Child Language Acquistion

Child Language Acquistion

1. Stages of devevelopment

   • Stage 1 Before Birth: In the womb, babies become acclimatised to the rhythms of their native language. Mehler found that French babies sucked harder on dummies when listening to French compared to italian and English
     • Stage 6 Two word stage (18-24 months): Babies begin to join words together. They are still usually nouns or noun-verb utterances. No real function words or auxiliary verbs yet
       • Stage 7 Telegraphic Stage: Last stage of language before a child can speak fluently and begins roughly around 2.5 years of age and onward indefinitely until a child has fluent language skills. They begin to have a better understanding of syntax and semantics. They learn as many as 10-12 new words a day. They generally follow the order of the subject, verb and object. The first inflection children learn is usually 'ing' followed by an understanding of plurals and how plurals are formed as well as starting to develop exceptions, Simple prepositions are generally learnt after this.
   • Stage 2 Crying: Before they can speak, babies communicate by crying. They have different cries for hunger, discomfort etc. English parents successfully identified English babies from their crying.
     • Stage 8 Multiword phase (30+ months): Children rarely make errors and can now make sentences with auxiliary verbs, prepositions, determiners etc. They continue to expand their lexicon.
   • Stage 3 Coogin (6-8 weeks): Babies begin to make actual sounds like gurgling. They might say 'gaga' or 'coo'. They begin to have more control over their vocal cords.
   • Stage 4 Babbling (6-9 months): The most important year in the first year of a child's life. Babies begin to make sounds that more closely resemble adult speech. They might say 'ba' 'ma' or 'da'. They may repeat these sounds over again called reduplicating monosyllables. CV structures, consonants and vowel combos. N.B- Parents are eager to believe they are saying mama or dada. They may also understand intonation, such as raising the tone at the end of a question,
   • Stage 5 One word or Holophrastic stage (9-18 months): Begins to say one word in order to convey meaning. This is now more language specific rather than universal babbling and the phonemes sound different to other languages.

2. Terms

   • Deletion of unstressed syllables: Omitting the weak syllable in polysyllabic words 'nana' for 'banana'
   • Substitution: Substituting one sound for another 'tip' for 'ship'
     • Consonant Cluster Reduction: Reducing consonant clusters to be smaller 'pider' for 'spider'
   • Reduplication: Repeating a whole syllable 'dada' 'mamma'
   • Assimilation: Changing one consonant or vowel for another in the same word 'gog' for 'dog'
     • Addition: Adding an extra vowel sound to the ends of words creating a CVC pattern 'doggie'
       • Deletion: Omitting the final or initial consonant in words 'do(g)'
     • Vowel Epenthesis: Inserting an additional vowel sound within a word to break up consonant clusters 'puh-lay'
   • Semantic Overextension: Occurs very frequently and is where a child associated a word with many more things it actually does
     • Semantic Underextension: occurs when a child uses a term to refer to one thing but not all of its meaning
     • Categorical overextension: The name of one thing is extended to all members of that category 'apple' for all fruit 60%
       • Analogical Overextension: A word from one category is used and extended to a similar thing in a different category 15%
       • Mismatch: Connection between label and object is unclear 25%