Grammatical Development Flashcards
Look at the rate of accusation flow chart!
<3
In the first 12 months what do babies use?
Use of proto-words.
First words.
What did Katherine Nelson (1973) say about the first 50 words after 12 months?
A study by Katherine Nelson (1973) found that nouns represented 60% of a child’s first 50 words.
She divided children’s first utterances into four categories:
Naming (e.g. ball, Daddy, dog)
Action (give, stop, up)
Modifying (more, dirty)
Social (bye bye, no)
Social represented just 8% of words.
What are holophrases (9-18 months)?
Babies will have a wide range of potential thoughts, however they will not have the vocabulary to express them.
The baby may use holophrases in order to express their thoughts.
A holophrase is a single word used to represent a more complex thought/grammatical structure.
Examples
Dodo- I want my dummy
Doggie- Wow there’s a dog!
Up- Please lift me up.
What is the two-word stage? (18-24)
What are the two grammatical structures?
After the Holophrastic Stage, the child progresses to the Two Word Stage.
The age that this happens will vary between individuals, and there will degrees of overlap.
They can now express utterance such as “want teddy”, combining two words together.
Two-word utterances tend to take one of the following grammatical structures
Subject>Verb= Me go, Ben play, Toy broken
Verb>Subject= Hit ball, Hold hand, Eat sweeties
What is the telegraphic stage (2 years)?
Usually associated with infants from the age of 24-26 months.
The term refers to speech that resembles an old-fashioned telegram.
It is characterised by a focus on lexical essentials (i.e. just the most important words).
What does a child not and does use a lot of in the telegraphic stage?
SO, a child’s speech in the Telegraphic stage is likely to:
Rely on nouns, and verbs
Rarely, if ever use, auxiliary verbs or determiners.
E.g. the concrete noun “milk” is sufficient to communicate meaning; it doesn’t need the definite article “the”.
What is the post-telegraphic stage (3 years)?
The child’s early reliance on “content” words gradually expands to include auxiliaries, prepositions, and articles.
E.g. “Mummy car” expands to “Mummy is in the car.”
Why are pronouns problematic and what do kids to instead?
Why might the child use their own name, rather than a pronoun, in this sentence:
“Jamie playing. Jamie playing shops.”
Confusion over the use of pronouns, e.g. “you”
Pronouns are shortcuts, and rely on an awareness of a shared context between speakers
“Jamie wants juice” eventually evolves to “I want juice”, sounding more like natural adult usage.
What are the three stages of negatives?
Words ‘no’ and ‘not’ are used in front of other expressions e.g. no want (15-18 months)
During the third year ‘don’t’ and ‘can’t are used.
In the third stage more negative forms are acquired such as ‘didn’t’ and ‘isn’t’ and negative constructions are used more accurately.
What are the three elements of questions?
Constructing questions is quite tricky but it can be broken down in to 3 key elements.
Intonationwith rising inflection (around 18 months during two-word stage).
Question words (interrogatives) what/where/why/how/who (around age 2 during telegraphic stage).
Auxiliaryverbs and varied syntax are used to form questions’is apple gone?’ Subject and verb order is switched (around 3 years old).
What was Roger Brown (1973) research on inflections?
Roger Brown (1973) conducted research on children aged from 20 to 36 months and identified the following sequence as being typical
-ing
-s (plural)
-‘s (plural)
A, the
-ed
-s (third-person singular verb ending)
Be (primary auxiliary)
Children will recognise the existence of inflections but may not know accurately how to use them. They will apply the –ed rule to all verbs even the irregular ones.
E.g I runned away
This is known as over-generalisation, it shows a child has internalised a grammatical rule.
What did Cruttenden say in 1979 on inflections?
Cruttenden (1979)divided the acquisition of inflections into the following three stages:
In the first stage, children memorise words on an individual basis
In the second stage they show an awareness of the general rules of inflections. They observe that past tense forms usually end in –ed so instead of ‘ran’ they say ‘runned’. This kind of error is known asOvergeneralisation.
In the third stage, correct inflections are used
