CLS Flashcards
What is significant about the stages of development for child language speech
Not children do not all develop at the exactly sam peace
However: Children all around the world do pass through the same sat of ages. There is a universal pattern of development, regardless of the language being acquired.
- When does it all start
In the womb!
Babies are tuned in to listen to language from the start.
They will focus on faces in the first few weeks before beginning to focus on the world around them later
Babies are born listeners; listening precedes speech or sound production.
What study suggests that even in the womb the growing baby acclimates to the sound of its native language
Mehler 1988: French newborn babies were able to distinguish French from other languages, feeling more comfortable around French speakers
- Crying
- First few weeks: Child expresses itself vocally through crying
- Signals hunger, distress or pleasure.
- Instinctive noise (so not language)
- Not controlled, no other motif but stress and hunger
- Crying
Features of crying
Sounds will obviously involve crying but low pitched sounds during feeding can be heard
Sounds in the early days are reflexive; in response to need
Cries ten to be about 1second long and with a pause to allow breathing. Cries in this stage to be vowel sounds [a]
Patents can distinguish between different sounds e.g. pain, hunger, fussing
Crying relies on an outward flow of air from the lungs to make vocal chords vibrate; so does speech
- Cooing
- Phonation stage
- Differentiated crying
- Also known as gurgling or mewing
- 6-8 weeks old
- ‘Coo’, ‘ga ga’ and ‘goo’.
- Cooing
Features of cooing
- Cooing is more musical, low-pitched and quieter than crying. ½ second long segments
- Involves both consonant and woven sounds; Kuu, guu, ch
- The baby will string these sounds together
- About 4 months laughter starts
- This stage gives the baby muscular control over vocal organs and tongue
- Vocal play (4-6 months)
- Expansions stage
- Cooing is replaced by more controlled sounds. They are longer and involve repetition e.g. mmmm, nnn, fff
- Raspberries enable lip muscles to be used
- Sounds made in all parts of the mouth
- Changes in pitch used
- Some syllables sounds may be vaguely heard e.g. ba, ta but imprecisely.
- Babbling
Canonical stage – a lot more variety in the sounds
- Most important stage in the first year.
- 6-9 months ago
- Sounds bring to resemble adult sound more closely- Linguists deem most important usually
- Babbling features
- [abababa] or [dadada] =reduplicated babbling
- Thesis emerges around 6 months
- Sound is clearly recognisable
- Around 9 months you might get [abu] and [maba] emerging = variegated babbling
- No meaning connected to these sounds – pronto language
- Pointing may be used too
- Babbling is universal to all language
- She sounds are more popular than others
Phonemic expansion
Phoneme: smallest element of sound in a language that can display contrast and hence change meaning or function of a word, e.g. Initial sounds in ban and Dan
During babbling, number of different phomeones contraction
- Phonemic contraction
- 9-10 months
- Number of phonemes produced reduces to those found in native language (contracts)
- Baby discards sounds not required
Evidence: noises made by children of different nationalities stats to sound different
- Experience: native adults successfully identifies babies from own country
- Phonemic contraction
Intonation
Intonation patterns begin to resemble speech
Common: rising intonations at end of utternece
Other variations in rhythm/emphasis may suggest greeting or calling.
- Phonemic contraction
Gesture
Although they do not yet have the power of speech, desire to communicate indicated through gesture.
Example: point to object and use dacisal expression, ‘What’s that’
Beginning of pragmatic development (ie.e recognising that social context affects meaning)
- Phonemic contraction
Understanding
- Although child may not begin to speak they might understand meaning of certain words
- Word recognition usually evident by the end of the first year.
- Common: names, ‘no’ and ‘bye bye’
- The first word…
- Somewhere around 12 months (up to around 18 months) the child makes is first recognisable word
- ‘Proto words’ like a word but not, has meaning but not right one.
What are the stages leading up to the first word and at what ages do they usually take place
- In the womb (B.c.)
- Crying (First weeks)
- Cooing (6-8 weeks)
- Vocal Play (4-6 months)
- Babbling (6-9 months)
- Phonemic contraction (9-10 months)
- First word ( est 1 year)
What is meant by Lexical and Semantic development?
Lexical development = a child’s acquisition of words
Semantic development = a child’s acquisition of the meanings associated with those words.
What is the typical rate of acquisition
(Which theorist can be included)
End of first year: child begins to speak
18 months: vocabulary of about 200 words
EXPLOSION!!!
5 years: Vocabulary of 200 words
7 years : vocabulary of 4000 words
Chomsky: That can only be explained by the genetic predisposition humans have for language.
What is the difference between words used and words understood during a child’s language acquisition
At each stage, the number of words understood by the child us expected to be higher than words used
18 months: 50 used but 250 words understood.
What is significant about a child’s understanding of semantics during their language acquisition
When a child adds a new word to their vocabulary, they are not immediately aware of its full range of meanings
More time is required to acquire this additional knowledge
Outline the Holophrastic stage
Roughly between 12-18 moths
By this age perhaps understand up to 60 words
Learn new words approximately 10 a month
Holophrastic stage
Kathryn Nelson
First words - 60% are Nouns
- Kathryn Nelsons research has shown that there are predictable patterns in the words and word classes first acquired by children.
E.g.
- Names
- Actions
- Foods
Holophrastic stage + Nelson
Why are children’s first words typically concrete nouns
When are Abstact nouns typically introduced?
Because concrete nouns have the most meaning attached.
5-7 years: abstract nouns begin to be used
Holophrastic stage
John Dore (1990)
8 speech functions (pragmatic development) occur during the Holophrastic stage
- Labelling – eyes after touching their baby doll
- Repeating – saying a word just because you said it
- Answering – Repetition can be answer
- Requesting action
- Calling- uh oh because they fell over
- Greeting – Hi
- Protesting – Shouting ‘NO’ or ‘Shoe’ because they don’t want shoe on
- Practising
Holophrastic stage
Overextension
- A common semantic error
- A word is given a broader (more general, over extended) meaning
- ‘daddy’ for all men, rather then just the child’s father
- ‘Dog’ for all four legged animals
- ‘Jamas’ for bed, bedroom, bedtime, sleeping
- ‘Mog’ for all cats
Holophrastic stage + Forms of overextension
Analogical extension
Some appearance feature of object is the same, all round things called the ‘moon;
Holophrastic stage + Forms of overextension
Functional extension
Similar function of objects – call all objects that hold liquid a cup
Holophrastic stage + Forms of overextension
Categorical extension
- extend one word in a category for all objects in that category e.g. call all small animals arecats
Holophrastic stage
What is significant about overextension
It’s more common than under extension
50 word vocabulary: one third are likely to be overextended
Holophrastic stage
Under extension
- Common semantic error made by children
- A word is given a narrower (under extended) meaning
- ‘Cat’ is the family pet, but not other cats
Holophrastic stage
What can underextension be defined as
A virtuous semantic error: A mistake that’s made with a logical reason
Holophrastic stage
What age marks a decrease in the number of overextensions & why?
Age 2 ½: Marked decrease in number of overextensions
Explanation?
They have the appropriate vocabulary. As their vocab increases those virtuous errors decrease.
Two Word stage
What grammatical features begin to emerge in this stage
(What theorist can be applied)
- Possessive pronouns – ‘my’
- Quantifies – ‘more’
- Noun-verb pairs
- Correct syntax : Chomsky innate understanding of grammatical rules
E.g. - “My bed” not “bed my”
Two word stage
Ursula Bellugi
Common stages of question formation:
- What, where
- When, who
- Why
What & Where first: More likely to involve concrete nouns
‘Why’ is last as its more abstract
Two Word stage:
Jean Berko- WUG test, 1958
What was the purpose and what was tested?
Testing a child’s genuine understanding of a grammatical concept
Tested:
- Possessive ‘s and es
- Plural possessive s’
- Diminutive ‘let’
- Conversion of nouns into adjectives
- Within adjectives, tests children on comparatives (quirkier) and superlatives (quirkiest)
- Past tense – ed
- Present continuous
Two Word stage & Jean Berko- WUG test, 1958
Findings
- Gleason major finding was that even very young children are able to connect suitable endings – plural distinction in their language: we just have to look at what they don’t do to see it.
- When presented with two wugs, the two-year-olds only produced the plural form “wugs” about 10 percent of the time
Two Word stage & Jean Berko- WUG test, 1958
What have psycholinguists learnt since 1958
In the years since, psycholinguistics have learned that children first begin producing plural forms for very common nouns quite early – by around 18 months.
But this doesn’t mean that children understand the plural morpheme –s, or any of its irregular pals, at an abstract level.
Indeed, children don’t begin to comprehend plural markers on new words, like wugs, until age three.
When do children typically reach the telegramatic stage
3
Give an example of a child’s use of language in the Early Telegramatic stage versus the late telegramatic stage
Man kick ball – Early telegramatic
Man kick red ball now – Telegramatic.
Telegramatic stage:
What kind of word endings/inflection/suffixes will you see emerge during this stage
- S plural and ing
- Possessive S inflection
-Contractions e.g. He’s and They’ve
- ‘est’ suffix for superlatives e.g. biggest
- ‘ed’ suffix for comparatives e.g bigger
Telegramatic stage:
How will tenses emerge demonstrated through examples
- I see a car
- I saw a car
- I will see a car
Telegramatic stage
Question formation theorists
Bellugi and McNeil (1970s)
Telegramatic stage
Bellugi and McNeill (1970s)
They theorised that there are distinct stages to how children develop and apply rules to questions
The basic syntax of a question: where (question word) is (auxiliary verb) Daddy (object) going (main verb)
Stages of question formation:
- Use of intonation to signal a question is being asked
- The use of question words (what, where, why)
- Manipulating syntax create more detailed questions? (Around age 5)
That is a car. -Is that a car?
Negation - Ursula Bellugi
- Stage One (during 1 word stage)
Uses ‘no’ at the start or end of a sentence
E.g. ‘no wear shoes’, ‘no ball’ - Stage Two
Uses ‘no’ or ‘not’ inside a sentence
E.g. ‘I no wear shoes’ or ‘I not want it’
Also contracted negation – can’t, won’t, don’t - Stage Three
Uses ‘not’ more and in correct place 9after main verb)
I did not do it, I do not want it
It wasn’t not me – double negatives used on purpose – to make it definitely a no!
Pronunciation
How does a child’s pronunciation differ from an adults
There are systematic ways in which a baby’s / children’s pronunciation differs from adults
Not just baby talk, like ‘choo chop’ – its also to do with them learning how to use their mouth and tongue to form different sounds – ‘goo’ instead of glue or ‘bisik’ instead o biscuit
Pronunciation
Features which make a child’s pronunciation differ from an adults
- Deletetion – miss out final or starting consonant
- Substitution- substitutes one sound for another similar
- Addition – add extra vowel or syllable to shorten word
- Reduplication – repitition of word/syllable
Pronunciation
What specific aspect of pronunciation do children struggle with?
Young children struggle with consonant clusters – as they are often hard to hear
Biscuit -> bisit
Drop -> dop
Tricky -> ticky
Pronunciation
Berko and brown (1960)
Founded the fis phenomenon
One child in the study had an inflated plastic fish he called a ‘fis’ – when researcher asked ‘Is this your fis?’ The child rejected the word by saying ‘No my fis’.
This happened repeatedly and only when the researcher ‘Is this your fish?’ Did the child accept it ‘Yes it’s my fis’.
It shows that children understand adult phonology even when they are still unable to pronounce the word correctly. They believe they are saying it correctly.
Pre school
At what age do children in the Uk join preschool
Children age 3-4 join a pre-school, Governmental practice; everybody gets 30 hours free child care from age 3.
- Has increased since early 2000s. Caused a shift the developmental stages are altered because they are in structured education for much longer and from much earlier.
Preschool
What connective emerges in this period
‘And’
Mummy ‘n’ daddy
- I went to park and went on slide and played with my dolly
Preschool
What connective (in relation to tense) emerges during this period?
Time - “And then”
Cause connectives “because”, “cos”
But, or, if, when, so…
Pre school
What number is the vocab approaching at this stage?
5000 words
Pre school
David Olmsted - Phonological study
David Olmsted study of 4 yr olds: Vowel sounds were good but problems remains with consonants (consonant clusters) - vowel sounds are secure by age 4
Preschool
What are some common errors still made during this stage
areas where children still find difficulties, slight semantic misunderstandings between:
- Ask/tell
- Put/give
- Borrow/lend
- Tell/promise
Preschool
What did Carol Chomsky (1960s) find 5 year olds still get wrong
At age 5 100% still get ask/tell wrong
Semantic misunderstanding
Preschool
Politeness Principles
- An area where parents/ teachers will be directly teaching and see explicit correction
- Please and thank you probably taught much earlier - reinforcement used to consolidate learning (skinner)
- Asking for things, not telling; models not imperatives
- I want … vs please may I…
- Polite forms of address
Preschool
Correction
- Much more explicit - accuracy as is now increasingly as important
- Introduction of a Teacher
Preschool
Brian Baldie, 1976
About passive constructs, used cards to detect whether children were able to understand passive constructs. Gave them a selection of cards then made a statement, then asked children to point to the card.
- Show children listen to the first bit of the sentence but not the rest
- Passive sentences are harder for them to understand, active are easier
- Reflected in teachings, not supposed to give too many instructions; as they’ll only listen to the first
- Age 5 100% of children couldn’t grasp it, until age 7 when they were able to do so more accurately
Can be brought into a transcript if a parent/child is using passive/active sentences. Particularly if looking at older children
Preschool
Guttenden, 1985
Understanding of the placement of punctuation
- I dressed and fed the baby
- I dressed, and fed the baby
- Only 9/20 5 year olds got it right
The cause in speech is what indicates the difference:
- Children are unable to understand the meaning and timing of a pause.
- Parents really exaggerate passes and intonation as we aware children find them challenging
Preschool
Language play
(6)
Children love to play with language and once they are competent they will play with sounds and words (age 6 plus)
- Jokes: Knock knock, or Why did the…
- Playing with sounds: Silly names e.g. Mrs DIng-dong, Mr Moggly Boggly; Adding word endings onto words e.g. fishy, snakey
- Talking backwards, changing word order e.g. cat becomes talk (influenced by learning about spelling)
- Reversals: Yes means no and no means yes
- Idioms literal meaning; pulling socks up; tearing out your hair etc
- Phonological patterning: alliteration, repetition, rhyme
Preschool
Taboo
If children don’t learn from imitation why do they always come out with swear words? I couldn’t get those damn socks out - or worse!
Poo and bottoms becomes hilarious; name calling e.g. Mr Ploopy or Mrs Poo-poo
Parts of the body hold fascination. “What do you call”
Preschool
Peer group influence
Once at school peer group becomes an influence as well as parents
Language of playground will be used. This might include in jokes, lots of taboo humour, slang and colloquialisms, sharing of cultural references; toys/superheroes, TV/film, books of music.
- Idiolect of child emerges, which. May trouble parents
- Up until now you will probably reflect accent/ dialect of parents, wherever they are from, but then at school you’ll start to be influenced by peers and a local accent/dialect (if different)
Preschool
Meta language
- CHildren begin to talk about, showing a consciousness of the process (part of cognitive development)
- Learning to read/write provides a whole host of technical terms that enables them to think explicitly about the process: Capital letter, full stop, alphabet, sentence
- A sense of the difference between spoken and written language emerges as literacy develops
