Child language acquisition Flashcards
Babies and sight
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
Babies and hearing
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.
when can a baby carry out reflexive vocalisations or vegetation and what is it?
0-2 months
natural sounds such as crying, burping, coughing, sneezing or grunting which are reactions to hunger, discomfort or simply physical sounds
when can babies coo and what does this mean?
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)
when can babies vocal play and what does this mean?
4-6 months
testing vocal equipment - children play with loud and soft, high and low
squeals, yells, growls
when can babies babble and what does this mean?
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
when can babies make proto-words and what does this mean?
10 - 12 months
beginning of ‘sense’ words. They may not resemble real words but they still mean something. - ‘Gama’ - grandmother
what are plosives?
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.
What are Fricatives?
produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together
what are affricates?
affricates begin as plosive but upon release become fricatives
what are nasals?
where air escapes through nose but not through the mouth
what are approximants?
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.
what is phonetic expansion?
during pre-verbal phase, children increase number of different phonemes they use.
what is phonetic contraction?
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
what is consonant cluster reduction?
where there are two or more consonants in a cluster, speakers will reduce it to one consonant (snow - no)
What is reduplication?
repeating syllable pattern
water - wa wa
bottle - bo bo
What is Fronting?
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)
What is gliding?
when speaker replaces one approximant with another.
Rabbit - wabbit.
What is backing?
occurs when speakers replace consonant with another made further back in the mouth
Tap - cap (plosives)
What is stopping?
When a non-plosive is replaced with a plosive
zoo - doo (fricative - plosive)
What is syllable deletion?
where an entire syllable is deleted
banana - nana
what is consonant voicing?
voiceless consonants replaced with voiced pair
pet - bet
what is consonant devoicing?
voiced consonants replaced with voiceless pair
pig - pik
what is the ‘fis’ phenomenon?
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
What were Jean Aitchison’s stages of lexical and semantic development?
network building
labelling
packaging
- this presented nature AND nurture
what is network building?
making connections between words and understanding synonyms, antonyms and hyponyms - Good = nice.
What is labelling?
using words to link objects and beginning to understand objects can be labelled and classified
Car! / Drink. / house.
what is packaging?
children explore how far words can apply to objects. They over-extend and under-extend to find limits of the world
example of packaging including accommodation and assimilation
packaging - child’s own dog - dog
Assimilation - sees another dog - dog?
Accomodation - sees a cat - dog (over extension of the word dog)
What are the stages of phonemic / language development
holophrase / one word utterances
Two word utterances
Telegraphic - three+ words with gaps in syntax
post-telegraphic
what was Jean Piaget’s object permenance study?
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.
What were Katherine Nelson’s word categories?
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
what was piaget’s idea of schema
a child can develop a schema of a dog
schemas constantly grow and adapt
what is assimilation?
a child uses pre-existing schema to understand a new situation
What is accomodation?
a child adapts a pre-existing schema to fit new experience.
what is categorical over-extension and what % of over extension is it?
name for one member of a category extended to all members of the category
60%
What is analogical over extension and what % of over extension is it?
word for one object extended to something from another category that shares similar physical properties / functional properties
15%
What are mismatch statements and what % of over extension is it?
when the link between word + object is quite abstract
25%
