EXAM Child Language Acquisition Flashcards
Stage 1: Preverbal Babbling (0-1 Years)
· Starts between 5-7 months
· Experimenting with sounds
· These sounds are universally similar, often repetitive
· Eventually narrows to only sounds they hear around them
· Same intonation patterns as adults occur
· Seemingly innate
Stage 2: Single Word/holophrastic (1-1.5 years)
· Approximately 12-18 months, infants discover that sound relates to meaning
· E.g. ‘no’, vehicle/animal imitations
· Also single word utterances that are consonant-vowel e.g. ‘ma’
· First meaningful words often everyday objects e.g. bickie, cat, cup
· At this stage, the vocabulary is approximately 50 words
· Overgeneralisation increases meaning of word
· Childs passive knowledge believed to be greater than vocal ability
Stage 3: Two-word utterances (1.5-2 Years)
· Approximately 2-3 words
· E.g. ‘dada chair’, ‘bye-bye boat’
· Utterings only contain content words with lexical meaning
· No function words or function morphemes
· Therefore, meanings are broad
· These combinations are structured not random
· Object/person + location: ‘Mamma bed’
· Agent + action: ‘Mamma eat’
· Action + patient: ‘Kick ball’
· Conforms with subjects + object structure of adult language but also shows child innovation
Stage 4: Telegraphic (2-3 Years)
· More complex sentences, often a simple question
· Heuristic functions (what/where)
· Children concerned with naming & classification (‘wassat’)
· Talk about location (up, down etc.)
· Attributes of things (hot, small, naughty)
· Usually interrogative pronoun followed by noun/verb (‘where ball?’)
Theories: INNATISM - Noam Chomsky
· Proposed Language Acquisition Device (LAD) in brain
· Proposed that the LAD possessed a basic universal grammar
· Humans are biologically hardwired with universal language elements and this enables child language acquisition.
Theories: Behaviourism – BF Skinner
· Children acquire language through imitation and reinforcement
· Adults provide models of utterances
· Positive reinforcement from parents/caregivers reinforces this
· Fails to recognise language mistakes
Theories: Cognitive/Interactionism – Lev Vygotsky
· Language acquisition through interactions with environment & aspects of a child’s social and cognitive development
· Seen as midway between Innatism and behaviourism
· Language development is both biological and social
Reduplication
Meaning expressed by repeating all or part of a word e.g. “moo moo”
Overgeneralisation
Applying one rule to all morphology eg “ed”
Substitution
Substitute an easy phoneme for a harder one e.g. thing>fing
Omission
Leaving sound/syllable/phoneme out eg banana > nana
Elision
Dominant sounds/consonants are blurred together eg “wanna”
Assimilation
Use dominant sound in place of a less dominant one e.g. yellow >llelow
Overextension
One word extended beyond original meaning eg “dog” meaning all animals
Underextension
Word limited in meaning e.g. “car” - only those driving on the road
