child language development Flashcards
what is communicative competence
- the ability to form accurate and understandable utterances using the grammar system and understanding social context for use e.g. turn taking
what are the stages of child lang. acquisition
pre-birth
pre-verbal (crying, cooing and babbling)
holophrastic (one word stage, labelling things around them – using proto words)
two word (adding verbs, no grammatical words)
telegraphic (string together sentences)
post- telegraphic (grammar and phrases become more correct)
describe the pre-birth stage
- before child is born, it recognises mother’s voice
- from 3 months ear bones have formed – can hear (have a preference towards) lower frequency sounds
why might babies prefer lower freq. sounds
- that’s what they hear in womb
describe the pre-verbal stage
- involves crying, cooing and babbling
crying: - baby’s exercising its vocal chords/ folds and understand that making noise will gain attention of people around them – a sign of communication e.g. hungry, wind, uncomfortableness
cooing: - at 2 months, baby’s experimenting w/ noises that can be made when tongue and back of mouth come into contact
babbling: - at 6 months, produces noises which resemble vowel and consonant sounds in lang. (will mimic intonation)
what is phonemic expansion and contraction
phonemic expansion: during babbling stage, the no. of different phonemes produced by child increases initially
phonemic contraction: by 9/10 months a reduction in no. of phonemes begin to occur – child will filter out phonemes they don’t need in their own lang.
what’s the difference between reduplicated and variegate babbling
- reduplicated babbling: simpler, appears first, repeating the same sounds (babababababa)
- variegated babbling: appears later, variation in the consonant and vowel sounds being produced (daba, manamoo)
describe the holophrastic stage
- child’s first word will be around 1st birthday
- will convey a whole sentence worth of meaning in a single word and label things around them
- “daddy” and “mummy” and other concrete nouns will likely be their first words (60% of first words are nouns)
what did researcher Katherine Nelson discover in the holophrastic stage
hint: child’s first words
- child’s first words are often the names of objects that are small and easily ‘handled’ by the child (“book”) or things that makes noises/ move (“car”)
give examples of how saying “mummy” in holophrastic stage conveys different meanings
“MUMMY”
- where’s mummy
- I want mummy
- come here mummy
- hello mummy
- there’s mummy
when does the holophrastic stage occur
- from 12-18 months
when does the two-word stage occur
- from 18- 24 months
describe the two-word stage
- child begins to put two words together to gain meaning e.g. “mummy sit” – represents simple understanding of grammar
- w/o number, person or tense, unlikely to have pronouns (except perhaps me)
- starts vocab spurt – child at this point has acquired 50 words - during this stage will gain 2-3 new words a day (around 300 words by 2yrs)
describe study conducted by DeCasper and Spence (1986)
hint: pregnant women
- asked women 7 1/2 months pregnant to read one of three stories that were similar in length and vocab out loud twice a day (recited 67 times before giving birth)
- infant interest was measured via sucking behaviour on nipple (high rates of sucking = increased attention)
- shows linguistic ability of foetus`
when does the telegraphic stage occur
- from 24-36 months
describe the telegraphic stage
- have longer and more complete utterances
- will omit context words and grammatical words e.g. “me going on trip”
