Concepts Flashcards
Brown’s U-Shaped Regression Model
As children grow older, the number of errors they make appears to increase. Initially, they will use the raw form of the verb. Over the course of a few months, a child who was originally saying ‘flew’ and ‘held’ might say ‘flyed’ and ‘holded’ using an overgeneralised -ed ending. However, children soon ‘re-learn’ the irregular forms.
Halliday’s Functions of Language
Instrumental / Regulatory Interactional Personal (expresses feelings/attitudes) Informative Heuristic (monologue that accompanies play) Imaginative
Order of Acquisition of Inflections & Function Words
-ing present participle
-s plural
-s possessive
Determiners e.g. articles
-ed past tense inflection
-s third person singular
Auxiliary verb ‘be’
‘Fis’ Phenomenon
A child referred to a ‘fis’ meaning ‘fish’. An observer said: ‘This is your fis?’. The child corrected them saying ‘fis’. The child continued to reject the adult’s imitation until he was told ‘That is your fish’ - the child responded ‘Yes, my fis’.
Concept of Object Permanence
At 18 months old a child begins to realise that objects exist even if they are out of sight. There is a sharp increase in vocabulary after the object-permanence stage is reached.
Overgeneralisations
virtuous errors that children produce when they apply a rule on an irregular, an example of this would be ‘sheeps’ - the use of -s would be regular, but sheep is an irregular plural that stays the same.
Proto-Conversations
conversations that follow all tendencies of any other interaction e.g. turn-taking and tones but have no words
babies have been observed to suckle in rhythm then pause, waiting for their mother to interact
Kaye’s (1980) features of Child-Directed Speech
Prosodic Features: higher pitch and greater range of frequencies (to maintain interest from the child)
Lexical Features: special forms of words like ‘doggy’
Complexity Features: shorter utterances with fewer clauses and fewer auxiliaries
Redundancy Features: immediate and later repetitions
Content Features: topics within the child’s world
Genie
A young girl was set back in her language development significantly due to her traumatic childhood characterised by a lack of interaction
Overextensions
Categorical: a word for one member of a clear category is extended to other members of that category (‘apple’ for all fruits)
Analogical: a word for one object is extended to another object which is not in the same clear category but which still bears some similarity to the original object (‘cat’ for a soft scarf)
Statement: a one-word sentence (‘dolly’ when seeing a doll’s bed)
Brown’s Semantic Roles
AGENT + ACTION ACTION + AFFECTED AGENT + AFFECTED ACTION + LOCATION ENTITY + LOCATION ENTITY + ATTRIBUTE POSSESSOR + POSSESSION NOMINATION RECURRENCE NEGATION
Jim
The case of a young boy who was placed in front of a television to learn language as his parents were deaf. He was severely delayed in his progress until he was taken to mainstream education where he caught up due to interaction.
Babbling
consists of combinations of consonants and vowels (e.g. ba, ma, baba, gaga) - even deaf babies babble
Melodic Utterance
melody, rhythm and intonation develop. This leads parents to believe their children’s utterances have different functions; such as questions (rising tone), statements (falling tone) etc.
Realisation rules: reduplication
reflects babbling and aims to make the word into a CV unit.
‘water’ might be [wɔwɔ]
Realisation rules: deletion
final sounds are ‘deleted’ to make a CV unit.
‘hat’ becomes [hæ]
Realisation rules: consonant cluster reduction
children struggle to pronounce consonant clusters so reduce them.
‘sky’ becomes [kaɪ]
Realisation rules: substitution
consonants are often substituted with other (easier to pronounce?) sounds
Children tend to replace fricatives with stops
‘see’ becomes [tɪ:] ‘tee’
rhotic sounds are often replaced with the bilabial /w/ ‘ready’ becomes [wedɪ] ‘wedi’
Realisation rules: unstressed syllable reduction
unstressed syllables are removed
‘banana’ becomes [nana] ‘nahna’
Realisation rules: preference for voiced sounds at front, unvoiced at back
prefer voiced sounds so:
‘pie’ is pronounced [bəɪ] ‘bie’
Realisation rules: assimilation
vowels or consonants are given similar sounds due to sounds surrounding them
dog is pronounced [gɒg]
Which realisation rule reflects babbling and aims to make the word into a CV unit?
water might be [wɔwɔ] ‘woh-woh’
reduplication
Which realisation rule removes final sounds to make a CV unit?
hat becomes [hæ] ‘hah’
deletion
Which realisation rule makes ‘sky’ become [kaɪ] ‘ky’?
consonant cluster reduction
Which realisation rule results in rhotic sounds becoming ‘w’ sounds?
substitution
Which realisation rule causes ‘banana’ to become [nana] ‘nahna’?
unstressed syllable reduction
Which realisation rule causes some sounds to become more like those surrounding them?
assimilation
Pre-Verbal Stages
Biological Noises: Cooing & Laughing Vocal Play Babbling Melodic utterance
Olmsted’s Research
earliest sounds are plosives e.g. /p/ /t/ /m/
final sounds to be mastered by children are /ð/ /θ/ /ʒ/ and come around age 6, this reflects biological development as they need teeth
Katherine Nelson’s (1973) Classification of Early Words
around two thirds of children’s first 50 words are concrete nouns. Often, these nouns refer to objects that the children interact with on a frequent basis.
The Holophrastic Stage
Single-word utterances (holophrases) are produced and function as phrases or sentences (12-18m)
Grammar is more flexible in this stage as it is virtually nonexistent since it relies on syntax.
Preposition ‘in’ can be used as an imperative verb ‘in!’ accompanied by a commanding tone
The Two-Word Stage
the adult behaves as if conversation is taking place - the child not only produces speech, but also receives feedback which confirms that the utterance ‘worked’.
children begin to use some inflections though the usage is not correct for several months
The Telegraphic Stage
Children tend to retain content words but omit function words e.g. prepositions, pronouns and auxiliaries.
Inflections are used more frequently and accurately during this period.
Use of auxiliaries becomes more accurate towards the age of 3. Use of modals also increases during this period.
Development of Questions Stage 1
questions are often marked by a rising intonation (the two word stage) and question words begin to be used. At this stage a basic understanding of syntax is present - i.e. question word comes first
Development of Questions Stage 2
questions expand to include more words (the telegraphic stage) but function words are still missing
Development of Questions Stage 3
more detailed and longer questions are developed through the use of auxiliary verbs. There is increasing use of modal auxiliaries. The use of the auxiliary ‘do’ which is used in negatives and questions becomes increasingly accurate though there may still be errors
Development of Negatives Stage 1
negative words are used on their own e.g. ‘no’ or ‘not’ in the holophrastic stage
Development of Negatives Stage 2
negative words are combined with other holophrastic or two-word utterances, usually at the beginning of the utterance e.g. ‘no bed’ or ‘not eat it’
Development of Negatives Stage 3
negative words begin to be used in the middle of an utterance in the later telegraphic stage e.g. ‘he not little’ or ‘I no want envelope’
Development of Negatives Stage 4
negative words are used more accurately often in contractions with auxiliary verbs (isn’t / don’t) e.g. ‘I don’t have a book’ or ‘I not hurt him’
Brown, Cazden and Bellugi (1969
found that parents often respond to the TRUTH value of what their baby is saying, rather than its grammatical correctness
