stage 2: the holophrastic (one-word) stage

Question 1

what is the holophrastic stage?

Answer 1

• this is when a child starts to convey a whole sentence worth of meaning in just a single word or labels things in the environment around them.
• the child is deliberately conveying meaning through word
  choice, which differentiates it from babbling.
• the caregiver must interpret the child’s meaning, based on the word used and other non-verbal cues; the caregiver will often expand
  on a child’s utterance to model the accurate form and lend clarity to what the child has said.

Question 2

what is holophrase? (feature of the holophrastic stage)

Answer 2

a single word expressing a whole idea which can act as a declarative, exclamative, interrogative, or imperative.

Question 3

what is noun bias? (feature of the holophrastic stage)

Answer 3

the number of nouns exceeds the number of other word classes in early vocabulary.

Question 4

what is gestalt expression? (feature of the holophrastic stage)

Answer 4

• compressing a string of words into a single utterance as they have not been able to segment, (eg. ‘what’s that?’ = ‘wassat?’)
• it is also argued that these are constructions which the child is using as units of language.

Question 5

what is overextension? (feature of the holophrastic stage)

Answer 5

when a word is used more broadly to describe things with similar properties, other than the
specific item to which the word actually applies (e.g. any round fruit may be an ‘apple’ or rats,
squirrels, and rabbits are all ‘mice’).

Question 6

what is underextension? (feature of the holophrastic stage)

Answer 6

when a word is used in a limited way which does not recognise its full meaning (e.g. knowing
the word banana for one in real life but not for a bunch of bananas or a picture of a banana).