Child Language Theorists

Operant conditioning

• Language learnt through imitation (like all other skills)
• Reinforcement through rewards from parents (praise/stickers etc) encourages language learning

Strength 

• imitation has a key role

Weakness

• language development stages, these are always the same regardless of the language they are learning
• children seem to have an incredible grasp of grammar
• an infinite number of sentences, a child cannot have heard every order of all sentences before they have spoken. It's just not physically possible.

• children have an innate understanding of grammar
• Language Acquisition Device (LAD) be able to learn the language as soon as you come into contact with it.

Strengths

• under/overextension-overextension of the 'ed' past participle eg 'wented' instead of 'went' clearly not imitating a parent
• Impressive speed of LA 
• Don't replicate all parents grammatical errors (if we do it is usually due to the dialect)

Weaknesses

• Interaction does have a key role (Bard and Sachs study, feral children, Viktor and Genie)

• Language Acquisition Support System (LASS)
• External support of MKO (More Knowledgeable Others) through reinforcement and child-directed speech, environment and social routine
• Conservation and pragmatic skills learnt through interactions with adults

Zone of Proximal Development 

• Learner can do unaided
• Learner can do with guidance (Zone of Proximal Development)
• Learner cannot do 

The MKO can scaffold the child response, for the items in the middle section, providing sentence starters etc.

• The relationship between parental input and language acquisition is to difficult to measure-hard to know what causes changes between stages
• interaction does play an important part in language acquisition

These build on Chomsky's theory and together make it quite accurate.

children are active learners they can't be taught anything until they ready, they use environment and social interactions to shape language

Strengths

• Connections between cognitive development and language acquisition

Weaknesses

• Some aspects of language acquisition are separate from cognitive developments ie mental disability doesn't hinder from speaking fluently.
  

Sensorimotor stage (>2 years)

• use senses
• classify objects
• only use concrete lexis
• develop object permanence (in peek-a-boo the child will realise you are not leaving when you cover your face)

Pre-operational (2-7)

• Language is very egocentric
• Language and motor skills develop 

Concrete Operational (7-11)

• Logical thinking about concrete events

Formal operational (<11 years)

• Abstract reasoning

Categorisedchildren's first words into four groups

Naming (things or people) - e.g Daddy 

Actions/Events - e.g. cuddle

Describing/Modifying things - e.g. more

Personal/Social - e.g. bye-bye

Phonology

• Slower, clearer pronunciation
• More pauses
• Higher pitch 
• Exaggerated intonation

Lexis

• Simplier, restricted vocabulary
  
• Concrete lexis referring to objects in immediate surroundings
• Diminutive forms e.g. 'doggie'

Grammar

• Simpler construction
• frequent use of imperatives
• lots of repetition
• frequent questions
• use of personal names instead of pronouns

Types of CDS

Motherese

• Exaggerated tone
• Wide range and variability of pitch simplifies the language 
• expansion and recasting

Teaches the words

Fatherese

• Not much different from non-CDS

Teaches the grammar

• Provided evidence for the belief that children overgeneralise
• 'this is a wug. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two ____'
• Children (¾ of 4-5 year olds) formed the regular plural form of 'wugs' they were applying their innate language skills to this noun despite never hearing what a wug is.

• Found that a child who referred to a fish as a 'fis'
• this child couldn't tell the difference between the adults use of fish and his use of 'fis'
• however when an adult referred to a fish like 'fis' corrected them 

Child: A fis

Adult: Is this your fis?

Child; No a fis

Adult: Is this your fish?

Child: Yes my fis