The Process of Spoken Acquisition Flashcards
What are some good opening phrases for essays?
1) one of the main features that distinguishes humans from animals…
2) no definitive explanation as to how language is learned
3) ‘biggest mysteries’
What is communicative competence?
The ability to form accurate and understandable utterances using the grammar system, and to understand social context for using them.
What are proto words?
‘Made up’ words that a child will use to represent a word they might not yet be able to pronounce e.g. ‘ray rays’ for raisins.
What is the pre-birth stage?
Some research suggests that nearly six months before a baby is born, the ear bones have formed and hearing goes on, exploring the idea that a child has the ability to recognise it’s mothers voice and differentiate between its native language and others, even before it is born.
What is the pre-verbal stage?
“A period of time that involves experimenting with noises and sounds but without producing recognisable words - usually lasting for the majority of the first year”
The first noise that a baby will make is crying, which often has a physical reason, like hunger. Parents often claim they can tell the difference between cries, knowing what the baby wants, when the cry is changing in intensity. Through crying, a baby is beginning to exercise its vocal cords and understand that making a noise will attract attention = the first stage in understanding the nature of discourse and interaction with others.
At 2 months, cooing begins, which are the sounds made when the tongue and back of mouth come into contact; it is more experimental than crying.
At 6 months, babbling begins, which resembles the vowel and consonant sounds we are familiar with.
What are the two types of babbling?
Reduplicated and Variegated.
What is reduplicated babbling?
This is simple, appears first and involves the child making the same sounds over and over e.g. babababa
What is variegated babbling?
This involves variation in the consonant and vowel sounds being produced, but still doesn’t resemble recognisable words e.g. daba, manamoo
What is the holophrastic stage? (and what age?)
This happens between 12 and 18 months, and is the stage when a child conveys a whole sentence worth of meaning in just a single word, or labels things in the environment around them. A large proportion of first words are nouns,
What is non-verbal communication?
All the ways in which communication occurs that do not involve words e.g. shaking head
What is reduplication?
Repeated syllables within a word (e.g. baa baa for blanket); the repeated syllables facilitate easier pronunciation.
What are diminutives?
The reduction in scale of an item through the way the word is created e.g. doggie, making the word phonologically easier and more appealing to say. Done by addition.
What is addition?
Adding an additional suffix to the end of a word in order to change the way in which the word is pronounced and interpreted e.g. Mummy and Dolly
What are other common phonological simplifications?
Substitution - swapping one sound for another
Assimilation - one consonant or vowel is swapped for another
Deletion - omitting a particular sound within a word
Consonant cluster reductions - reducing phonologically more complex units into simpler ones (2 consonants down to 1)
What research shows children’s understanding of correct pronunciation and articulation?
Berko and Brown 1960: A child rejecting an adults articulation of the word ‘fish’ as ‘fis’, but continuing to say it as ‘fis’ themselves. This shows that even if a child cannot articulate something, they can differentiate between that and the correct form in other speakers.
