CLA

Question 1

Who described children’s language acquisition in terms of the functions of individual utterances?
What were these functions?

Answer 1

> John Dore

1. Answering
2. Calling
3. Greeting
4. Labelling
5. Practising
6. Protesting
7. Repeating
8. Requesting action

Question 2

Who described children’s language acquisition in terms of functions, linking these to different ages? What are these functions?

Answer 2

Halliday

1. Instrumental (personal needs)
2. Regulatory (control behaviour of others)
3. Interactional (begin/maintain) all learned at a young age (up to 18 months)
4. Personal (express feelings)
5. Heuristic (seek knowledge)
6. Imaginative (create new words)
7. Informative and representational (communicate information and express propositions) - 6 to 8

Question 3

Who came up with the idea of the LAD? What’s the wider theory?

Answer 3

Noam Chomsky
>Children born with innate knowledge of lang. and learn at high speed when hearing it from others
1. Baby knows about linguistic rules due to innate knowledge
2. Babies hears examples of native lang.
3. Linguistic rules help make estimations and presumptions
4. Baby works out grammar rules from this and lang. becomes more adult as they hear more examples

> links to children over-regularising and putting grammar in where it’s not needed/right (wug test)

Question 4

Who said that language was an innate, unique ability of humans? What was their theory?

Answer 4

Pinker
>Born with innate capacity for lang.
>Language unique to humans, evolved from solving problem of communication among social hunter-gatherers

Question 5

In which country was the sign language of deaf children studied? What was it evidence of?

Answer 5

Nicaragua

Spontaneous collaboration which suggested an innate capacity to create new, sophisticated language

Question 6

Who studied the child of two deaf parents? What did they find? What does it indicate?

Answer 6

Bard and Sachs
‘Jim’ was exposed to TV and radio but his speech development was severely retarded until he attended sessions with a speech therapist -> human interaction is necessary to develop speech

Question 7

Who found that children whose mothers talk more have larger vocabularies? What theory does this fit with?

Answer 7

Clarke-Stewart

Social interactionism

Question 8

Who came up with the theory of sociodramatic play? What is it?

Answer 8

Garvey
>In play, children adopt roles, act out storylines and invent things -> ‘pretend play’ which fulfils Halliday’s imaginative function
>Children play together because it is enjoyable but also because it practises social interaction and negotiation with roles decided as they play -> ‘sociodramatic’ since it involved social and dramatic skills with rules reflecting real world behaviour
>Usually begins at around 4 -> linked to cognitive understanding of different roles and their effect on language?
>Subject-specific lexis used and structures of real-life interactions are replicated -> observe and imitate adult behaviour

Question 9

Who found that 4 yo adjust their language when speaking to 2 yo? What did they compare ‘baby-talk’ to?

Answer 9

Hirsh-Pasek and Treiman 1982

the way adults talk to dogs

Question 10

Who argued against Chomsky’s LAD and proposed a different innate ability which allowed lang. development? What ability was this?

Answer 10

John MacNamara

The capacity to read meaning into social situations

Question 11

Who found that only 4% of errors are corrected by caregivers?

Answer 11

Schatz

Question 12

Who argued that social interaction is important in cognitive development and coined the terms ZPD and MKO? What is their theory? What did they say about egocentric speech?

Answer 12

Vygotsky
>Children need a more knowledgeable other who supports the child in moving beyond what they know (through their zone of proximal development) using scaffolding
>it goes ‘underground’ and becomes ‘inner speech’ when children learn that talking aloud is considered anti-social/eccentric -> language is means of cognitive development (use it to ‘think’ with)
>Children learn to switch between intrapersonal and interpersonal speech

Question 13

In which country to adults speak to children as they do to adults? What impact does it have?

Answer 13

Papua New Guinea

Children acquire lang at same pace as elsewhere

Question 14

In which country do parents not speak to their children until they reach a certain age? What impact does it have?

Answer 14

Samoa

Children go through same stages at roughly same time as long as there is enough exposure

Question 15

Who distinguished between motherese and fatherese? What is the difference?

Answer 15

Mark Vandam (2015)
Fatherese more likely to resemble that used to other adults and less likely to have sing song intonation and simplification of motherese

Question 16

Who proposed the theory of child-directed speech? What is its purpose? What are some key features?

Answer 16

Catherine Snow
>Attract and hold attention
>Help process of breaking down lang. into understandable chunks
>Make conversation more predictable by keeping conversation in here and now, referring to things baby can see

LEXIS:
>Simplified lexis
>Label objects fairly generally (flower not rose, bluebell)
>Concrete nouns and dynamic verbs
>Adopt child's own words
>Frequent use of name

GRAMMAR:
>Simple construction
>Imperatives
>Repetition
>Names instead of pronouns
>Fewer verbs, modifiers and adjectives
>Omission of past tenses and inflections
>Closed and tag qs
>Interrogatives where interrogative determiner is in the wrong place but baby can replace it easily

PHONOLOGY:
>exaggerated intonation patterns to help find key content words
>pauses between phrases
>Speak slowly
>Exaggerate differences between sentence types
>Higher and wider pitch range

DISCOURSE:
>Lots of gesture
>Fear utterances per turn -> allow child to response
>Deixis used to point attention to things -> demonstratives
>Supportive lang. through expansion (fill out utterance) and recasting (put child’s vocabulary into new utterance)

CORRECTION:
>subtle through recasting and expansion but important to remember fis-phenomenon and detrimental effect correction can have

Question 17

Who said the intentions of CDS can be distinguished even if meaning is unclear?

Answer 17

Bryant and Clark Barrett (2007)

Question 18

Match stage to age:

1) 0 months a)Babbling
2) 2 months b)Crying
3) 4 months c)Cooing
4) 6 months d)Post-telegraphic
5) 12-18months e)Laughing
6) 18-24 months f)Two-word
7) 2-2 1/2 yrs g) Holophrastic
8) 2.5 yrs onwards h)Telegraphic

Answer 18

1) b
2) c
3) e
4) a
5) g
6) f
7) h
8) d

Question 19

Define reduplicated and variegated babbling

Answer 19

Reduplicated = same sound over again
Variegated = different sounds

Question 20

Define underextension

Answer 20

When a child does not realise that, for example, a photo of a dog is also a dog

Question 21

Define:
reduplication
diminutisation/addition
deletion
consonant cluster reduction
assimilation
substitution
TH-fronting

Answer 21

Reduplication = repeated word/syllable
Addition=adding suffix to word, often to make it CVCV
Deletion=deleting syllables
Consonant cluster reduction=deleting parts of a consonant cluster; making them into smaller units
Assimilation=sounds change to be like ones around them
Substitution=swapping one sound for another easier one
TH-fronting = replacing thorn or theta with a t/v/d/f

Question 22

Define segmenting

Answer 22

Segmenting=ability to perceive boundaries between words

Question 23

What are the early 8, middle 8 and late 8?

Answer 23

EARLY (1-3):
m b y n w d p h

MIDDLE(3-6.5):
t ng k g f v ch j

LATE(65-7.5):
sh s th r z l zh

Question 24

Who focused on chunks of language called ‘constructions’, which children learn and are able to adapt? What are the reliable patterns of these constructions called? What does this approach emphasise?

Answer 24

Ibbotson
Slot-and-frame constructions
Child’s environment and linguistic interaction
Children’s inbuilt ability to draw connections and parallels between language patterns they have heard and apply that to their own linguistic output

Question 25

Who proposed a focus intentional reading and pattern finding? What are these?

Answer 25

Tomasello
Intentional reading = evaluating the context in which language is spoken and understanding meaning and intentions around them from the language being used e.g. able to discern most important words for use in holophrases
Pattern finding = on reaching the two-word stage, child can understand the effect of particular word pairing and patterns e.g. more + noun