Child language acquisition

Question 1

Babies and sight

Answer 1

sight develops gradually in infancy
fully developed by the time they reach 3-5 years old
at birth, an infant can detect light and motion, make out faces and large shapes
up to 3-4 months, they can distinguish between colours, focus on smaller objects up to 3 feet away and watch activity around them

Question 2

Babies and hearing

Answer 2

born with excellent hearing - hear sounds in the womb
have been exposed to sounds of mothers and other family members
from birth, babies are startled by loud noises
a baby recognises and calms to parent’s voice by 3 months
6 months - can turn eyes / head towards new sound.

Question 3

when can a baby carry out reflexive vocalisations or vegetation and what is it?

Answer 3

0-2 months
natural sounds such as crying, burping, coughing, sneezing or grunting which are reactions to hunger, discomfort or simply physical sounds

Question 4

when can babies coo and what does this mean?

Answer 4

2-4 months
greater control over sounds that they make, babies begin to laugh and coo
cooing consists of sounds made from the back of the mouth (K,g)

Question 5

when can babies vocal play and what does this mean?

Answer 5

4-6 months
testing vocal equipment - children play with loud and soft, high and low
squeals, yells, growls

Question 6

when can babies babble and what does this mean?

Answer 6

6 - 12 months
repeating patterns of syllables (consonant - vowel)
- reduplicative - babababababa
- variegated - bagaba
- contraction - child reduces number of phonemes
- expansion - number of phonemes the child uses increases

Question 7

when can babies make proto-words and what does this mean?

Answer 7

10 - 12 months
beginning of ‘sense’ words. They may not resemble real words but they still mean something. - ‘Gama’ - grandmother

Question 8

what are plosives?

Answer 8

blocking part of the mouth so that no air can pass through.
pressure increases behind place where it is blocked.
Air is allowed to pass through again and sound is created.

Question 9

What are Fricatives?

Answer 9

produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together

Question 10

what are affricates?

Answer 10

affricates begin as plosive but upon release become fricatives

Question 11

what are nasals?

Answer 11

where air escapes through nose but not through the mouth

Question 12

what are approximants?

Answer 12

involve articulators approaching each other but not enough to create turbulent airflow. Approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce turbulent airflow and vowels which don’t.

Question 13

what is phonetic expansion?

Answer 13

during pre-verbal phase, children increase number of different phonemes they use.

Question 14

what is phonetic contraction?

Answer 14

at around 9-10 months, children begin to stop using certain phonemes - the ones they do not recognise as being necessary to their native language

Question 15

what is consonant cluster reduction?

Answer 15

where there are two or more consonants in a cluster, speakers will reduce it to one consonant (snow - no)

Question 16

What is reduplication?

Answer 16

repeating syllable pattern
water - wa wa
bottle - bo bo

Question 17

What is Fronting?

Answer 17

occurs when speakers replace a consonant with another that is made further forward in the mouth.
Sound will be of the same manner
shoo - soo (fricatives)
goat - doat (plosives)

Question 18

What is gliding?

Answer 18

when speaker replaces one approximant with another.
Rabbit - wabbit.

Question 19

What is backing?

Answer 19

occurs when speakers replace consonant with another made further back in the mouth
Tap - cap (plosives)

Question 20

What is stopping?

Answer 20

When a non-plosive is replaced with a plosive
zoo - doo (fricative - plosive)

Question 21

What is syllable deletion?

Answer 21

where an entire syllable is deleted
banana - nana

Question 22

what is consonant voicing?

Answer 22

voiceless consonants replaced with voiced pair
pet - bet

Question 23

what is consonant devoicing?

Answer 23

voiced consonants replaced with voiceless pair
pig - pik

Question 24

what is the ‘fis’ phenomenon?

Answer 24

comes from famous study by linguists Jean Berko Gleason and Roger Brown where child can recognise a phoneme in speech but is unable to pronounce it correctly themselves.
a child referred to his plastic fish as ‘fis’ but when an adult said ‘fis’, the child corrected them by saying ‘no, fis’.
Therefore, a child’s linguistic comprehension precedes linguistic production

Question 25

What were Jean Aitchison’s stages of lexical and semantic development?

Answer 25

network building
labelling
packaging
- this presented nature AND nurture

Question 26

what is network building?

Answer 26

making connections between words and understanding synonyms, antonyms and hyponyms - Good = nice.

Question 27

What is labelling?

Answer 27

using words to link objects and beginning to understand objects can be labelled and classified
Car! / Drink. / house.

Question 28

what is packaging?

Answer 28

children explore how far words can apply to objects. They over-extend and under-extend to find limits of the world

Question 29

example of packaging including accommodation and assimilation

Answer 29

packaging - child’s own dog - dog
Assimilation - sees another dog - dog?
Accomodation - sees a cat - dog (over extension of the word dog)

Question 30

What are the stages of phonemic / language development

Answer 30

holophrase / one word utterances
Two word utterances
Telegraphic - three+ words with gaps in syntax
post-telegraphic

Question 31

what was Jean Piaget’s object permenance study?

Answer 31

interested in cognitive development
understanding that objects continue to exist when they cannot be observed
children begin to develop this around the age of two
this is why we play peek-a-boo
once a child has developed understanding of this their vocabulary increases dramatically as they begin to retain words that they know they might need in the future.

Question 32

What were Katherine Nelson’s word categories?

Answer 32

classes of objects - shoes / ball/ book/ cup / duck
specific objects - daddy / nana / mummy
actions / events - quack quack / woof / jump
Modifying / describing - more / hot / two
personal / social - yes, bye bye, hello

Question 33

what was piaget’s idea of schema

Answer 33

a child can develop a schema of a dog
schemas constantly grow and adapt

Question 34

what is assimilation?

Answer 34

a child uses pre-existing schema to understand a new situation

Question 35

What is accomodation?

Answer 35

a child adapts a pre-existing schema to fit new experience.

Question 36

what is categorical over-extension and what % of over extension is it?

Answer 36

name for one member of a category extended to all members of the category
60%

Question 37

What is analogical over extension and what % of over extension is it?

Answer 37

word for one object extended to something from another category that shares similar physical properties / functional properties
15%

Question 38

What are mismatch statements and what % of over extension is it?

Answer 38

when the link between word + object is quite abstract
25%