Child Language Acquisition

The system by which sounds are produced is called ‘the vocal tract’.

VOICED PHONEME = the vocal folds are vibrating

UNVOICED PHONEME = vocal folds are not vibrating

THE MANNER OF ARTICULATION

• Lateral approximant -> produced by air being forced between the sides of the tongue and the tongue being pressed against the alveolar ridge.
• Fricatives -> pushes of air. For example, the /f/ sound in ‘five’.
• Plosives -> These are quick release of built-up air. For example, the /g/ sound in ‘green’.
• Nasals -> sounds which release air through the nose and not through the mouth. For example, the /n/ in words like ‘night’.
• Approximant -> when articulators are brought close together but are not fully touching. For example, the lips don’t fully touch when making the /w/ sound in words like ‘word’.
• Affricatives -> start as plosives and end as fricatives. For example, the /tʃ/ in words like ‘church’.

A child will often use techniques to simplify the pronunciation of words. These include:

• Consonant cluster reduction -> when a child reduces a set of consonants that are all together - e.g. in the word 'spider' they made reduce 'sp' by removing the 's'.
• Assimilation -> when a sound later on in the word has an influence on other sounds in the word - e.g. the /b/ in 'rabbit' might assimilate to the front to form 'babbit.
• Substitution -> when a child changes one sound for another (usually one easier to say).
• Addition -> when a childs adds a consonant or vowel to a word - e.g. adding the 'y' sound onto words like 'dog' to form 'doggy'.
• Deletion -> child drops a consonant from a word when it is surrounded on one or both of its sides by vowels - e.g. this usually ocuurs at the end of words - 'do' instead of 'dog'.

'fis-fish' phenomenon - Berko & Brown

• Happened when a child was talking to their caregiver about what they called their plastic 'fis'.
• When the caregiver repeated this to them, they were able to recognise that the caregiver had said 'fis' and not 'fish', but could not then pronounce 'fish'.
• This shows that comprehension precedes competency.
• Children can notice mistakes, but not recognise that they are making these mistakes.

From around 17 weeks, a foetus can hear sounds in utero. This is often shown when a child reacts more when they hear a certain voice or when they hear a certain piece of music.

MEHLER (1988) - found that French babies had stronger reaction to French sounds at 4 days old than they did to English, Spanish or Italian - proved that babies become accustomed to their native language before birth.

• Biological noises (0-2 months) -> involves a lot of crying, child begins to gain control of their air stream, universal – parents of all nationalities can recognise the different types of crying.
• Cooing & laughing (2-5 months) -> begin to see a control of vocal chords, but the sounds are meaningless, like ‘coo’,’ hoo’ and ‘ga’, tongue control is evident.
• Vocal play (5-8 months) -> child begins to experiment with different vowel and consonant sounds, begins to play with pitch, no meaning behind these noises, parents may respond very positively to certain sounds and as a result, the child may produce these again and again.
• Babbling (6-12 months) -> happend for a long time, consonants begin to get linked to vowels, still no meaning to the sounds, parents will react if 'da' or 'ma' is formed, 2 types: reduplicated (when the sound is repated e.g. 'mama') & variegated (when the sound is differed e.g. 'dabama'), to start with they will try as many new sounds as they can (phonemic expansion), then the child narrows the range to their native langauge at around 9/10 months (phonemic contraction), child gains more control over body - paralinguistic features develop, also develops intonation as of real speech - rising intonation at the end of the interrogative mood.
• Melodic utterances (9-18 months) -> utternaces containing rhytms, tone is developed.
• Protowords (around 1 year) -> utterances which resemble words - would not make sense outisde the context of primary caregivers.

In the 1980s, Pamela Grunwell’s research examined rates of acquisition of consonant sounds. Her research details that generally, children will learn these phonemes and these ages:

• 2: /p, b m, d, t, w, n/
• 2.6: /k, g, h/
• 3: /f, s, j, l/
• 3.6: /dʒ, v, z, r, tʃ, ʃ/
• 4: / θ, ʒ, ð/

HALLIDAY - 7 FUNCTIONS OF CHILD'S LANGUAGE

• Instrumental -> langauge used to show needs and desires - 'want food'
• Regulatory -> language used to get people to do something - 'tickle me'
• Interactional -> language used to interact with others & form relationships - 'hi Anna'
• Personal -> explores feelings & identity - 'me like juice'
• Heuristic -> langauge used to explore the world & the envornment that surround the child - 'what Emma doing?'
• Imaginative -> langauge used to be imaginative (play stories, play pretend etc.) - 'I'm a doggie! Woof!'
• Representational -> language used for facts - 'coat is yellow'

RESCORLA defined three categories for when a child overextends words:

• Categorical -> when a child uses one word to describe everything in a category - also known as using a hypernym in place of the more specific hyponym - for example, a child may apply ‘dog’ to all breeds of dogs.
• Analogical -> when a child uses a word to describe something which is physically (or visually) similar or serves a similar purpose - for example, labelling a van as a car.
• Relational -> when the word used has some form of relation to the incorrect word - for example, labelling the road as a car.

FIRST WORDS - WHY IS IT 'MAMA' AND 'DADA'

Gervain (2012) -> published work which tested babies at 2 and 3 days old and discovered that brain activity peaked with reduplicated syllables. But this does not explain why so many of the first words contain variegated syllables.

David Crystal -> hildren recognise that their parents get very excited when they say the ‘ma’ and ‘da’ syllable and as a result, increase the frequency they say this. But this does not constitute understanding - it will be many months before the child can link their production of ‘mama’ to the concept of the maternal caregiver.

• Holophrastic stage -> denotes the period of time when children speak using single words. This happens generally between 9-18 months. The holophrases are predominately nouns. The holophrases will often encompass many meanings & moods.
• The two-word stage -> dentoes utternaces of 2 words only. Occurs between 18 & 24 months. Other word classes start to emerge, but nouns still dominate. Syntax is explored (correctly). Inflections are not applied to verbs. 
• Telegraphic stage -> denotes when a child is speaking using utterances with just enough info. Occurs roughly between 24 & 30 months. A wider range of word classes are acquired (particularly pronouns, followed by dterminers & prepositions).
• 2.5-5 years -> from 2.5 years old onwards, there is rapid expansion through to 5 years old. In particular, more frequent adjectives. Between 3-5 years, the child enters the complex utterance stage (sometimes referred to as the Post-telegraphic Stage).This includes time features, contracted negatives and increasingly accurate inflections.

B. F. Skinner says that a child learns language based on positive and negative reinforcement of ideas.

For example, when a child correctly calls a dog "a dog", a caregiver may say something positive like ‘yes, that’s the dog’ to reinforce the idea.

Similarly, when an incorrect utterance is produced, like the child calling a dog a cat, the caregiver may say something negative, like ‘no, that’s not a cat, it’s a dog’. Tone of voice and paralinguistic features will often assist with this.

-> believe that a child is born tabula rasa (or blank slate) and learns language based on their interaction with caregivers.

CHILD DIRECTED SPEECH = the process of talking to a child - Bruner - a child must interact with caregivers in order to learn how to use language - He created what he calls a LASS (Language Acquisition Support System) – a system designed to ‘scaffold’ a child in learning language (structuring responses in order to help a child to use language more accurately).

Snow & Bruner argue that caregivers may use the following strategies as part of the scaffolding and CDS process:

• Recasting & reformulation – the caregiver repeats what the child said containing anything missing and needed to make a grammatically standard utterance.
• Expansion – the caregiver makes the utterance more complex by expanding on what they said.
• Exaggerated prosodic cues – exaggerating intonation, varying pitch and using higher intonations.
• Expatiation – expressing what the child said giving more information.
• Overarticulation – the caregiver stretches out vowel sounds in words.

Rhoades adds that the following are also used:

• Short and simple sentences which are melodic.
• Focus on what the child is doing.
• Repetition of what the child and caregiver say.
• Pausing between words.
• Higher frequency of interrogatives and imperatives.
• Slower speech.

GRICE'S MAXIMS (1975)

• Maxim of quantity -> the contributions must carry enough information, and not too much.
• Maxim of quality -> the contributions must be truthful.
• Maxim of relation -> the contributions must be relevant & pertinent to discussion.
• Maxim of manner -> the contributions must be clear & limit ambiguity.

Myzor believes that CDS helps to aid social development but does not help linguistic development - for example, it may teach children turn-taking in conversation but not aid their ability to use correct forms.

Cliff Pye researched how different cultures learn language. His research detailed that children around the world acquired language at roughly the same time and that not all cultures used CDS - for example, Samoan families do not speak to the children until they are around 18 months old. This implies that language acquisition may be more innate.

De Villiers & De Villiers state that it is rare for caregivers to give direct feedback about the correctness of their language, so there must be something more innate.

Chomsky questions how children produce utterances that are grammatically non-standard to the point where no caregiver would have said them – errors often happen that are not present in the template.

NOAM CHOMSKY

• Children cannot learn through the imitation of their caregivers because they provide a ‘poverty of stimulus’ - the caregivers of children do not provide a good enough standard of language (and often break the rules).
• So he states that children must have something inbuilt within their brains to help them learn language – he calls this the ‘Language Acquisition Device’ or the LAD.
• Within the LAD is a knowledge of language structures (universal grammar) and the knowledge becomes activated through experience.
• Around the age of 7, the LAD switches off and then it becomes difficult to learn languages.
• Children will often resist corrections to their mistakes – in this sense, the LAD is instructing them that their way of using language is correct and that the caregivers is wrong.
• Children make virtuous errors (errors which are made with good intentions).

'THE WUG TEST' - JEAN BERKO GLEASON

• Children were given a picture of a bird-like creature called a ‘wug’ and then asked to state things like what two of these creatures would be called (‘wugs’). The test invented nouns and verbs to test pluralisation and over-generalisation.
• 76% of 4-5-year olds and 97% of 5-7-year olds could correctly use the -s ending for ‘wug’.
• The test used words that children will not have encountered before and so proves that children learn the rule and do not imitate.

Cruttendon (1979) supports this theory with what he defined as the 'u-shaped curve'.

• At point 1, the child applies the rule and gets it right.
• At point 2, the child applies the rule everywhere and gets it wrong.
• At point 3, the child learns that the rule only works in certain situations.

GENIE

• In the 1970s, a 13-year-old girl was found by authorities. When authorities found her, she was withered and held her hands like a rabbit.
• At first, welfare officers assumed she was autistic, but further probing discovered she could barely speak (limited to a very small number of words).
• Her father had trapped her in a room since she was a toddler, detaining her in a straight-jacket and tying her to a chair. He growled at her if she cried or made any other noise.
• Linguists worked extensively with Genie, but because she had passed the critical period, she could not properly acquire language.
• This case study supports Chomsky. As Genie had passed the critical age, Chomsky would argue that the LAD has expired and so cannot be activated.
• This case study also supports the idea that children cannot learn language by interaction with caregivers alone.

OTHER SUPPORTING ARGUMENTS

• Children often produce grammatically non-standard utterances, and so they cannot be copied.
• Inflectional mistakes (Berko Gleason) prove an application of a set of rules.
• Pinker – every utterance is practically unique – children produce utterances they’ve never heard before.
• Culture is not a barrier – all cultures acquire language at a similar age.
• Children notice mistakes (Berko and Brown).
• Non-standard grammatical constructions can make sense.

CRITICISMS OF CHOMSKY

• Often dismissed by critics because it is based on hypothetical thinking rather than real-life children - leading linguistics like Tomasello have dismissed Chomsky as an ‘armchair linguist’ - this criticism of Chomsky’s research throws into question the validity of his theory.
• As Pinker points out, nearly every utterance a child produces is a brand-new combination of words, and so he questions whether a child can learn from imitation.

Overall, Chomsky’s theory is limited by not having scientific evidence, but is still very important in considering how a child learns language.

PIAGET

• States that children start life in a very egocentric way - they feel that the world revolves around them.
• This is supported by the notion of object permanence - means that when a child cannot see something, to them, it does not exist (they do not grasp the concept of object permanence).
• This is often seen when a child starts crying when a primary caregiver moves out of sight.

VYGOTSKY

• Proposes that there exists a cognitive deficiency – a gap in knowledge. He calls this gap the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and he states that a More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) is needed to fill the gap.

CHALLENGES TO COGNITIVISM

• Children who have learning difficulties and cognitive issues still learn to use language even expressing concepts beyond their understanding
• Apes share a similar cognitive development as humans in the first years of life, but do not acquire language.

TOMASELLO - children listen to language and do 2 things: Intention reading – children learn how to use language to achieve social ends. Pattern finding – children look at many utterances and develop schemas based on patterns in language.

BRAINE - children learn language in a 'slot and frame' manner - the child develops a schema in which variables can be placed to suit the situation - e.g. a child may the learn the scheme ‘I + want + a + non-specific item’ to form utterances like ‘I want a drink’.

Challenges:

• Children may understand social concepts (like ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’) before the intention reading stage starts.
• There is a fundamental lack of evidence – we cannot truly know what happens in a child’s brain.

PHONICS 

• All about learning what combinations of graphemes (letters) correspond to sounds.
• This approach is incredibly prominent in schools currently - as a result, you may hear younger children pronounce their alphabet as /æ b k/ rather than the traditional pronunciation, as this gets children learning the most common pronunciation of letters.
• Issues: It does not teach meaning, It doesn’t prepare children for words that have no phoneme-grapheme correspondence.
• Phoneme-grapheme correspondence = the link between the sound & letters of a word - a word like ‘coat’ isn’t fully pronounced as it is written, as it would be pronounced (using phonetics) as ‘co – at’.

WHOLE WORD

• The idea of this is for the child to learn (memorise) how each word is pronounced.
• meaning is at the heart and focuses also on getting children to understand what each word means (starts with common words and works its way up).
• In this sense, it is sometimes nicknamed the ‘look and say’ approach.
• Issues: it doesn’t prepare children to pronounce words that they haven’t learned, it assumes that a child will be able to memorise great numbers of words.

PSYCHOLINGUISTIC MODEL

• The child learns based on the environment from which they live and their interactions with caregivers.
• This works by the child having to think about what a word might mean through the use of clues like other words they have encountered before, pictures and other contextual knowledge.
• The approach focuses on decoding (when a child phonetically breaks down a word) meaning rather than the symbols.
• Issues: the method does not always cover all bases and has the potential of the child not guessing or guessing wrong.

Often these approaches do not exist in isolation of each other – many caregivers will uses a mixture and combination of all of these models to effectively learn to read.

TRADITIONAL VIEW

• Prioritisation of language.
• This view is all about having the reader having a set of skills which are built upon to gain full comprehension.
• Dole (et al) believe that the text holds clues, meaning and opportunities to learn and that it is the reader's job to decipher these.
• Nunan believes that the child learns to decode written symbols into their aural equivalents (link the phonics method here).
• McCarthy built on this saying that the traditional view is less ‘bottom-up’ and more ‘outside-in’ in the sense that meaning already exists, and the reader has to take this meaning in.

THE COGNITIVE VIEW

• Linked in most closely with this is schema theory.
• Rumelhart believes that reading requires the ‘building blocks of cognition’ in order for the reader to be able to process the information they are receiving - missing schema can prevent a child from properly understanding and processing what the information means.
• Goodman states that the reader is at the heart in the process of learning to read and that the reader makes hypotheses as they read to confirm or reject ideas.

THE METACOGNITIVE VIEW

• In this, the reader thinks about what they are doing when they are reading.
• Block believes that the other two views are irrelevant because the reader controls their own ability to understand a text - reading is an active process.
• Share believes that there is a process which takes place called phonological recoding in which the reader recodes what they know of phoneme-grapheme correspondence in order to correctly read words.
• Klein (et al) believes that metacognitive readers do the following whilst reading a text. Finding purpose of the reading (this occurs before reading). Deciding what the form (type) of text it is (this occurs before reading). Look for features and conventions which typify the form of the text identified in the above. Projecting the author’s purpose of writing the text onto the text. Deciding whether to scan or to read in detail. Predict what will happen in the text as they read (based on what has already happened, their existing knowledge and chapter endings).

FRITH'S MODEL 

• Logographic stage -> the child is chiefly concerned with graphemes as visual objects which they are able to recognise by sight (as they would recognise what a chair is from what it looks like). As such, they will first learn that image of a word represents a thing.
• Alphabetic stage -> the child starts to differentiate between words and other symbols and as a result, develops the concept of letters and sounds having a relationship. The child learns some phoneme-grapheme correspondence and the ability to combine sounds in order to form words. They acquire knowledge of letter order and phonological factors affecting pronunciation. They begin to decode words they are unfamiliar with. Some linguists have said that the child can do this as part of their natural development, but most agree that this comes from exposure to reading and other literacy activities.
• Orthographic stage -> the child does not need to phonologically recode very much, but can, more often than not, recognise the word and its meaning (from their internal lexicon). When they are repeatedly exposed to the same sequence of graphemes, they store their knowledge of the word in an orthographic and phonological lexicon to save time phonologically decoding the word each time.

EHRI'S MODEL

• Pre-alphabetic phase -> Words are read through memorisation or from guess based on context.
• Partial-alphabetical phase -> Some letters are known and their respective phonemes are learned – words are learned by sight in relation to context.
• Full-alphabetic phase -> There is extensive knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondence and unfamiliar words can be decoded and store these in their memory post-analysis.
• Consolidated-alphabetical phase -> Larger words and differing phonemes and meanings are learned (awareness of homophones etc here too).

CHALL'S MODEL

• Stage 0: pre-reading (pseudo reading) - up to 6 years: Mock reading – will repeat what has been previously read to them. Can name letters of the alphabet. Reliant on images.
• Stage 1: initial reading & decoding - 6 to 7 years: Learns that there is a relationship between letters and sounds. Simple texts with high frequency words and words with phoneme-grapheme correspondence can be read. Monosyllabic words can be ‘sounded out’.
• Stage 2: confirmation & fluency - 7 to 8 years: Simple and familiar stories can be read – this will be increasing fluent. Decoding ability improves. Number of words than can be read by sight improves. Awareness of context improves.
• Stage 3: reading to learn - 8 to 14 years: Reading is used to acquire knowledge. Experience of new feelings. Learn new attitudes. Generally, one point of view.
• Stage 4: multiple viewpoints - 14 to 18 years: Reading is done widely through a large range of material (often complex material, too). Descriptive, informative and narrative texts are read. Different views are encountered.
• Stage 5: construction & reconstruction - 18 years plus: Reading is done for the reader’s needs – this may be personal or professional. All about the integration of knowledge that you hold with the knowledge that others hold – synthesis. Rapid and efficient.

Clay says that when they are reading, children will notice mistakes that they make if they don’t fit with the rest of the text (and doesn’t make sense) – in this instance, the child will go back and repair what they said.

Gough and Hillinger say that children go through two key stages in reading:

• The first being ‘early visual association’.
• The second being ‘decoding’.

= all about spelling 

• Substitution – one letter is swapped for another letter.
• Omission – unstressed sounds get missed out.
• Insertion – spurious letter is added.
• Transposition (or a transposed letter) – the letter is the wrong way around.
• Grapheme cluster substitution – a combination of letters are swapped for a different set of letters.

READ states that children’s spellings are creative because they notice distinctions that adults are no longer aware of.

FERREIRO believes that children think that words must have several letters.In addition, he states that children believe that words should have different letters. As a result, you may often see double letters in words missed out.

BIANCARDI believes that children think that the bigger the object, the bigger the word should be.

STATISTICAL LEARNING 

• States that children find patterns in spelling from exposure to forms of writing.
• Seidenberg believes that pattern finding is all a part of finding connections between words - for example, a child may notice that lots of words end in ‘ed’ when we’re talking about things in the past.
• Treiman says that the child’s own name can have an influence on their orthography - quite often, the child will use a capital when there is no need because it is drilled into them that their name needs a capital.

PHONICS VS WHOLE WORD

Reyner believes that children should be taught to write from ‘sounding out’ the word and writing down what they hear. However, this method does not work well for words which do not have phoneme-grapheme correspondence or homonyms.

Curtis believes that children should be taught to write as whole words as this is more fluent and adult-like - this aids comprehension over pronunciation. However, if the child has not seen the word before, then this can make it very difficult to write, even if the word has phoneme-grapheme correspondence.

• Stage 1: perparatory stage - up to 6 years: Motor skills are acquired. Basic spelling system is in use.
• Stage 2: the consolidation stage - from 6 to 8 years: Written work reflects spoken language. Writing can be colloquial (or at least have many colloquialisms). Declarative mood dominates. Hypotaxis – use of conjunctions to join clauses. Child struggles to end sentences. Sentence form emerges, but often without punctuation.
• Stage 3: the differentiation stage - from 8 to mid-teens: The differences in mode become apparent to the child – work becomes less speech-like. An awareness of genre developments. Structure emerges. Grammar is more complex (and accurate). Sentences are also more complex. Punctuation is often more controlled – it is often accurate.
• Stage 4: the intergration stage - mid-teens upwards: On the whole, writing is now becoming very accurate. Vocabulary is now expanded. Spelling is more accurate. An awareness of the audience and purpose of the writing can alter the way a piece is written. A personal written style is developed.

• Stage 1: scribbling: Any marks on the paper are random and are not letters or words. Control of the pen is unsure. The child talks through what they are doing as they are doing it.
• Stage 2: mock handwriting: Lots of shapes now forming, though not actually fully comprehendible. Pseudo-letters (letter-like shapes) begin to form – at this point, writing and writing skills become emergent.
• Stage 3: mock letters: Letters are now formed, but not as words – these are just random letters. Spacing is irregular – can sometimes have huge gaps and sometimes be cursive.
• Stage 4: conventional letters: Sounds are now linked to letters. Spacing still isn’t there. Sometimes words are reduced to the initial-position consonant – e.g. ‘g’ for goat.
• Stage 5: invented spelling: Phonetic spelling dominates. Words which are familiar and simple are often spelled correctly.
• Stage 6: appropriate spelling: Complexity arises in sentences. Standard spelling is now more apparent. Writing is now quite legible.
• Stage 7: correct spelling: Spelling is now more accurate than not. Cursive font is now common.

CREATIVITY

Alan Maley says that creative writing promotes a playful engagement with language which allows children to test out the bounds of writing in a supportive environment. He believes that creative writing develops children lexically, grammatically and phonologically.

Craik and Lockhart believe that creative writing requires ‘semantic processing’ which indicates an act of ‘deep processing’, whereas accuracy is more about ‘structural’ and ‘phonemic’ processing which is indicative of ‘shallow processing’.

Dornyei believes that creative writing can: Offer respite from the other classroom monotony, allow students to experience success, motivate students, make tasks more enjoyable, increase autonomy.

Crystal believes that writing can sometimes be seen as a prison and that playing with language in a creative way may be the key to opening success within writing.

Goouch and Lambirth believe that there is a negative impact on a child’s self-esteem if their writing is wrong.

CREATIVITY

• Being creative allows for a child to be unique and show individuality.
• Creative work allows a child to reflect on their own experiences and feelings.
• There is not such a thing as being ‘wrong’ in creative writing.
• Creativity cannot be measured.
• Can you ‘learn’ to be creative - or is it something more natural? The profusion of Creative Writing courses at Universities would suggest that creativity can be learnt.

ACCURACY

The National Curriculum is a prescriptive set of measures which is designed to judge children on their ability to write in certain ways. In essence, it measures a child’s accuracy as a way of judging their writing ability.

Rickford argues that there is a necessity of having rules and that as such, creative writing should be done with rules in place. He also thinks that children should be taught to write in dialectal, colloquial and accent forms. He does suggest that the end-goal is to get children writing in Standard English.

Torrance believes that teachers can enhance a student’s creativity through judging their level of accuracy and that correcting them leads to better writing.

• Accuracy can be measured.
• Specific advice and feedback can be given to aid development.
• Accuracy marks out superior members of groups (gifted and talented) which enables them to maximise their success.
• Accurate work often makes a better, more enjoyable read.