Language Acquisition A2 Revision Cards

Before Birth

• Baby acclimatised to sounds of language already
  • Mehler (1988); French babies sucked on dummies more strongly when they heard audio ofpeople speakingFrench as opposed topeople speakingEnglish
    
  • Babies used to rhythms and intonation of language spoken around them

Crying

• Vocal expression through crying
  • Instinctive noises that are not classified as language
• Found within the first few weeks of life

Cooing

• Universal development at around six to eight weeks
  • 'coo', 'goo' and 'ga-ga'
• Developing increased control over vocal cords

Babbling

• Most important stage of first year
• Occurs between 6-9 months, continues after 'actual' speech
• Sounds resemble adult language
  • Combinations of consonants and vowels
    • 'ma', 'ga' and 'da'
  • Repeated sounds are known as reduplicated babbling
    • 'baba' and 'mama'
• No meaning attributed to sounds
• Child exercises mouth through blowing raspberries
  

Phonemic Expansion and Contraction

• Number of phonemes produced increases initially; at the age of 9 or 10 months it reduces
  • Number of sound restricts to those of native tongue
    • Unecessary sound discarded
• Variation in speech begins to occur around now

Understanding

• Signs of word recognition evident by the end of first year
  • Names of family members , masic repsonses, words related to famililar experiences

The First Word

• Around first year
• It is the first recognisable word with an associated meaning
  

The First Year: Trends

• Vowel command BEFORE consonant command
  • 2 and a half: all vowels learned, 2 thirds of consonants learned
  • 4: difficulty with a few consonants
  • 6/7: all consonants learnt with confidence
• Consonants first used correctly at beginnings of words
  • The 'p' in push is said more confidently than in rip
• Common sounds (such as the letter e) are acquired first
• Children simplify their pronunciation of words
  

Simplification: Deletion

• Final consonants are dropped
  • hat becomes ha
• Unstressed syllabes are gone
  • Banana becomes nana
• Consonant clusters reduce
  • Snake becomes nake

Simplification: Substitution 

• Substituting hard sound for easier ones
  • rock becomes wock
  • thumb becomes numb
  • toe becomes doe
  • pig becomes big
• Reduplication may also occur
  • dog becomes gog
    

Understanding

• Comprehension and meaning develops quicker than reproduction of sounds
  • Berko and Brown (1960)
    • Child: This is my fis
    • Father: You mean your fish?
    • Child: Yes, my fis

Intonation

• Conscience alternation in tone and rhythm before speech
• During two-word stage, emphaiss used to alter meaning
  • Cruttenden (1974): intonation understanding develops as they enter teenage years
    

How fast is vocabulary acquired?

• Speech begins roughly at the end of the first year
  • 18 months: vocabulary of 50 words
  • 2: vocabulary of 200 words
  • 5: vocabulary of 2000 words
  • 7: vocabulary of 4000 words
    • These are how many words are USED by the child
      • At 18 months, a child understands approximately 250 words but does't necessarily use/know how to use all of them
    • Time is needed to acquire additional knowledge and full range of meanings of words
      

First Words

• A large proportion of first words are people, familiar objects and words related to social interaction
  • Nouns are the largest class, followed by verbs and then adjectives
    • Concrete nouns are found first - abstract nouns do not appear until between the ages of 5 and 7
• First verbs are actions such 'go' and 'eat'
  • Functional word like 'the' and 'of' are missing
    

Underextension

• A narrower meaning is applied to a word
  • cat is solely used to refer to the family pet, but not for all cats

Overextension

• A broader meaning is applied to a word
  • daddy is used to refer to all men
• This error is the main and most frequent type of error
  • 2 and a half: overextension rapidly decreases as the child begins to 'fill in' the gaps in their vocabulary with new words
• The child's ability to understand meaning happens before their ability to produce the words themselves
  

Labelling, Packaging and Network Building

• Aitchison (1987) identified three stages that occur during vocabulary acquisition:
  • Labelling
    • The first stage, links between sound and objects
      • Mummy is understood as referring to the child's mother
  • Packaging
    • The understanding of a word's range of meaning
      • Over and underextension occurs before this stage
  • Network Building
    • Grasping connections between words
      • Cold is the opposite to hot
      • The relationship between a hypernym and hyponym is understood
        

One-word Stage

• Occurs roughly at the age of one
• Words used as naming function but may also convey ore complex messages
  • Juice may mean I want more juice, I want some juice  and I've spilt some juice
  • The situation and intonation enable understanding
  • Syntactical understanding is more advanced than lexical
    
    • Children are able to respond to two-word instructions

Two-word Stage

• Occurs roughly at the 18 months
• Two-word sentences have a wide variety of meanings
  • Possession, somebody performing an action or to explain a location
    • Bloom (1973): the same sentence can be used to express different meanings
  • The meaning is ambigious because inflectional affixes are absent
    • -s plurals and -ed past tense are absent
      
• Words usually appear in a grammatically correct sequence
  • Words are ommitted but they are still in appropriate grammatical order
    • Words that convey less information or function grammatically are usually removed

Telegraphic Stage

• From the age of 2, three and four word utterances appear
  • Some will be grammatically correct whilst other will have elements missing
    • Determiners, auxiliary verbs and prepositions are not present
• Wides structures, such as questions and commands
  • Simple statements appear
• At the age of 3, initally-ommitted words appear alongside multiple clauses, co-ordinating conjunctions and inflectional affixes
• At the age of 5, basic grammatical rules are learned
  

Acquisition of Inflections

• Brown (1973): inflections acquired in the following order:
  • -ing
  • -plural -s
  • possessive -'s
  • 'the' 'a'
  • past tense -ed
  • third person singular verb ending -s
  • auxiliary 'be'
• Cruttenden (1979): inflections acquired in 3 stages:
  • Words are memorised on an individual basis but principles are disregarded
  • An awarness of the general principles governing inflections occurs; overgeneralisation occurs at this sstage
  • Correct inflections are then used with irregular forms

Understanding of Grammatical Rules

• Berko (1958):
  • The 'Wug' Experiment
    • Children shown a picture of a fictional creature with the sentence 'This is a wug'. They were then shown a picture of two 'wugs' with the statement 'Now there is another one; there are two of them.' They were asked to complete the sentence 'There are two...' Children aged 3 and 4 correctly answered with 'There are two wugs'
      
    • Children aged 2 and a half to 5 show an awareness of grammatical rules
      

Questions

• Research suggests that the acquisition of questions is split into three stages:
  • Initial reliance upon intonation
    • Daddy gone?
  • Question words are acquired but no auxiliaries are used
    • Where Daddy gone?
  • Auxiliary verbs are used and a reversal of the subject-verb-object may be found, wh- not always inverted correctly
    • Is Joe here? would be correct but Why Joe isn't here? would be incorrect

Negatives

• Again divided into three stages:
  • Single dependence upon 'no' and 'not'
    • No want, No go home
  • 'Don't' and 'can't' used in the 3rd year both after a subject and before a verb
    • I don't want it, Sam can't play
  • More negative forms like 'didn't' and 'isn't' appear, along with accurate negative constructions
    

The Functions of Children's Language

• Halliday (1975)
  • Physical, Social and Emotional Needs
    • Instrumental Model - used to express needs
      • Want drink
        
    • Regulatory Model - used to control others
      • Go away
    • Interactional Model - used to form relationships
      • Love you, Daddy
    • Personal Model - used to express feelings, opinions and identity
      • Me good girl

The Functions of Children's Language

• Halliday (1975):
  • Environmental
    • Heuristic Model - used to gain knowledge of the environment
      • What that tractor doing?
    • Imaginative Model - used to create the environment
      • Jokes and stories
  • Representational Model - convey facts and information
• Try to remember the following mnemonic:
  • HIR PRINTER (her printer); H=Heuristic, I=Interactional, R=Regulatory, PR=PeRsonal, INT=INTEractional, R=Representational
    

Early Years

• Bancroft (1996):
  
  • Peekaboo parallels typical conversation
    • Turn-taking - child may not initially grasp but adult acts as if it does
    • Each participant respond to the other's contribution
    • The common purpose is to understand the sequence
    • Pleasure is given to both parties
  • 10 months: the child regularly intiaties the game
    • Adult begins to ask questions, give agreement and disapproving/approving responses
      

First Conversations

• First speech - statements directed to nobody
  • Ignore others and conversation depends on adult's stimulation

Later Development

• Skills develop between 2 and 4; they become an active participant and initiate conversation
  • Conventions of turn-taking, response to questions, greetings and politeness
• Youssef (1991):
  • Observed Janet, aged 3 years and 9 months, found that she would give different varieties of English for different social contexts
• At school, there is an increased sensitivity to a listener's needs and greater understanding of appropriate language for formal situations
  

Imitation and Reinforcement

• Skinner (1957):
  • Positive and negative reinforcement shape a child's use of language and ensures development
  • Children acquire language by imitating others
• Evaluation:
  • All children pass through stages regardless of the amount of reinforcement they receive
  • Under and overextension proves that children have an innate understanding of grammar
    • This means they have the capacity to create an infinite number of sentences - they are entirely original and therefore not imitated
  • It is more likely that lexis is imitated whilst grammar is innate
    

Innateness

• Chomsky (1965) - criticism of Skinner's theory:
  • Innate ability to understand language - the Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
  • All languages have different surface but same deep structure - children possess innate awarenes of the latter
• Evaluation:
  • LAD is proven by the speed of learning - children from all cultures pass similar stages and grammar is common in all languages
  • Bard and Saachs (1977):
    • Jim had deaf parents and was thus severely retarded. However, upon visiting a speech therapist, his language development improved dramatically
      • Children are born ready to speak but need interaction to do so
        

Cognition Theory

• Piaget (1976):
  • Language is learned in stages - we progress mentally from one stage to another
  • Stages cannot be skipped; they must be learned
  • The stages (in order) are as follows:
    • Sensorimotor: 0-2 years
    • Pre-operational: 3-7 years
    • Concrete operational: 8-11 years
    • Formal operations: 12 years+
• Evaluation
  • Some children with mental development issues have still been able to speak fluently
  • Grammar and sentence structure is independent of general cognitive development
    

Input Theories

• Bruner:
  • Language Acquisition Support System (LASS - a parody of Chomsky's LAD)
    • Language support by interaction from parents and family
  • Bruner has stages also, and these are similar to Piaget's:
    • Inactive = Early parts of the sensorimotor stage
    • Iconic = Later parts of the sensorimotor stage and the pre-operational
    • Symbolic = Later Piaget stages
• Evaluation:
  • Clarke-Stewart (1973): babies whose mothers talk to them have more extensive vocabularies
  • It is hard to pinpoint language advancements
  • Children acquire language even with parents who speak to them like adults
  • Feral child Genie - she had no interaction with language so she did not learn any
    

Features of child-directed speech

• Phonology:
  • Slower and clearer pronunciation
  • More pauses
  • Higher pitch
  • Exaggerated intonation and stresses
• Lexis:
  • Simpler, restricted vocabulary
  • Diminutive forms - 'doggie' not 'dog'
  • Concrete language about the immediate environment
• Grammar
  • Simple constructions
  • Frequent imperatives and questions
  • Repetition
  • Personal names not pronouns - 'Mummy' to refer to oneself, not 'I'
    

Effects of child-directed speech

• More accessible language; understanding of the language is clearer
• Higher pitch and intonation retains a child's attention
• Frequent questions improve auxiliary verb comprehension and introduces some conventions of a conversation
• Some argue that baby talk interferes with development as the speech is distorted and inaccurate
• Caretaker speech is also not essential - in some cultures, speech is not modified for children yet they still acquire language at a normal rate
  

Stages in Reading Development

• Chall (1983):
  • Pre-reading or pseudo-reading: 0-6 years, the child turn pages and pretends to read a story that has previously been read to them
  • Intial reading and decoding: 6-7 years, the child begins to learn the grapheme-phoneme relationship and understands around 4000 spoken words and 600 written words
    
  • Confirmation and fluency: 7-8 years, it is the consolidation of previous knowledge whilst reading skills and vocabulary increase gradually - they understand 9000 spoken words and 3000 written words
    
  • Reading for learning: 9-14 years, it is a means of gaining knowledge
  • Multiplicity and complexity: 14-17 years, complex and varied reading material
  • Construction and reconstruction: 18 years onwards, reading is confident, rapid and efficient, reading is done for both personal and occupational reasons
    

The Teaching of Reading

• Phonic approach:
  • Focus on sounds and the grapheme-phoneme relationshp is stressed
  • There is active encouragement for children to decode words
  • Books are read for learning not for the plot
• Whole-word approach:
  • Recognition of individual words as wholes, not individual sounds
  • More focus on actively reading - not just theoretical
  • Encouragement to become more familiar with books

Learning to Write

• Pre-skills must be learned beforehand:
  • Physical co-ordination of pen and pencil
  • Structures of written language
  • Different styles of writing
• Kroll (1981) identified the following stages:
  • Preperatory - up to the age of 6, the child masters physical skills and learns the basics of spelling
  • Consolidation - 6-8, the child writes in the same way that they speak - short, declarative sentences
  • Differentiation - 8-mid-teens, increased confidence in writing, an awareness of difference between speech and writing, complex and varied sentences/styles
  • Integration - midteens onwards, they develop a personal 'voice' and adapt confidently to the requirements of different situations
    

Glossary and Useful Terms

• auxiliary verb - a verb placed in front of a main verb (such as 'is' or 'have')
• complex sentence - a sentence containing a main clause and one or more less important clauses
• compound sentence - two or more simple sentences joined together by a coordinating conjuctive such as 'and' or 'but'
• declarative sentence - a sentence that makes a statement ('there is a ball')
• grapheme - letters on a page
  
• hypernym - a general word ('furniture')
• hyponym - a more specific word ('chair')
• phoneme - a sound (the 'cah' sound in 'cat')