child language acquisition

pre- verbal development

• vegetative- sounds of discomfort or reflexive actions-0-4 months
• Cooing- comfort sounds and vocal play using open mouthed vowel sounds-4-7 months
• Babbling-Repeated patterns of consonant and vowel sounds-6-12 months
• Scribble talk(proto words)-word like associations not matching actual words but used consistently for same meaning.-9-12 months

Lexical and grammatical stages

• Holophrastic-one word utterances-12-18 months
• Two word-two word combinations-18-24 months
• Telegraphic-three words or more combinations-24-36 months
• Post telegraphic- more grammatically complex sentences-36+ months
• Holophrases and phonology-one word are likely to develop alongside scribble talk(proto words)
• Differences between one word and two utterances are usually a label for objects and Holophrases . That contain a whole sentence in one word and two word combinations miss out pro-nouns , determiners and auxiliary verbs.

Theory on Holophrases

• Katherine Nelson- coined the phrases of Holophrases
• Naming ( things and people)
• Actions or events (gestures and positioning)
• Describing ( modifying things)
• Personal ( social words)
• Leslie Resconia conducted a study on 78 children from age 2-15 years old and published findings in 2009
• Link between later vocabulary development in toddlers and continued language errors as they grew older.

Developing Lexis

• At 12 months a child can produce sounds that adults can recognise.
• Proto words initially have meaning for a child/parent this has to be developed to enable them to communicate with the outside world. They have developed semantic awareness in order to link objects to ideas.
• Two word stage- words are omitted and gained later in language development as they don't understand rules such as Piaget theory as they are not cognitively developed.
• Ending words are dropped such as Articles(a and the) the prepositions(in, on ,with and at) then Verbs(to be ) finally Auxiliary verbs( does run, can run,is running)
• Derivational Monphonology-( making new words)
• Compounding- Joining existing words together into new combination's (horsey man)
• Conversion- using words as a different word stage class (I jammed the toast)
• Affixation - Applying endings to words to create a new one ( Its crowdly in here or his shooting his shooter)

Phonological errors

• Deletion
• Subordination
• Consonant cluster reduction
• Addition
• Assimilation
• Reduplication
• Deletion of unstressed syllables
• Voicing
• de voicing
• A child drops a consonant at the end of a word
• child replaces a consonant with one that is easier to say
• Two or more consonants in a word and a child may drop one
• one vowel added at the end of the word
• one consonant in one word is changed due to the influence of another
• phoneme is repeated
• omitting the opening syllable in polysyllabic words
• Voiceless- consonants p , t, f changed to equivalents b,d,v
• De voicing- voiced consonants replaced by voiceless equivalents

Phonics

• Method of teaching , reading and writing of English language by developing learners.
• Phonic awareness-Ability to hear identity and manipulate phonemes in order to learn and teach.

Early phonological errors

• Identify basic features - age and situation of the child
• discuss expectation of child due to age and impact of the environment and occasion
• discuss a range of phonological errors
• Comment critically( modal verbs) on a range of errors with emphasis on vowels and impact of glottal stop
• Link seamlessly to all relevant contextual factors.

Phonological theorist

• Jean Berko and Roger Brown
• Found that children referred to plastic fish as a "fis"
• substituting "sh" for "s" and couldn't link an adults use of "f" with the same object
• A child's ability to imitate adult speech as they fully engage in conversation but not what's going on. opposes skinners theory that children recast adult speech.
• child A "fis"
• adult is this your fis?
• Responded to correct pronunciation of plosives and affricatives are more complex to say. Depends on age stage and teeth for a specific pronunciation.
• child No!
• adult Is this your fish?
• child yes

Sounds in phonological development

• Plosives-airflow blocked for brief time- stop consonant voiced-p,t,k devoiced b,d,g
• Fricatives- airflow is partially blocked air moves through mouth in steady stream voiced-f,t,s,h de voiced-v,z
• Affricatives- putting plosives and fricatives together voiced-t(church) de voiced-d (judges)
• Approximates which are similar sounds to vowels voiced-w,r de voiced-j
• Nasals Produced by air moving through nose voiced - M,N
• Laterals placing tongue on ridge of teeth then air moving down side of mouth voiced - L

Type of Theorists

• Behaviourists- language is developed through imitating other language gaining positive and negative reinforcement from adults.
• Social interactionist- Children's early language can be influenced and improved by adult careers adjusting their own speech patterns.
• Nativist- Language is innate and we are pre programmed to acquire it.
• Cognitivist- Language will grow when children's ideas about the world developments.
• Nativism - inhibit language acquisition device( extract rules of language from rules of words)
• - universal grammar
• - critical period- that language acquisition development must be activated before the age of 12 or child's language will be impaired as in the case of Genie.

Behaviourists

• skinner- "behaviour of organisms" - opposes chomskys theory that babies are not born with any predispositons and that language must be learnt.
• viewed babies as empty vessels and that language had to be put into- with the use of operant conditioning(trial and error fail to use the correct language until it succeeds with reinforcement by parents genes.)
• reward infant vocalisation with skinners box with positive and negative reinforcement.

Cognitivists

• Jerome Bruner(scaffolding)-three stages of representation with an enactive stage encodes the storage of information without external knowledge with 0-1 years old. Then iconic visual representation from a summarisation of objecdts from 1-6 years old. furthermore,symbolic nfor 7 years onwards stored in a code or symbolic with fixed relation to something it represents.oposes piaget that within schools subjects can restrict a child from what they are able to do.Agrees with piaget with the involvement parents make a big difference.
• Piaget - four stages of cognitivist development- sensorimotor birth til two then pre- operational 2-7 then concrete operational 7-11 finally that of formal operational.
• Chomsky- the idea that language is synonomous with capacity to produce the infinate number of sentences.Children born with inherent ability to learn human language, encodes major principles with grammatical structures.
• Vygotsky- children are affected by personal history.( Language cannont linguistically atribute the concept with the idea that a child needs to understand the past in order to use the past tense.Developed the Zone of proximal development- the difference between what a child can do on their own and what they can do with help and what a child can do with guidance.

Social interactionalists

• Katherine Garvey"play"
• socio dramatic play - linked to the cognitivist understanding studying pairs that children adopt identities,with elacitcity sponge theory and opposes skinner theory of operant conditioning.
• Jerome bruner

Nativist

• chomksy

Theorists

• Perera- chronological action verb through connectives and non - chronological more difficult to unite based on connections of ideas.
• Britton
• mode of represents speech
• poetic visual rhyme and similes
• transactional formal style to stimulate expressive roles.
• Rothery-
• observation and comment
• recount-chronological pattern
• report- factual description
• narrative- story gene orientation complication.

Opening of children's TV programmes

• Thomas the Tank engine aid child language development
• Raised intonation when describing what they each can do in the programme ( Narrative with the use f simple,verbs,adjectives but can be complicated at times " shunting tracks and hauling freight"
• Rhyming couplets at the end- Like nursery rhymes and encourages child's development as it makes it more memorable.
• ending numerical development- "two,four,six and eight"
• Pragmatics, irony and humour for adults as well as children "Percy being square"-bit of a geek and do as hey are told.
• Narrative structure as in Labov- story of characteristics and what they do in the series.

Discourse

• How do games like peek a boo demonstrate early understanding of the game
• Turn taking with the use of adjacency pairs with the idea of cause and effect as when children cover their eyes and wait for some one to say " where is " before revealing themselves also teaching them politeness strategies.
• Through child directed speech, children will become unaware of adjacency pairs.
• IRF structure" initiation,response,feedback"- Sinclair and coulthard 1975 as a way of analysing educational discourse , which is evident in early childhood conversation.
• Initiation- Mother asks child a question-"what do we say"
• Response - child provides a response -"Thank you granny"
• Feedback - mother praises appropriate behaviour - " well done John "

Halliday- Seven different functions .

• That might be served when a child uses language and he suggested that by having motivation for using language, a child will be motivated further to use language.
• Instrumental-where the child is trying to fulfil a need such as asking for food and drink.
• Regulatory- used to control the behaviour of someone such as telling care giver where to sit.
• Interactional- used to develop relationships with others such as telling a sibling you love them.
• Personal- used to express views and preference such as me no like it.
• Heuristic- used to explore the world around them such as what you doing mummy?
• Imaginative- used to explore something creative during play.
• Representational - used to exchange information. to give receiver information.

Eve Clark over and under extension

• over extension- is where a child applies a more specific term to label a more general noun. e.g.: ball (noun) label noun with similar characteristics.
• Analogical overextension is when a child extends the link between similar objects and how a child refers to fruits as balls as anything spherical has become a ball to do this child due to objects shape. such as linking balls to oranges or apples.
• Another example of analogical overextension- is tiger - used when looking at pictures of tigers, lions and leopards in a picture book.
• Categorical overextension- here the child refers to all external items of clothing as a dress as this item she is the most familiar within the category.
• Another example of categorical overextension is socks when referring to gloves
• Underextension - is the complete opposite as the child uses a more general word but applies to a very specific thing- A child recognises the green apple as an apple as that is the only one they have seen before, so the underextend the rule.
• Shoes is another example when talking about their own shoes but not when talking about another shoe type.