralising and learn to use language correctly
-children who have been deprived of social contact can’t achieve complete communicative competence - genie
-children need input to give them more skills than grammar - eg pragmatics

Question 26

negatives of usage-based theory

Answer 26

-children experience same stages of development at the same time
-children resist correction
-children create a form of language that adults don’t use
-children produce ‘virtuous errors’ - which are understandable, but not grammatically correct