child language acquisition

Question 1

Grice’s Maxims

Answer 1

~quantity (be informative and give the right amount of information)
~quality (truthful- only give information)
~relation (be relevant information and develop the discussion)
~manner (clear, brief and orderly)

Question 2

Corner stone theory- behaviourist approach

Answer 2

~children acquire language by imitating the speech of others
~produce word correctly- given encouragement
~through this process children are conditioned into using the right language

Question 3

Nativist approach- Noam Chomsky

Answer 3

children have an innate ability to extract the rules underlying language from the words they hear being spoken
LAD (language acquisition device)
brain is ready to analyse what is heard and able to understand and apply rules of grammar
subconscious innate understanding of syntax, word meaning and sound
children all over the world develop at a similar rate in similar stages of development
poverty of stimulus
CDS (child directed speech)
universal language

Question 4

behaviourist approach-Skinner

Answer 4

acquire language through imitation of others
conditioning
praise

Question 5

limitation with Chomsky

Answer 5

feral children
children only ever come into contact with a very limited amount of speech
limited amount of speech from low economic standing houses
children will only ever hear small utterances
children never exposed to the full system of language at once
somehow children will manage to organise and structure speech in their minds- “inborn faculty” of the brain

Question 6

inborn faculty

Answer 6

ability of the brain to make sense of language

Question 7

LASS

Answer 7

language acquisition support system

Question 8

High SES (social economic status)

Answer 8

mothers use longer utterances and more different words when they talk
larger vocabularies- 11,000 utterances

Question 9

low SES

Answer 9

mothers are found to talk less and use less varied vocabulary- 700 utterances

Question 10

problems with behaviourism

Answer 10

parents don’t say ‘I breaked glass’ the behaviourist they can’t account for children’s invention of language
children find meaning and truth more important than grammatical correctness

Question 11

Piaget and Vygotsky

Answer 11

believed that language can only develop alongside their understanding of the world
a child must first understand the idea of the past before they can use the past tense
object permanency- objects still exist even if they are not visible
everybody wants praise

Question 12

Vygotsky

Answer 12

collaborative play is essential to children’s learning
‘what a child can do in cooperation today, they can do alone tomorrow
baby talk contributed to mental development, as it helps teach the child the basic functions and structure of language
studies have found that responding to an infants babbling with meaningless babble aids the infant’s development

Question 13

problem with nativism

Answer 13

all children have an inbuilt language acquisition device that enables them to extract the rules of the particular language from the words and structures the hear
universal grammar: a theory that all languages share similar grammatical structure under the surface

Question 14

early phonological stages

Answer 14

vegetative stage
babbling
cooing
holophrastic stage- early proto words

Question 15

age and word use relation

Answer 15

end of first year: child begins to speak
18 month: vocabulary of about 50 words
2 year: vocabulary of about 200 words
5 years: vocabulary of 2000 words
7 years: vocabulary of 4000 words

Question 16

Katherine Nelson

Answer 16

research has shown that there are predictable patterns in the words and word classes first acquired by children:
naming- thing or people, describing or modifying things

Question 17

Jean Piaget

Answer 17

emphasised that children are active learners who use their environment and social interactions to shape their language

Question 18

Piaget- Sensorimotor stage

Answer 18

0-2
child experiences the physical world through the sense and begins classifying the things in it
lexical choices, when they appear tend to be concrete rather tan abstract

Question 19

Piaget- Pre-operational stage

Answer 19

2-6/7
language and motor skills develop
child is learning to speak and is developing their imaginative focus
language remains egocentric- either focused on the child or used when they are alone

Question 20

Piaget- Operational

Answer 20

6/7-11
a child develops the ability to understand the pints of views of others
they become more capable of logical thought and begin thinking logically about concrete events

Question 21

Piaget- Formal operational stage

Answer 21

11+

abstract reasoning and thinking skills develop

Question 22

Holophrastic

Answer 22

12-18 months
one word utterances
remember- Illegal

Question 23

two word

Answer 23

18-24 months
two word combinations to create simple syntactical structure
e.g. subject+verb
remember- piss up

Question 24

telegraphic

Answer 24

three or more words combined in increasingly complex and accurate orders
subject+verb+object
subject+verb+compliment
subject+verb+adverbial
remember- funds for sesh

Question 25

post- telegraphic

Answer 25

most grammatically complex combinations which show an increasing awareness of grammatical rules and irregularities
help me I’m pissed and dead in the eyes of society

Question 26

morpheme

Answer 26

the smallest grammatical unit of meaning

Question 27

bound morpheme

Answer 27

units of meaning within a word that rely on other morphemes to make sense

Question 28

unbound morpheme

Answer 28

units of meaning within a word that do not depend on other morphemes to make sense

Question 29

Roger Brown

Answer 29

study of two word utterances
found that children at all cultures make the same relationship between grammatical concepts
when repeating an adult, children at this stage commonly omit elements but retain the correct meaning
utterances focus on key words with grammatical function words commonly omitted
range of complex meanings can be expressed in two word utterances

Question 30

Bloom

Answer 30

observed that the same sentence may be used to express different meanings
the scope for ambiguity at the stage arises because of the omissions of inflectional affixes
commonly possessive and plurals ‘s’ and past tense ‘ed’ are absent

Question 31

telegraphic stage

Answer 31

children create yes/no interrogatives because these require an understanding of syntax to invert word order and auxiliary verbs
children also acquire what, where, why and when (Bloom)

Question 32

Bellugi

Answer 32

the ability to use negation also requires syntactic awareness

1. uses n’o’ or ‘not’ at the beginning or end of a sentence e.g. no where shoes
2. moves no/not inside the sentence e.g. I no want it
3. attaches the negative to the auxiliary verbs and the verb ‘be’ securely e.g. no, I don’t want to go to nursery I am not

Question 33

David Crystal

Answer 33

added another way of saying no to Bellugi’s stages:
pragmatic use of the word ‘maybe’ used by adults as a politeness strategy
children will acquire this skill as their pragmatic awareness develops

Question 34

Bellugi- continued

Answer 34

break the politeness principle
pronouns, difficult for children to use accurately because they can express so many things:
person [I/you/they]
subject or object within an utterance [I/me]
number singular/plurals [I/we/us]
gender [he/she]
possession [mine]

Question 35

Bellugi continued further

Answer 35

the child uses their own name first [e.g. Tom play]
the child recognises the difference between subject and object pronouns but may not use them accurately in the subject object position [I play toy, me do that]
the child uses them according to whether they are in the subject or object position within a sentence

Question 36

Determiners

Answer 36

function word acquired later in development
attach to nouns:
articles [a/an/the]
numerals [one]
possessives [my]
qualifiers
demonstratives

Question 37

Rapid progress

Answer 37

by 3 years, items such as determiners begin to be used regularly
more than one clause appears
coordinating conjunction
inflectional affixes
by 5 years many of the most basic grammatical rules have been learned, though some have yet to be mastered

Question 38

Piaget continued

Answer 38

increasingly complex morphemes acquired suggests a link between cognitive development and language acquisition
adding -ing and ‘s inflections seem more straightforward than acquiring the correct form of the verb to be which requires understanding of tense and number
Piaget advocated that children will only acquire more complex forms of language when their intellectual development can cope