Children’s Language Development Theorists Flashcards
One word/holophrastic stage:
- 12 to 18 months
- words like milk or mummy
-holophrases -> ‘juice’ can mean. ‘I want some juice’ or ‘there is juice’ depending on
context
- understanding of syntax is more advanced than what they can say
- children can respond to two word instructions
Two word stage:
- 18 months
- usually grammatically correct
- supports Chomsky’s model for language acquisition
- S+V-> Daddy sleep
- S+O-> Suzy juice
- S+C-> Daddy busy
- omit elements when copying adults
Telegraphic stage:
- 2 years
- 3 or 4 word utterances
-some grammatically complete:
S+V+O-> Lucy likes tea S+V+C-> Teddy is tired S+V+A-> Mummy sleeps upstairs
-some incomplete:
Daddy home now Where Josh going
-wider range of structures:
interrogatives imperatives simple statements
Post telegraphic stage:
- 3 years plus:
- determiner
- more than one clause appears
- coordinating conjunctions
- inflectional affixes- 5 years: - most grammatical rules learned - more detailed noun phrases
Children/phonemic simplification:
- Substitution: easier sounds are used (th becomes d, n or f. R becomes w)
- Assimilation: substitution but with pre-existing letters (doggy becomes goggy)
- Deletion: unstressed syllables or final consonants dropped
- Consonant Cluster Reduction: dry becomes die, frog becomes fog
- Addition: adding a vowel to make CVCV (dog to doggy, frog to froggy)
- Reduplication: repetition of a sound (weewee, poopoo)
Children/negative formation and pronoun acquisition:
Beluggi
Negatives:
- No like book (negative word at the beginning of an utterance
- Me not going (negative word moves, incorrect use of pronouns
- I’m not happy (correct usage)
Pronouns:
- Rachel go now (name instead of pronoun)
- Me no like it (mix up of object and subject pronouns)
- I love you (correct usage)
Features of CDS (Bruner):
- higher pitch
- name instead of pronoun
- expansion (big, fluffy dog)
- diminution (kitty, horsey, daddy)
- recasting/correcting the error (more likely to correct semantic parts, not grammatical errors, challenged Skinner)
- mitigated imperatives/modal verbs and politeness
- repetition
- tag questions/questions in general to encourage them to speak
- positive reinforcement
Noam Chomsky (Nativism)
- overgeneralisations/virtuous errors
- the existence of universal grammar, 75% of languages use SVO or SOV, 10-15% use VOS
Berko and Brown (Nativism)
-children can tell the difference between right and wrong pronunciation- a child corrected an adult who said ‘fis’ when the child said ‘fis’ as well
Berko (Nativism)
-wug test shows that children follow learned grammatical rules
Kaluli tribe (Nativism)
-CDS is not used and children still accurately learn language
Lenneberg (Nativism)
there is a critical period hypothesis (until puberty):
- Genie Wiley was unable to full learn to speak due to abuse until 12
- Isabelle was incarcerated with her deaf mother until age 6 and could acquire spoken language
Tchernichovski (Nativism)
-he raised zebra finches in isolation which resulted in their song not being fully developed. By the fourth generation their song had evolved back to normal
BF Skinner (Behaviourism)
- in his book Verbal Behaviour he argued that spoken language development was just like any other conditioned behaviour in the animal world
- it’s more likely that a caregiver would correct semantic errors/the truth value
Piaget (Behaviourism)
-children need to understand a concept before they can use it- harder to use past tense if you don’t understand the concept of the past
