Child Acqusition

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Beginnig of language develpment

before birth:

efore birth a child has acclimatised to the sounds of its native language

crying:

the child can express itself vocally. Different kinds of ‘cry’ can be identified

cooing:

known as gurgling or mewing, is another universal stage of development and generally occurs when babies are around 6-8 weeks old. It is thought that during this stage the child is discovering its vocal chords and sounds like ‘coo’ ‘goo’ and ‘ga-ga’ are made.

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babbling:

- child is between 6 and 9

sounds are produced such as ‘ma’ ‘ga’ and ‘da’. Sometimes these sounds are repeated producing what is known as reduplicated monosyllables eg: ‘mama’, ‘dada’, ‘baba’.

-the number of different phonemes produced are increased, known as phonemic expansion

-there might be a rising tone at the end of an utterance, adding emphasis and rhythm- Intonation and gesture

pre expansion;

This is where the number of different phonemes produced by the child increases initially.

The first word stage

A child is usually about a year when it speaks its first recognisable word.

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the first word stage:

phonological development: how children develop ability to use and understand the sound of language

ways of simplification:

deletion- deleting certain sounds

-final consonants maybe dropped eg. 't' in 'hat'

- syllables deleted 'banana' becomes 'nana'

- consonant clusters reduced 'snake' - 'nake'

substitution:- harder words

- R becomes W

- TH becomes F

reduplication;- of sounds is another common phenomenon. occurs when different sounds in a word are pronounced the same way such as 'dog' becomes 'gog'.

Berko and brown- understanding:

describe how a child referred to a plastic fish as his fis. this proves that the understanding may develop quicker than the ability to pronounce things.

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language functions