how do children learn language? bálint gábor. stages/milestones cooing:1-4 months babbling:4-20...
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Stages/Milestones
Cooing: 1-4 months
Babbling: 4-20 months
One-word: 12-18 months
Two-word: 18-24 months
Multi-word: 24 months
One-word (12 months)
Dada (father enters the room) Down (child sits down) Door (father closes the door) Here (child points) Mama (child gives something to mother) Again (child watches lighting of a match again)
Comprehension Precedes Production
Children in this stage respond better to grammatical utterances, even though they don’t necessarily produce them.
18 months
Cookie Monster is tickling Big Bird.
*Cookie Monster can tickling Big Bird.
allgone sock hi Mommy byebye boat allgone sticky more wet it ball Katherine sock dirty sock here pretty
Multi-Word (2-2.5 years)
sentences 3 or more words in length
few function words
few, if any, morphological or syntactic markers
Cat stand up table. What that? He play little tune. Andrew want that. Cathy build house. No sit there. Chair broken. Daddy like book. What her name? Car make noise. Me wanna show Mommy.
•Adult Grammar•NP => Det N a pencil•NP => Poss N my pencil
•Child Grammar•NP => Det Det N a my pencil
Creative Morphology
Noun > Verb
Why didn’t you jam bread?
Why didn’t you jam my bread?
Let’s get brooming.
Creative affixation
I hate you and I’ll never unhate youǃ
Grammar Construction Hypothesis Children make systematic, not random, “errors”
Innateness Hypothesis
Children learn the language of their environment naturally until puberty.
Questions
One/Two word Stage:Intonation, no auxiliary verb, no wh
See hole?
I ride train?
Ball go?
Sit chair?
Two/Multi word Stage II: wh-word, no auxiliary verb
What he wants?
What he can ride in?
Where I should put it?
Where Ann pencil?
Why you smiling?
Multiword Stage: Inversion in yes/no questions
Did Mommy pinch her finger? Can’t you fix it? Do I have it? Will you help me? Is Mommy talking to Robin’s grandmother?
But not wh-questions
What I did yesterday?
Why Kitty can’t stand up?
Where I should put it?
Where I should sleep?
Why you are smiling?