Stages Of Development

Question 1

What are the 8 main child language development stages?

Answer 1

Vegetative (0-4 months)
Cooing (4-7 months)
Babbling (6-12 months)
Protowords (9-12 months)
Holophrastic/One word stage (12-18 months)
Two Word (18-24 months)
Telegraphic (24-36 months)
Post-Telegraphic (36 months + )

Question 2

What were Nelson’s 4 categories of reasons for child speech?

Answer 2

Naming
Action
Social
Modifying

Question 3

According to Nelson (1973), what percentage of children’s first words are nouns?

Answer 3

60%

Question 4

Contradicting Nelson in 2004, what idea did Bloom put forward?

Answer 4

Noun bias - this explained why so many children had a noun as their first word.

Question 5

What are the three main stages within the babbling stage of child language development?

Answer 5

Pre-expansion
Phonemic expansion
Phonemic contraction

Question 6

What are the main features of the pre-expansion stage in babbling?

Answer 6

Reduplication of singular syllables, ie ‘mama’, ‘dada’ or ‘bye-bye’

Question 7

What are the main features of the phonemic expansion stage in babbling?

Answer 7

Number of phonemes (sounds) that the child has increases

Question 8

What are the main features of the phonemic contraction stage in babbling?

Answer 8

At around 9-10 months, the possible phonemes reduce to what will be required for their native language

Question 9

What is the difference between biologically primary and secondary knowledge? (David Gaery)

Answer 9

Primary - emerge instinctively
Secondary - training or instruction (learned)

Question 10

What is Noam Chomsky’s Nativist Theory?

Answer 10

• Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is built into the human brain and needs to be ‘awakened’ to acquire language
• Children rely on stimuli from the environment to ‘kick start’ the process of acquiring language
• Based upon all children of different languages developing at the same rate
• No scientific proof

Question 11

The three main sound types are consonants, vowels and dipthongs, how are each of these pronounced?

Answer 11

Consonant - produced when a vocal tract is either blocked or so restricted there is an audible restriction
Vowel - a sound made without closure / audible friction
Dipthong - a vowel in which there is perceptible change in quality during a vowel

Question 12

IN 1987, Pamela Grunwell put forward the idea of a ‘phonological acquisition sequence’ - what did this show?

Answer 12

The adopted sounds become more complex as the child ages (24-42 months).

24 months - p, b, m, d, n, w, t
30 months - k, g, h
36 months - f, s, j, L
42 months - ch, dg, v, z, sh, r

Question 13

What is deletion?

Answer 13

a common phonological process in which a child omits or leaves out a sound or syllable in a word

Question 14

What is substitution?

Answer 14

when a child replaces one class of sounds for another class of sounds. This may be done to make the word easier to say

Question 15

What is assimilation?

Question 16

What is reduplication?

Answer 16

A sound change in which some phonemes (typically consonants or vowels) change to become more similar to other nearby sounds. A common type of phonological process across languages, assimilation can occur either within a word or between words

Question 17

What is constant cluster reductions?

Question 18

What is the deletion of unstressed syllables?

Question 19

What is fronting?

Answer 19

Pronouncing sounds at the front of the mouth that should traditionally be pronounced at the back of the mouth
ie, ‘tee’ instead of ‘key’.