Child Language Acquisition Flashcards
Theories and Theorist
Nativist Theory
•proposed by Chomsky
•children have an inborn faculty for learning language known as LAD
•LAD is a mechanism for working out the rules of a language
+Over-generalisation in children
+When particular places of the brain are damaged, they may lose their ability to speak
-There isn’t a particular research done on this
- He only looked at the concept of grammar and not aspects like turn-taking
Behaviorist Theory
•proposed by Skinner
a child imitates the language of its parents and carers
•successful use of language is positively reinforced
•unsuccessful use of language is punished
+ Children usually have the same accent or dialect as their carer
- Children hear non-standard English but still learn non-standard English
- Children are sometimes unable to repeat what an adult says
- Studies show that correction to a child’s grammar actually impedes the child’s learning
Social Interaction Theory
•children learn through interaction with their caregivers
+ Routines teach children about turn-taking
- some cultures that don’t promote interactions with children still become articulate and fluent in language
Cognitive Theory
•proposed by Jean Piaget
•Children have to understand a concept before they can acquire a particular language
• E.g a child who hasn’t learned the concept of size won’t be able to use words like ‘bigger’ and ‘biggest’
+ Studies show that at 1yrs children seem to be unaware of the existence of objects
-People with cognitive disability are able to use language beyond their understanding
François Grosjean - Bi-lingual household
he found that bilingual children learn language at the same pace as other children and don’t confuse both languages.
they learn them discreetly
Patricia Kuhl et al
•they found that the more social interaction a child had the more ready they were for school
•they suggested that social interaction is critical in a child’s language learning journey.
•she suggested that by 12 months, babies are ‘culture bound listeners’, children don’t speak yet but still receptors to langugage
Brooks et al - Eye Gaze theory
they found that children who were skilful at following eye gaze at 10 months had more vocab size at 2yrs
Ofsted research
They found that children born during the pandemic lack communication skills
MAK Halliday
•we need physical development before we can talk
•there are 7 reasons why language is used :
•Instrumental (fulfill a need)
•Regulatory (influence or command)
•Interactional (strength social relationship)
•Personal (develop self / opinions)
•Representational (convey facts or information)
•Heuristic (to gain knowledge)
•Imaginative (used for play/creativity).
Katherine Nelson (Holophrastic stage)
60% of a child first 50 words are nouns
Jean Aithchison (Holophrastic stage)
at 18 months, a child develops a ‘naming insight’ and rapidly develop new lexicon to attach labels to it
Roger Brown (Two word stage)
He identified ‘meaning relations’ how words are differently linked together to convey meaning
What are the 3 main formation of early speech
- Question Formation
- Pronoun Formation
- Negation Formation
David Crystal (negation)
Children learn skills of using ‘maybe’ instead of saying ‘no’ as a pragmatic method
What is Coupla
A verb used to join or ‘couple’ a subject to a compliment e.g. ‘Mummy is nice’
What is CDS?
Child directed Speech
Name 6 features of CDS
•pronounced intonation to draw attention to key lexiems
•simplified vocab to establish key words
•simplified grammar (short utterances)
•actions to accompany speech
•higher pitch
•’yes’ ‘no’ questioning
•present tense
•exaggerated pauses for turn taking cues
•repeated grammatical frames eg. children’s book
Jerome Bruner LASS Model
•Language acquisition support system
•interactions help acquisition like scaffolding
•ritualised activities- occurs daily with same language rules and meaning of interaction, explicit for children to learn
E.g “bye bye” and prosodic indicators such as pitch and intonation
Zone of Proximal development
•proposed by Vygotsky
•It is the difference between what a child can do with and without guidance
•parents provide linguistic support or work with children to move them towards knowledge/competence
What is Question Formation
•when children are in the Two word stage, they use intonation for questioning, then later use the 5 W’s ‘What’ ‘Where’
•’When’ is acquired last because children are not aware of time.
What are the 3 stages for Pronoun Formation
•Ursula Bellugi
1. Children use their name in place of pronouns
2. They recognised how to use ‘I’ and ‘me’
3. They learn to put they in the right place (object, subject)
Desmond Morris
the first 6 month of a baby’s life all babies of different nationality will sound the same
after 6 months they then start to sound different depending on their nationality.
Brown and Levinson
they suggested the politeness theory
positive face - to seek social approval and be include
negative face - a display for their unique feeling
John Dore - Language Function
he suggests we use language for specific functions
Labelling, Calling, Greeting, Answering, Practicing, protesting, Repeating, Request action
Ursula Bellugi (Negation development)
- they use ‘no’ or ‘not’ at the beginning of or at the end of sentences
- they put ‘no’ or ‘not’ inside the sentence
- they can attach auxiliary verbs to negations
Morpheme acquisition stage
•proposed by Roger Brown
1. Inflection ‘-ing’
2. Plural ‘-s’
3. Posessive ‘-s’ (e.g. Billy’s car
4. Articles (e.g. the, a, an)
5. Past tense ‘-ed’
6. 3rd person singular inflection (e.g. she walks)
7. Contraction of verbs (e.g. he’s happy)
Question development stage
•proposed by Roger Brown
1. children only use prosodic cues such as rising intonation.
2. Interrogative pronouns e.g. what, when etc.
3. Syntactic inversion of the auxiliary verb e.g. is be gone?
Wug test
by Jean Berko Gleason
children were able to connect suitable suffix to produce past tense and plurals
Berko & Brown
‘Fis phenomenon’
they found that children couldn’t produce the fish sound but were able recognise when someone else isn’t saying it right
Bard & Sachs
• a boy called Jim who was son of two deaf parents, although he was exposed to TV and radio his speech was impeded
• this suggests that exposure to langugage from TV etc is not an effective stimulus to language learning; human interaction is important
Vygotsky
•he suggested that children need an MKO who supports the child to move to the ZPD
Jerome Brunet - Language Acquisition Support System (LASS)
•she stated that language learning is an innate ability, but it needs to be activated through LASS
(Incp)
Eve Clark study
She found that common adjectives such as ‘nice’, ‘good’, and ‘bad’ are often among children’s first 50 words, but spatial adjectives such as ‘wide’ and ‘narrow’ are acquired later
