Child Language Acquisition Stages Flashcards
The First Year Phonology
- Cooing – beginning control of muscles of vocal organs.
- Varied vowel-like and consonant-like sounds, including nasal sounds [mmm]
and [nn] and fricatives [fff]. Produces range of sounds including glides – low to high pitch and high to low pitch; practice a variety of sounds. - Babbling – imitate syllable like
sequences used in speech.
First Year Lexis and Semantics
Proto-words - word like vocalisations, not matching actual words but used
consistently for the same meaning. E.g. using ‘mmm’ to mean ‘give me that
First year Pragmatics/Functions of Speech
Cooing - Could be imitating the
parents’ lip movement, but no
sounds.
Laughing
Holophrastic ( 12- 18 months) Stage Grammar and Syntax
At this stage, single word utterances
express a complete idea and it
performs the same function as an
entire sentence would.
Holophrastic Stage Phonology
- 12 - 18 months
- Pronunciation is often
idiosyncratic.
Holophrastic Stage Lexis and Semantics
- First words are usually at
about 12 months. - Research by Benedict: by 18 months a child can speak about 50 words, but can understand about 5 times this (250).
- Research by Katherine
Nelson: 60% of children’s first utterances are nouns. Often the names of objects which are small and easily handled - New words also relate to personal interactions e.g. no/hello/ bye bye.
- language used by children depends very much on how much they are spoken to by family around them.
- Over-extension and Under-extension are common as the child tests out the application of new words
Two Word Stage ( 18 - 24 months ) Grammar and Syntax
- the same pattern as adult language – usually Subject + Object. ‘My bed’ not ‘Bed my’
Two Word Stage Phonology
- 18 - 24 months
- Pronunciation continues to be
erratic.
Two Word Stage Lexis and Semantics
- Two words are put together.
- During this stage children have about 50 words in their vocabulary.
- Pronouns are rare although children may use ‘me’ to refer to themselves.
Two Word Stage Pragmatics/ Function of the Speech
- The basic conversational pattern of discourse is established as the child begins to chatter – often to
themselves as well as to others - During the two-word stage,
children use the rising
intonation to indicate a
question
Telegraphic Stage ( 2 - 3 years )
Grammar and syntax
- Jean Berko’s Wug (1958): proves that children don’t just learn plurals off by heart, there is a rule that the child internalises and then uses in unrelated circumstances
- an absence of prepositions, conjunctions and determiners, as well as an absence of auxiliary verbs
- start to use no and not in
front of verbs, contracted negatives too
like can’t and don’t - Inflections are used more frequently
and more accurately - may use subject and object pronouns but mix them up
Telegraphic Stage ( 2 - 3 years )
Phonology
- Children change the sounds
of words if they can’t make
the actual sound - don’t like friction sounds
[f] – prefer stopped
consonant e.g. pish for
fish; tii for sea - Reduplicationtakes place
when children pronounce
the different syllables in a
word the same way. Usually,
at this stage, these words
have two syllables.Water,
for example, might come out
as [wowo]
Telegraphic Stage Lexis and semantics
- 2 - 3 years
- So called because of the
limited utterances of two to
three words which make
sense - Nouns and verbs typically
constitute telegraphic
speech
Telegraphic Stage Pragmatics/ functions of the speech
- the children continue to use
rising intonation. - Monologues are typical at
this stage: Children begin to provide a
running commentary of
what they are doing as they
are doing it
Post-Telegraphic Grammar and syntax
(3 – 5 years)
- Utterances are much longer
- Children refer to events in
thepastand (less often) in
thefuture. - Use of coordinating conjunctions
(and, but, so, for, yet,) to create
compound sentences
