child language acquisition Flashcards
Grice’s Maxims
~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)
Corner stone theory- behaviourist approach
~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
Nativist approach- Noam Chomsky
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
behaviourist approach-Skinner
acquire language through imitation of others
conditioning
praise
limitation with Chomsky
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
inborn faculty
ability of the brain to make sense of language
LASS
language acquisition support system
High SES (social economic status)
mothers use longer utterances and more different words when they talk
larger vocabularies- 11,000 utterances
low SES
mothers are found to talk less and use less varied vocabulary- 700 utterances
problems with behaviourism
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
Piaget and Vygotsky
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
Vygotsky
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
problem with nativism
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
early phonological stages
vegetative stage
babbling
cooing
holophrastic stage- early proto words
age and word use relation
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
Katherine Nelson
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
Jean Piaget
emphasised that children are active learners who use their environment and social interactions to shape their language
Piaget- Sensorimotor stage
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
Piaget- Pre-operational stage
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
Piaget- Operational
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
Piaget- Formal operational stage
11+
abstract reasoning and thinking skills develop
Holophrastic
12-18 months
one word utterances
remember- Illegal
two word
18-24 months
two word combinations to create simple syntactical structure
e.g. subject+verb
remember- piss up
telegraphic
three or more words combined in increasingly complex and accurate orders subject+verb+object subject+verb+compliment subject+verb+adverbial remember- funds for sesh
post- telegraphic
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
morpheme
the smallest grammatical unit of meaning
bound morpheme
units of meaning within a word that rely on other morphemes to make sense
unbound morpheme
units of meaning within a word that do not depend on other morphemes to make sense
Roger Brown
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
Bloom
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
telegraphic stage
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)
Bellugi
the ability to use negation also requires syntactic awareness
- uses n’o’ or ‘not’ at the beginning or end of a sentence e.g. no where shoes
- moves no/not inside the sentence e.g. I no want it
- 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
David Crystal
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
Bellugi- continued
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]
Bellugi continued further
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
Determiners
function word acquired later in development attach to nouns: articles [a/an/the] numerals [one] possessives [my] qualifiers demonstratives
Rapid progress
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
Piaget continued
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
