1_Language Acquisition- Spoken Language.

1_Language Acquisition- Spoken Language.

1. Theories of Acquisition. (AO2)

   • Nativist (Chomsky)
     • Believes LA is an innate process. Everyone has an inbuilt LAD, which enables them to be extract the rules of a particular language from the words and structures they hear.
       • Universal grammar- the theory that all languages share a similar grammatical structure under the surface.
         • Critical period- theory that a child's LAD must be activated with sufficient input before the age of 12, or the child's language acquisition will be impaired.
           • Children experience the same stages of development at the same pace. Children produce correct language even when surrounded by 'impoverished' faulty adult speech.
   • Cognitive (Vygotsky)
     • Language acquisition is part of a wider development of understanding.
       • Believes that language comes with understanding - a child can't linguistically articulate concepts he/she doesn't understand. i.e they need to understand the past tense in order to use the past tense.
         • Object permanence- the ability to understand that an object still exists even though it's no longer in sight.
   • Social Interactionist (Bruner)
     • Believes language is acquired as a result of interacting with adults.
       • Social interactionists think there must also be a LASS- Language Acquisition Support System.
         • Bruner particularly looked at ritualised activities that occur daily in young children's lives e.g mealtimes and bedtimes- and how carers make the rules and meanings of these interactions explicit and predictable so that children can learn.
           • Routines/ rituals teach children about spoken discourse structure, i.e turn taking.
   • Behaviourist (Skinner)
     • Language acquisition is a result of imitation and reinforcement.
       • Skinner coined the 'Skinner Box' where he tested positive and negative reinforcements with rats and pigeons. Some people are sceptical of his findings as he didn't focus on humans. He believed that language is learnt through positive and negative reinforcement.
         • Children imitate accent and dialect.
   • Both nativist and cognitive theorists believe that children learn pragmatic aspects of language and produce utterances that increase in complexity as they work towards establishing a rule.

2. Case Studies

   • 1- Genie, suffered serious neglect, which led to developmental delay. Lived with little or no auditory stimulation for 13 years. When found the only vocalisation she was capable of was a whimper.
     • Nativist- past the critical period of 12 years for when the LAD must be activated- LA impaired as a result.
       • Social interactionist- lack of interactions with others or routines prevented LA.
         • Behaviourist- lack of imitation/ reinforcement.
   • 2- The 'fis' phenomenon- researchers have looked at children's phonological errors to see how they link to their understanding of words and ideas, as well as their ability to imitate language. Jean Berko and Roger Brown (1960) found that a child who referred to a plastic fish as 'fis', substituting the 'sh' sound for 's', couldn't link an adult's used of 'fis' with the same object.
     • Supports cognitive- doesn't understand the concepts.
       • Challenges behaviourist theorist- fails to imitate.
   • 3- The 'wug' test- experiment carried out by Jean Berko (1958) which aimed to investigate the acquisition of the plural and other inflectional morphemes in English- speaking children. Berko presented with a made up creature called a 'wug' then, presenting them with another 'wug', asked them 'Now there are two...?' On this cue =, most of the children replied saying 'wugs', applying the correct plural suffix 's', despite never hearing 'wug' before.
     • Supports nativists- natural presumption of the plural.
   • 4- Vincent- a hearing child born to deaf parents, learned to communicate using sign language. As a hearing child, he enjoyed watching TV but he ignored the sounds. He didn't start to speak until he went to school, where people talked to him.
     • Behaviourist/ social- interactionist- interaction with others allowed him to develop language.

3. Phonology

   • 1- Vegetative: sounds of discomfort or reflexive actions e.g crying, burping. (0-4 MONTHS)
     • Language development may begin in the womb- DeCasper and Spence (1986) found that babies sucked on their dummies more when their mothers read them the same story that they'd also read aloud during the last six months of the pregnancy.
     • Mehler et al (1988) found that four- day old French babies increased their sucjing rate in a dummy, showing interest or recognition, when they heard French as opposed to Italian or English. This suggests that they'd acquired some awareness of the sounds of French before they were born.
     • Fitzpatrick (2002) found that the heart rate of an unborn baby slowed when it hear its mother's voice/.
     • All this suggests that even in the womb, babies become familiar with sounds, rhythms and intonations of language.
     • The period between birth and the first word being spoken is known as the pre- verbal or pre- language stage. Crying is the first main vocal expression a baby makes. It makes the caregiver aware that the baby needs something. Crying can indicate hunger, discomfort or pain. This isn't really a conscious act on the baby's part. It's more an instinctive response to how it feels.
   • 2- Cooing: comfort sounds, vocal play- grunts and sighs become vowel like 'coos', hard consonants and vowels, pitch (squeals) and loudness (yells) are practiced. These sounds don't yet carry any meaning- the baby is just experimenting with sounds. Gradually these sounds become more defined and are strung together, this vocal play is the start of babbling.
   • 3- Babbling: extended sounds resembling syllable like sequences, repeated patterns- reduplicated sounds e.g 'mamama' and non- reduplicated e.g 'da-di-da' (variegated). (6- 9 MONTHS)
     • Research has shown that deaf babies who've had some exposure to sign language will babble with their hands- producing consonant and vowel combinations in sign language. This suggests that babbling is an innate activity, which is preprogrammed to happen in the process of language development.
     • Most people argue that babbling is a continuation of the baby's experimentation with sound creation (cooing) rather than the production of sounds which carry meaning. E.g the infant may produce 'dadada' but they're not actually saying anything referring to Dad or Daddy at this stage.
     • Some people argue that babbling is the beginning of speech: Petitto and Holowka (2002) videoed infants and noted that most babbling came more from the right side of the mouth, which is controlled by the left side of the brain. This side of the brain is responsible for speech production. Their findings suggest that babbling is a form of preliminary speech.
     • Even in the early stages of babbling, some babies will use rhythms that resemble the speech patterns of adults. There will be recognisable intonation in the strings of phonemes they put together. E.g at the end of a babbling sequence the intonation may rise, mirroring the kind of intonation adults use when asking a question. Babies can also accompany these sounds with gestures, like pointing.
   • 4- Proto- words: word like vocalisations. (9- 12 months)
     • Eventually certain combinations of consonants and vowels start to carry meaning. E.g, a child might say 'mmm' to show they want some more food. This isn't a word in itself but functions like one- these are proto- words and are sometimes accompanied by gestures as well.
     • Another example of a proto- word is when a child refers to a cat as 'da'- this is still a sound rather than a recognisable word, but it refers to an object and isn't just a random utterance. At around 9 months children start to sound like they're speaking their own made- up language. This is called jargon.
     • In the later stages of babbling, sound and meaning start to come together. At this stage, 'ma- ma' does indicate Mum. This usually happens by the time the baby is ten months old.
   • Types of sound.
     • 1- Plosives (24 months)
       • 2- Nasals (30 months)
         • 3- Approximents and laterals (36 months)
           • 4- Affricatives (42 months)
             • 5- Fricatives (48 months)
   • Phonological Errors
     • 1- Deletion: omitting the final consonants in words. e.g 'do' instead of 'dog'.
     • 2- Substitution: substituing one sound for another (especially the harder sounds that develop later. e.g 'pip' instead of 'ship'.
     • 3- Addition: adding an extra vowel sound to the end of words, creating a CVCV pattern- e.g 'doggie' instead of 'dog'.
     • 4- Assimilation: changing one consonant or vowel for another because of the influence of another in the same word, e.g 'bub' instead of 'tub' because of the influence of the final 'b'.
     • 5- Reduplication- repeating a whole syllable, e.g 'dada', 'mama'.
     • 6- Consonant Cluster Reductions- consonant clusters can be difficult to pronounce so children can reduce them to smaller units, e.g 'pider' for 'spider'.
     • 7- Deletion of unstressed syllables- omitting the opening syllable in polysyllabic words. e.g 'nana' for 'banana'.
   • Pragmatics
     • What is pragmatics about?
       • Implicature (what we mean rather than what we say).
         • Inference (interpreting what others mean).
           • Politeness.
             • Conversational management and turn- taking.
     • Halliday's Speech Functions.
       • 1- Instrumental: language used to fulfill a need. e.g 'want milk'.
       • 2- Regulatory: language used to influence the behaviour of others e.g 'pick up'.
       • 3- Interactional: language used to develop and maintain social relationships e.g 'love you'.
       • 4- Personal: language used to convey individual opinions, ideas and personal identity, e.g 'me like Charlie and Lola'.
       • 5- Representational: language used to convey facts and information, e.g 'it hot'.
       • 6- Imaginative: language used to create an imaginary world and may be seen in play predominantly e.g 'me shopkeeper'.
       • 7- Heuristic: language used to learn about the environment, e.g 'wassat?'
     • Dore's Language Functions.
       • 1- Labelling: naming a person, object or thing.
       • 2- Repeating: Repeating an adult word or utterance.
       • 3- Answering: responding to an utterance of another speaker.
       • 4- Requesting action: asking for something to be done for them.
       • 5- Calling: Getting attention by shouting.
       • 6- Greeting: Greeting someone or something.
       • 7- Protesting: Objecting to requests from others.
       • 8- Practising: Using language when no adult is present.
     • How is pragmatics acquired? (AO2)
       • Social interaction.
         • Egocentric speech- Piaget. Allows children to classify their experiences and environment.
     • Politeness
       • Brown & Levinson (1978- 1987) define politeness in terms of the concept of FACE. Respecting face is defined as showing consideration for people's feelings. We show consideration by respecting the basic human needs.
         • The need not to be imposed on- this is called negative face.
         • The need to be liked and admired- this is called positive face.

4. Lexis

   • Making Meaning
     • 12 months- first recognisable word, this age varies dependent on the child. Initially proto- words have meaning for the child and their carer but have less meaning for others.
       • 18 months- children have a vocabulary of about 50 words.
         • 24 months- most children have reached a 200 word vocabulary.
           • 36 months- it will be around 2,000 words.
             • On average, children learn about 10 words a day.
   • Katherine Nelson (1973) identified 4 categories for 1st words:
     • 1- Naming (things or people).
       • 2- Actions/ events.
         • 3- Describing/ modifying things.
           • 4- Personal/ social words.
   • A child's vocabulary has a predominance of nouns. Prepositions, determiners and conjunctions come later as they have a grammatical rather than a semantic function.
   • Stretching Words
     • At this early stage of development, children are trying to do a lot with a little.
     • Their early words are often overextended to cover more things that have similar properties or functions to the actual object. e.g referring to every type of fruit as 'apple'.
     • On other occasions, words have their meanings underextended to cover a narrower definition of a word's meaning.
   • Overextension
     • Rescorla (1980) noted 3 forms of overextension:
       • 1) Categorical Overextension- The name for one member of a category is extended to all members of the category. This is the most common form of overextension.
       • 2) Analogical overextension: A word for one object is extended to one in a different category, usually on the basis that it has some physical or functional connection- e.g 'ball' used for a round fruit.
       • 3) Mismatch Statement: one- worded sentences that appear quite abstract; child makes a statement about one object in relation to another. e.g saying 'duck' when looking at an empty pond.
   • Aitchision (1987) identified 3 stages in children's acquisition of words and their meanings:
     • 1) Labelling: linking words to the objects to which they refer, understanding that things can be labelled. e.g labelling a cat as a cat.
     • 2) Packaging: Exploring the labels and to what they can apply. Over/ underextension occurs in order to eventually understand the range of a word's meaning. E.g realising a cat has differences from other animals.
     • 3) Network Building: Making connections between words, understanding similarities and opposites in meaning. E.g realising a cat comes under the wider category of 'animal',

5. Grammar

   • There are 4 stages in a child's grammatical development:
     • 1- One word/ holophrastic: one word utterance (12- 18 MONTHS)
       • 2- Two- word: two words combined to create simple syntactical structures, (18- 24 MONTHS)
         • 3- Telegraphic: Three or more words joined in increasingly complex and accurate orders. (24- 36 MONTHS).
           • 4- Post- telegraphic: Increasing awareness of grammatical rules and irregularities. e.g using 'ran' instead of 'runned'. (36 MONTHS onwards)
   • Holophrastic (one word)
     • The term 'holophrastic' means 'whole phrase' and is used to describe words that don't simply fulfill the naming purpose, but behave more like a short utterance.
       • E.g if a child said 'dog as a dog walked into the room, they could be labelling the dog but their intention could also be to indicate a dog has entered the room. IN order to make sense or the utterance, context needs to be taken into account (AO3).
         • Gestalt expression: refers to the way in which children can compress a string of words into a single utterance, 'wassat'- holophrase.
   • Telegraphic
     • Once a child can combine three or more words, they're starting to make their meanings more explicit.
       • Telegraphic stage- utterances similar to the style and construction of a telegram in that function words are left out, but content words are retained.
         • Early in this stage, verb inflections, auxiliary verbs, prepositions and determiners are all omitted. As children move towards the post- telegraphic stage, these function words appear accurately in utterances.
           • Key developments take place in the construction of questions, negatives and pronouns.
   • Interrogatives
     • In the one and two word stages, questions are formed by rising intonation (prosody) alone. Only later can children fully develop interogatives because these involve changing word order and using auxiliary verbs.
     • Other questions require the 4 W's (what, why, where, when) These tend to appear fairly early on in development and are frequently used correctly at the beginning of a sentence, e.g 'where mummy?' But inverstion of the subject and auxiliary copula verb doesn't happen until later e.g 'where is mummy?'
     • The 4 W's appear to be acquired in a certain order:
       • 1- What (subject or object)
         • 2- Where (location)
           • 3- Why (reason)
             • 4- When (time)
               • This is logical because:
                 • Knowing 'what' is happening gives a child more words.
                   • 'Where' pinpoints where objects can be found.
                     • 'Why' shows some cognitive awareness and desire to learn about environment.
                       • 'When'- temporal aspect, more abstract, sense of time?
   • Negatives
     • The ability to use negation also needs syntactic awareness. Researcher Ursula Bellugi identified 3 stages of negative formations in young children:
       • 1- Child uses 'no' or 'not' at the beginning or end of a sentence. e.g "no wear shoes"
         • 2- Moves 'no'/ 'not' inside the sentence, "i no want it".
           • 3- Attaches the negative to auxiliary verbs and the copula verb "be" securely, "No, I don't want to go to nursery/ I am not"
             • David Crystal (linguist) adds another way of learning to say "no" to Bellugi's stages. This is more pragmatic than grammatical, as it doesn't directly use a negative word. It can be observed when adults don't want to be direct in disagreeing with their children, e.g using "maybe" instead of "no"- and is a skill that children will develop.
   • Pronouns
     • Ursula Bellugi found 3 stages in the development of pronouns:
       • 1- The child uses their own name, "Tom play".
         • 2- The child recognises the I/me pronouns and that these are used in different places within a sentence, "I play toy", "Me do that".
           • 3- The child uses them according to whether they're in the subject or object position within a sentence, e.g "I play with the toy", "give it to me".
   • Determiners
     • Determiners are another function word acquired later in development. Determiners are attached to nouns and are articles (a, the), numerals (one), possessive (my), quantifiers (some, many) and demonstratives (this).
   • Post- Telegraphic Stage
     • This is when the remaining function words are acquired and used appropriately. The child can:
       • 1- Combine clause structures by using coordinating constructions (and, but) and subordinating conjunctions (because, although) to make complex and compound utterances.
       • 2- Manipulate verb forms more accurately, e.g using the passive voice ("the car was followed by the lorry").
       • 3- Construct longer noun phrases ("the two big red buses").
   • Sentence Types
     • Simple sentences- 1 subject, 1 verb, 1 object.
     • Compound sentences: 2 clauses, joined by a conjunction (and, but, because).
     • Complex sentences: 1 main clause and a subordinate clause, which can't make sense on it's own. E.g "the cat, who was very hungry, eyed the goldfish"- "who"= the subordinate clause.
   • Virtuous Errors
     • Virtuous error= a mistake which has an underlying logic, showing that learning has taken place.
       • E.g "I runned"- over generalising "ed" ending on irregular verb form.
   • The final stage of a child's understanding is pragmatics (implied meanings and politeness strategies).

6. REMEMBER: When commenting on children's early speech, examiners don't want a 'deficit' approach (e.g saying what a child can't do), but rather suggestions as to what the 'errors' show about the child's language acquisition/ understanding.- Show what understanding they do have.

7. Context

   • You should ask these questions when examining data:
     • 1- Who participates? (one or more speakers, gender)
       • 2- What relationship exists between speakers? (family members, friends, carer and child, teacher and student)
         • 3- What is the setting? (domestic, nursery)
           • 4- In what developmental stage is the child? (age)
             • 5- What other factors might effect the data? (cultural influences such as books, TV, social experiences.
   • Play and Language Acquisition.
     • Lev Vygotsky observed children's play and linked it to both cognitive and social development. Young children often used props as 'pivots' to support their play but, when older, use their imagination instead.
       • Vygotsky also observed how children role- play adult behaviour as part of exploring their environment, which has interested more recent researchers.
     • Catherine Garvey's study of pairs of children playing found that children adopt roles and identities, acting out storylines and inventing objects and settinfs as required in role- play scenarios. This is termed pretend play and fulfills Halliday's imaginative language function. Children play together because it's enjoyable but it also practices social interactions and negotiation skills, with players roles and responsibilities often decided as they play. Sometimes called sociodramatic play, it involves both social and dramatic skills, with explicit rules and reflecting real- world behaviour.
     • Sociodramatic play usually begins when children are around 4 years old, possibly linking to their cognitive understanding as they understand the different roles people have and how these affect language. In their re- enactments they use field- specific lexis and structure them in some of the formulaic ways that adults use in precisely these situations, suggesting that they can observe and imitate adult behaviours.
   • The role of parents.
     • The term used to describe the non- standard form of language used by adults with young children have changed over time. The current preferred term used by linguists is 'child- directed speech' (CDS) because it focuses on the child rather than the specific role of the adult.
     • Baby talk seems to rely on reduplication ('din-din'), deletion and substitution and addition ('doggie') with the adult speaker adopting child- like characteristics.
     • When you learn about acquisition theories, evaluate what the linguistic theorists might think about the value of baby talk. Baby talk focuses on simple lexical features and exaggerated prosodic features, such as sing- song intonation.
     • Vygotsky- 'zone of proximal development'- describes how adults and children work together to move children towards independence, knowledge and competence. Bruner, with other researchers, introduced the concept of 'scaffolding' to refer to the ways adults help children to advance cognitively. He observed that adults withdraw support as children's skills develop.
   • Features of CDS
     • The benefit of CDS, some argue, is in teaching children the basic function and structure of language. Not all cultures use CDS, either not speaking to their children until they have reached a certain aged (as in Samoa and Papua New Guinea), or not simplifying adult language for children.
     • Chomsky maintained that language structures can't simply be acquired by repeating language from varieties such as CDS, because of its 'impoverished' and 'random' nature- using incomplete grammatical utterances. However, this now seems to be less valid, as studies of CDS features suggest that this register is more structured and regular than previously thought.
     • Some people have also looked at whether men use a different language register to their children. Men seem to use more direct questioning styles, seek more information and use a wider vocabulary than women.
     • Some of the evidence about the effects of CDS appears contradictory. Alison Clarke- Stewart found that children had a larger vocabulary if their mothers talked to them a lot. However, Roger Brown found that children were rarely corrected for grammatical mistakes, though they were for lexical errors or for the content of their speech.
       • So CDS alone can't explain children's acquisition of language, but may affect their linguistic competence.