Child Language Acquisition (ao1) Flashcards
preverbal stage
0 to 12 months
stage 1
Experimenting with noises/sounds but without producing recognisable words – it can be further broken down into the vegetative state, cooing and babbling.
- VEGETATIVE, 0-4month: Biological noises e.g. coughing/ crying/ phonological reflexes
- COOING, 4-7 months: vocal play e.g. vowel sounds ‘oo’/laughter/pitch variations
- BABBLING, 6-12 months: Repeated patterns; syllable-like sequences e.g. Re-duplicated sounds-consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (‘baba’) and non-reduplicated (variegated) e.g. ‘bada’/’egu’
- PROTO WORDS, 9-12 months: Word-like vocalisations but are not real words. They may be used consistently with semantic connotations e.g. ‘mmm’ for ‘give me that’ accompanied by gestures like pointing to support verbal cues.
family role:
* Parents quickly become aware of the sounds made by the new born infant and can begin to distinguish the reasons for different sorts of cries, these cries are not language specific.
* Parents use caretaker lnguage and the caregiver teaches or initiates term taking.
* this style of caregiver language is very distinctive. It is in a higher and lighter tone than normal speech with frequent repetition of words (these words are important in the infants world)
cooing
Distinct from crying but not yet forming recognisable vowels and consonants. A baby experiments with the noises that can be made when the tongue and back of the mouth come into contact; the baby begins to develop control over the vocal muscles.
babbling
The baby produces phonemes, often in the form of combinations of vowels and consonants (eg. ma, ga, ba, baba, gaga), they are largely those that appear in the child’s native language.
reduplicated babbling
The period when infants repeat the same syllable over and over, such as “babababa” or “mamamama” or “gagagaga”. Non-Reduplicated Babbling: In this phase of babbling, the sounds are now more varied.
vegetative state
The baby makes discomfort sounds such as crying - this is instinctive to how a baby feels.
variegated/non-reduplicative babbling
Non-Reduplicated Babbling: In this phase of babbling, the sounds are now more varied. Instead of producing the same syllable over and over, they start to combine different sounds and syllables like “magaga,” “gagamee,” or “gababama”. This type is also called variegated babbling.
holophrastic stage
12 to 18 months (1-1.5 years)
stage 2
This is also known as the single word stage.
During this stage, children begin to acquire and produce real words of their native languages. A child in this stage will use single-word constructions to communicate. The use of single-word items is meant to convey full sentences provided the context.
As expected, word productions are extremely redundant. The one-word productions have three functions:
- Express emotions: “uh-oh,” “bad”
- Request a desired action: “up,” “down,” “gimme”
- Name objects: “baba” (bottle), “truck,” “doggie,” “mine”
At this stage, children know the meanings of words that they say, as speaking is often accompanied by finger-pointing (Helms-Park, 2018).
Some other key features:
- Many of the lexical items learnt are nouns referring to items in the infant’s world; eg. ‘mummy’, ‘juice’, ‘ball’, as well as family names and pets.
- Vocabulary items relate to personal interaction (thank you, goodbye) as well as general conditions in their environment (hot, all gone, more)
- Vocabulary is limited to one word but it may mean many things
- It is perhaps at this stage, more than any other, the language used by young children depends on how much they have been spoken to by their immediate family.
- Certain phonemes arrive before others. The child is able to use a wider range of initial consonant sounds like M, H, and B.
- Sounds in the earliest vocabulary include plosive sounds (b/p) sounds and nasal sounds like m and n begin to be used.
two word stage
1.5-2 years
stage 3
features of two word stage:
- The child’s rate of learning is phenomenal and the child’s mastery of their language broadens and their range of expression becomes more complex.
- These sentence/phrases are not inflected; there are no indications of tense or person but there is however, emergence of a sequence and order of meaning (SVO).
Children usually enter this stage when they have acquired about 50 words. They begin to demonstrate their knowledge of the word order that occurs in their language. English has a SUBJECT VERB OBJECT (SVO) word order. It is very common for production to take the following structures:
Doer + action: “Tommy play”
Action + affected object: “Kick ball”
Possessor + possessed object: “Daddy key”
Negation/Refusal/ Cessation of existence: “No veggie,” “all gone milk”
At this stage, lots of verbs, nouns, and adjectives emerge, as well as intonation! Intonation is a clear indication that children do not perceive speech production as one chunk, but rather as individual words coming together to convey a more complex meaning.
Monologue
2+ years
From the age of 2 children will often provide a running commentary on what they are doing as they are doing it; this may extend into imaginative play
as the child becomes older the mologue becomes more narrative
Telegraphic stage
2-3 years
stage 4
At this stage, children experience a vocabulary spurt or “explosion.” Production is pidgin-like, as grammatical/function words (little words) such as ‘the,’ ‘a,’ ‘is,’ ‘will,’ ‘of,’ ‘by,’ pluralization, tense (past -ed), verb endings/person agreements (she eat ‘s’) are omitted.
During this stage, a child will primarily communicate with content words (verbs, nouns, adjectives) and some pronouns such as ‘me’ and ‘mine.’
Although many function words are missing at this stage, children obey the word order and structure of their language. Considering the English word order (SVO), English speaking children are expected to produce phrases similar to the following sentences:
“Want more ice-cream.”
“Mommy go bye-bye.”
“He go play.”
- Children begin to express themselves using their limited vocabulary. This often causes overextension
- Overextension gives way to underextension
- Child’s utterances become longer and more grammatically complex and complete utterances emerge although some parts may be missing.
- words have greater purpose than identification
- Though SVO is still generally followed, auxillary words such as ‘is’, prepositions such as, ‘to’, ‘from’, ‘under’, determiners such as ‘a’, ‘the’, inflections such as suffixes to show the tense and person are omitted (ed, ing) are omitted.
- sound combinations such as ‘ch’, ‘sh’, ‘j’, and ‘ph’ are still discovered where children cannot say polysyllabic words, They abbreviate words, for example, banana becomes nana.
- They can understand two clause commands such as ‘pick up teddy and bring him here’ as well as antithetics like ‘hot and cold’.
- much more engaged in language and household activities like meeting a visitor.
Continuing Development
3-5 years
Following features of language develop with great speed:
- Connecting words or conjunctions, for example, and, because, as, so.
- Number words
- Words connected with emotions
- Family terms (auntie, brother)
- Colors
- Contrasting concepts (antithetics)
- Broadening of vocabulary improves distinguising hypernyms (categorical words) from hyponyms (words within categories)
- Say words with three or more syllables (elephant)
- Children are prone to making virtuous errors at this stage (runned, eated). They apply regular grammatical endings to words with irregular form. See Barko Wugg test.
- Able to speak appropriately in different situations such as family and plygroup.
- Start to use question forms and negation.
- Able to use auxillary verbs like ‘do’, ‘have’, and ‘be’.
- Can handle more complex utterances with two or more parts.
- They start to understand that some words may have more than one meaning and although they inevitably mix things up, their fluency is increasing.
- ## Start to understand idiomatic expressions. However, complete understanding of idiomatic aspects are not learnt till much later in life.By the age of 5:
- Children can converse effortlessly in majority of situations
- Understand and articulate complex language structures and sentences
- Use conditional tense, for example, ‘if it stops raining we could go to the park)
- Understand abstract ideas as well as idioms.
- take part in conversations even though it may be for egocentric reasons.
overextension
When a word is used more broadly to describe things with similar properties, other than the specific item to which the word actually applies (eg any round fruit may be an ‘apple’ or rats, squirrels, and rabbits are all ‘mice’).
underextension
When a word is used in a limited way which does not recognise its full meaning (eg. knowing the word banana for one in real life but not for a bunch of bananas or a picture of a banana).
Kitty might mean the family cat, but not other cats.
hypernym
An overarching (category) noun which encompasses many other nouns
Superhero is a hypernym for Batman and Spider-Man
hyponym
A noun with a narrower meaning which is part of a hypernym (category member)v
batman
virtuous error
Errors in morphology that have some underlying logic to demonstrate that learning has taken place (eg. I runned, Three mens).
Mature Language Stage
5-11 years
- Able to function as independant conversationalists in their world
- In addition to speech development they become skilled in reading and writing.
- Develop the ability to speak appropriately with a range of people with whom they have diferent relationships. (head teacher, teachers, seniors, classmates) They learn the use of different registers/level of formality must be used with different people.
- Children between 5-7 are good at speaking and expressing their requests and ideas through connectives (words with joint clauses giving additional information and reasoning i.e. because, as)
- Children learn that words can be used literally and imaginatively; the child’s imagination is developing with story reading and writing. They are able to use language for different purposes as they begin to speak more fluently.
- Speaking skills continue to develop with a mastery of humor and a play on words.
- The child will almost inevitably be involved in arguments and must develop language strategies to manage these.
Bernsteins Restricted Code
According to Bernstein, children from low income households tend to speak in restricted speech codes.
features of Restricted code;
- simple and short sentences
- simple clauses
- commands and questions
- assertive sttements
- repitition of simple conjunctions
- hesitancy
- limited vocabulary and reasoning
- “Right, keep the noise down. I said keep it down.”
Bernstein’s elaborated speech codes
spoken by mc and uc
- accurate and varied grammatical order and syntax including the use of passive voice.
- complex sentences with coordinate and subordinate clauses.
- Complex and varied vocabulary.
- Range of utterances and musing.
proto words
‘Made up’ words that a child will use to represent a word they cannot pronounce (eg. ‘rayray’ for raisin’). These are not true first words as they have no semantic content.
content word
Content words are words that have meaning. They can be compared to grammatical words, which are structural. Nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs are usually content words. Auxiliary verbs, pronouns, articles, and prepositions are usually grammatical words.
syntactic inversion
Reversal of the normal order of the words and phrases in a sentence, learnt when forming a question (eg. ‘I can eat the cake’ (S;MAV;V;O) becomes ‘Can I eat the cake?’ (MAV;S;V;O)).
‘On the mat sat the cat. ‘ Inverting the sentence draws the reader’s attention to the mat (the object) instead of the cat (the subject). It takes the reader by surprise because it’s not what they expected.
assimilation
Swapping one consonant/vowel for another (eg. borry = lorry)
Assimilation occurs when a consonant sound starts to sound like another sound in the word (e.g. “bub” for “bus”). Children no longer use this process after the age of 3. Denasalization is when a nasal sound like “m” or “n” changes to a nonnasal sound like “b” or “d” (e.g. “dore” for “more”).
consonant cluster reduction
Reducing phonologically more complex units into simpler ones – from two (or more) consonants down to one (eg. dis = dish; fis = fish).
deletion
Omitting a particular sound within a word, usually the final consonant or a weak syllable (eg. jamas = pyjamas; tephone = telephone).
diminuitive
Adding a suffix to make a word phonologically easier to say (eg. doggie).
reduplication
Repeating consonants clusters or vowel clusters in a word (eg. snowwowman).
substitution
Swapping one sound for another which is easier to pronounce (eg. wok = rock).
th fronting
Replacing th- sounds (/ð/; /θ/) with /f/ or /v/ (eg. fink = think; vem = them).
positive reinforcement
Encouraging or establishing a pattern of behaviour by rewards and praise
negative reinforcement
Stopping a child from repeating a mistake through correction, punishment, ignoring or a denial of wants (eg. being told off for forgetting ‘please’)
Universal Grammar
All human languages posses similar grammatical properties which the brain is hardwired to be able to decode and use
interpersonal speech
Also termed social speech, this is external communication used to talk with one another.
intrapersonal speech
Also termed private speech, this is communication that a person directs at themself – typical from age 3.
silent inner speech
What happens when private speech is internalised – typical at around age 7.
recasting
where the baby’s vocabulary is put into a new utterance.
Child: She is littler than me Adult: She is little. She is smaller than you. You are small but she is even smaller.
Recasting enables a parent to teach language in a positive, low-pressure way. Done correctly, it keeps the conversation going without interruptions and criticism. Because you’re repeating what your child has said, it shows them that you are listening to them.
