Essay Theorists

• SCHEMAS: Equilibrium > Assimilation > Accomodation
• Object Permanence - Blanket and Ball
• Egocentrism - Three Mountains
• Number - Conservation
• Abstract Reasoning - Pendulum

HIR PIRI

Environmental:

• Heuristic, Imaginative, Representational

Social Needs:

• Personal, Interactional, Regulatory, Instrumental

(LAD) Language Acquisition Device: All children are born with the innate ability to acquire language at a similar rate regardless of environment and intelligence. Supporting evidence includes virtuous errors, SVO sentence structure, and the application of inflections.

Nativist outlook

Universal grammar - all languages share similar rules

Language is acquired through social interaction

Operant Conditioning:

• Positive reinforcement
• Negative reinforcement

Criticism: all supporting evidence conducted on lab rats not humans

Labelling  // Answering 

Repeating // Requesting

Calling // Greeting

Protesting // Practising

'Fis' phenomenon study 

Child can understand words before capable of saying them themselves

IPA: International Phonetic Alphabet

Vowel sound = phoneme 

Consonantal sound = grapheme

Deletion

Substitution

Reduplication

Only applicable to children 2 years or under

60% of children's first words are nouns

Content words come first - naming and describing words

LASS: Language Acquisition Support System

Features of CDS: scaffolding, repetition, recasting, modelling, open/closed interrogatives, intonation, direct address, enforcement of politeness features i.e. turn-taking and face.

• Children learn through roleplay - cognitive and social development
• Often referred to as sociodramatic play: reflects real-world behaviours and involves explicit rules
• Observe and imitate adult behaviours
• Exercising imaginative function

• Deficit theory - women are weak

• Empty language (pretty, sweet, lovely, etc)

• Tag questions

• Hedging

• "Women's work" words

• Outdated/sexist -> challenge 

Link to informalisation of language 

• Damp spoon theory - langauge is deteriorating because of laziness

• Crumbling castle - English language is crumbling over time

• Infectious diseases - people pick up bad language habits when speaking informally and this affects language in a pejorative manner