Child Language Acquisition Revision

Child Language Acquisition Revision

1. Lexical Development

   • Katherine Nelson - four categories for first words: naming things/people, actions/events, describing things, personal/social words
   • David Crystal - children's early words are those objects that they interact with the most e.g. toys, food, clothes etc
   • Skinner/Behaviourist Theory - they believe that language is acquired through social interaction - this would seem true with lexical development
   • B.F Skinner stated that children imitate and copy adults and get positive/negative reinforcement for their verbal behaviour

2. Phonological Development

   • Fis Phenomenon - Jean Berko + Roger Browne: a child referred to a plastic inflatable fish as 'fis'. Researches have looked at children's phonological errors - shows that children's understanding of phonemes is more developed than their physical ability to produce the sounds

3. Semantic Development

   • Over and Underextension - common for children to overextend a words meaning when they first learn it. They underextend words by giving it a narrower definition: categorical overextension, analogical overextension, mismatch statements
   • Aitchison's stages of Child Linguistic Development: stage 1 = labelling, stage 2 = packaging, stage 3 = network building
   • Jean Piaget four developmental stages: sensorimotor (up to age 2), preoperational (age 2-7), concrete operational (age 7-11), formal operational (age 11+)
   • Jean Piaget - children are active learners who use their environmental and social interactions to shape their language

4. Debates in Child Language Acquisition

   • Children learn through imitation
   • Theories: NATIVIST, BEHAVIOURIST, SOCIAL INTERACTIONIST, COGNITIVE
   • Children use cognitive skills to develop language by themselves
   • Children need input from others to communicate effectively
   • Language is inbuilt with humans pre-programmed to acquire it

5. Grammatical Development

   • Holophrastic (one word) stage: 12-18 months
   • Two word stage: 18-24 months
   • Telegraphic stage: 24-36 months
   • Post telegraphic stage: 36+ months
   • The Wug Test - Jean Berko Gleason
     • She gave children a picture of an imaginary creature called a 'Wug' and asked them what more than one would be called - 3/4 of the 4/5 year olds formed the regular plural 'wugs'. Suggesting that children create their own grammatical understanding rather than imitating adults

6. Pragmatic Development

   • Positive Politeness: where the individual desires social approval and being included
   • Negative Politeness: where the individual asserts their needs to be independant and make their own decisions
   • Halliday Functions: speech has seven functions. Most useful to analyse children's language is the imaginative and heuristic function
   • Brown and Levinson: politeness is encouraged by parents from a young age