CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITIONREVISION PACK

Child Language Acquisition

For CLA you will need to:Know . . . Be able to . . . The principle milestones in linguistic development, in terms of: Pragmatics / Language functions Phonetics Lexis / Semantics Syntax / Morphology.

Describe and analyse examples of child language data precisely and accurately, using the appropriate framework and terminology.

The issues surrounding the question of ‘stages’ of language development.

Analyse data with an open mind.

The principle theories that attempt to explain the process of acquisition, i.e. Behaviourist, Innateness, Cognitive, Social.

Relate your analysis of specific examples of child language to these theories, and explain how they might explain the linguistic data you are presented with.

The relationship between spoken and written language and how this helps to explain the process of learning to read and write.

Comment precisely and in an informed way on data relating to children’s early reading and writing.

The Specification says . . . This means you must . . . AO1: Communicate clearly the knowledge, understanding and insight appropriate to the study of language, using appropriate terminology and accurate and coherent written expression. (2.5 %)

Write your analysis and essays clearly and accurately.

Make sure you use proper linguistic terminology to define the features of language you are discussing.

AO3: Understand, discuss and explore concepts and issues relating to language in use. (5%)

Show you can apply your understanding of linguistic theories of acquisition to your analysis and discussions of child language data.

AO4: Apply and explore frameworks for the systematic study of language at different levels, commenting on the usefulness of the approaches taken. (5%)

Show you can identify the most appropriate linguistic framework to apply to a given text.

AO5ii: Analyse and evaluate variation in the meanings and forms of spokenand written language from different times according to context. (7.5%).

Show you can analyse how context/situation can affect spoken and written data.

ENB6 CLABEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Children all around the world seem to acquire language by passing through a similar set of stages; although the time it takes to move from one stage to the next can differ from child to child. The same pattern of development occurs regardless of the language, but children do not develop at the same pace.

STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT

Before birthResearch suggests that whilst in the womb, babies become used to the rhythms and intonation of the language being spoken around them.

CryingDuring the first few weeks of a child’s life, the child can express itself vocally. Different kinds of ‘cry’ can be identified – from one signalling hunger or distress for example. This suggests that cries are distinctive noises and as such, cannot really be described as ‘language’.

CooingThis 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.

BabblingThis is the most important stage during the first year of a child’s life. It usually begins when the child is between 6 and 9 months. At the onset of babbling, the baby begins to make sounds that more closely resemble adult language.

Combinations of 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’. Such sounds still have no meaning, but parents are often eager to believe their child is speaking its first words. As well as babbling, the baby is likely to blow bubbles and splutter.

Phonemic expansion and contractionDuring the babbling phase, the number of different phonemes (units of sound) produced are increased, known as phonemic expansion. Later at about 9 or 10 months the number of phonemes occurs (phonemic contraction). In other words, the child retains the sounds of its native language but discards the ones it knows aren’t needed. We know this happens because research has shown that at this age, the sounds made by babies from different nationalities are different.

Intonation and gestureAnother development during the babbling stage is the patterns of intonation begin to resemble speech. For example, there might be a rising tone at the end of a sentence as if the child were asking a question. Another method of communicating without speech is for a child to point at something with a facial expression that seems to say ‘I want that’ or ‘what’s that?’

Understanding

Although the child may not yet have begun to speak properly, it doesn’t meant they don’t understand the meaning of certain words. Words that are recognised are likely to include family members, responses to questions such as ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and basic expressions like ’bye-bye’.

The first wordA child is usually about a year when it speaks its first recognisable word.ENB6 CLAPHONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT - how children develop the ability to use and understand the sounds of language

TRENDS IN PHONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTIt is difficult to be precise about later phonological development and the way in which vowels and consonants are acquired varies from child to child. When a sound has been mastered, it maybe used only in the pronunciation of certain words and may be missing or pronounced incorrectly in others. Researchers have identified certain trends in phonological development and these are listed below:

Command of all the vowels is achieved before all of the consonants By the age of two and a half the average child has mastered all of the vowels and around

two thirds of the consonants At four the child is likely to be having difficulty with only a few consonants The child may be six or seven before confidence in using all vowels and consonants has

been acquired Consonants are first used correctly at the beginning of words but consonants at the end

of words are more difficult for example ‘p’ and ‘b’’ sounds in ‘push’ and ‘bush’ will be easier to pronounce than ‘rip’ and ‘rib’.

In general, sounds that occur frequently in a large number of words will be acquired before sounds that occur less frequently

To make words easier to say children simplify their pronunciation in certain ways

WAYS OF SIMPLIFICATION

DELETION:Children will often simplify pronunciation by deleting certain sounds:

Final consonants maybe dropped eg) the ‘t’ sound in ‘hat’ and ‘cat’ Unstressed syllables are often deleted eg) ‘banana’ becomes ‘nana’ Consonant clusters are reduced eg) ‘snake’ becomes ‘nake’ , ‘sleep’ becomes ‘seep’

SUBSTITUTIONAnother form of simplification involves substituting harder sounds with easier ones.

R (as in rock or story) becomes w Th (as in there, that or thumb) becomes d, n or f T (as in toe) becomes d P (as in pig) becomes b

REDUPLICATION of sounds is another common phenomenon. This occurs when different sounds in a word are pronounced the same way such as ‘dog’ becoming ‘gog’.

UNDERSTANDINGBerko and Brown (1960) describe how a child referred to a plastic fish as his ‘ fis’. When an adult asked ‘is that your fis?’ he replied ‘no, my fis.’ When he was told ‘that is your fish’ he replied ‘yes, my fis.’ Another child confused card/cart and jug/duck in his speech, but when

shown pictures of the items, could correctly identify them. This proves that understanding may develop faster than the ability to pronounce things.

ENB6 CLAPRAGMATIC DEVELOPMENT - WHAT DO WORDS DO?Language functionsMichael Halliday’s ‘Learning how to mean’ proposed seven main ‘functions’ that spurred a child to want to use language.

FUNCTION WHAT IT IS WHAT IT’S USED FOR

INSTRUMENTALLanguage used to fulfil a speaker’s need

Directly concerned with obtaining food, drink comfort etc . eg ‘I want’

REGULATORYUsed to influence the behaviour of others

Persuading / commanding / requesting other people do as you want ‘daddy push’ (child on swing)

INTERACTIONALUsed to develop social relationships and ease interaction

The Phatic dimension of talk eg ‘hello’

PERSONAL

Used to express personal preferences / the speaker’s identity

Sometimes referred to the ‘here I am!’ function – conveys attitudes, expresses feelings

INFORMATIVE Used to communicate information

Relaying or requesting information eg ‘I got a new doll

HEURISTICUsed to learn and explore the environment

Using language to learn – this may be questions or answers or the kind of running commentary that accompanies child’s play

IMAGINATIVEused to explore the imagination

May also accompany play as children create imaginary worlds / may arise from story telling. Also jokes, songs etc

This can be a complex system which is difficult to apply to data, therefore, John Dore’s ‘Infant Language Functions’ is a lot simpler to learn.

FUNCTION EXAMPLELABELLING Naming or identifying a person, object or

experienceREPEATING Echoing something spoken by an adult speakerANSWERING Giving a direct response to an utterance from

another speakerREQUESTING ACTION Demanding food, drink, toy, assistance etc

CALLING Attracting attention by shoutingGREETING Pretty self explanatoryPROTESTING Objecting to requests etcPRACTISING Using and repeating language when no adult is presentENB6 CLAGRAMMATICAL DEVELOPMENT – part 1

One word stage / Holophrastic stageThe average child is about a year old when it speaks its first words. Roughly between 12 and 18 months is begins to speak in single word utterances such as ‘milk’ mummy’ and so on. This is known as the ONE WORD STAGE. Occasionally more than one work may appear to be involved but this is because the child has learned the group of words as a single unit and thinks it is all one word. For example: ‘Allgone’.

In many situations the words simply serve a naming function, however, sometimes they convey more complex messages. These words are called HOLOPHRASES. For example, the word ‘juice’ might mean ‘I’ve finished my juice’ or ‘I want more juice’, therefore the single word is taking the place of a more complex grammatical construction that the child hasn’t learned yet.

Two word stageTwo word sentences usually appear when the child is around 18 months old. Usually, the two words are in a grammatically correct sequence such as:

Subject + verb - Jenny sleep (Jenny is sleeping)Verb + object Suzy juice (Suzy is drinking juices_Subject + complement Daddy busy (daddy is busy)

Also, when a child tries to repeat what an adult has said, it will miss out part of the sentence, but what is retained is usually grammatically correct:

ADULT: Look Charlie, Ben’s playing in the gardenCHILD: Play garden

This example shows how children in this stage focus on key words. Words that convey less information such as ‘in’ or ‘the’ for example, are missed out.

Confusion as to what a child actually means during the two-word stage can arise because children don’t know tenses or plurals yet. Also, depending on the CONTEXT of the utterance it might have more than one meaning. Take the following example from Bloom (1973):

WHAT WAS SAID ACTION POSSIBLE MEANINGMummy sock Child picks up sock This is mummy’s sockMummy sock Mother puts sock on child Mummy’s putting my sock on

The TELEGRAPHIC STAGEFrom the age of about 2, children begin producing three and four word utterances. Some will be grammatically complete such as ‘Amy likes tea’ or ‘Mummy sleeps upstairs’ but others will have essential grammatical elements missing such as ‘Daddy home now’ or ‘Laura broke plate’. These utterances are similar to some of those used in the two-word stage – they can often make sense, but key elements are missing such as:

Articles – ‘a’ ‘the’ Auxiliary verbs – ‘is’ ‘has’ Prepositions- ‘to’ ‘on’ ‘for’ Conjunctions – ‘but’ ‘because’

Progress during this stage is rapid, and by the age of 5, children have usually mastered sentences containing more than one clause, conjunctions and ‘ing’ ‘ed’ or ‘s’ endings to words and verbs. These are known as inflectional affixes.

ENB6 CLAGRAMMATICAL DEVELOPMENT – part 2

ACQUISITION OF INFLECTIONSResearch indicates there is a predictable pattern in the acquisition of inflectional affixes. These are word endings such as –ed and –ing. Functional words such as articles like ‘a’ and ‘the’ and also auxiliary verbs seem to be acquired in a regular order.

Brown (1973) studied children’s language development between the ages of 20 months and 36 months and found the sequence shown below occurred regularly. The features are also listed in the order in which they were acquired:

1) –ing2) plural ‘-s’3) possessive ‘-s’4) the, a 5) past tense –ed6) third person singular verb ending – s (eg): he sings7) auxiliary verb ‘be’ (eg): I am dancing

Cruttenden (1979) divided the acquisition of inflections into the following three stages:

1) In the first stage, children memorise words on an individual basis2) In the second stage they show an awareness of the general rules of inflections. They

observe that past tense forms usually end in –ed so instead of ‘ran’ they say ‘runned’. This kind of error is known as OVERGENERALISATION.

3) In the third stage, correct inflections are used

UNDERSTANDING GRAMMATICAL RULESChildren produce accurate grammatical constructions from an early age, and researchers have tried to determine if they have learned this themselves or have copied adult speech. A famous experiment was carried out by Jean Berko (1958) who showed children pictures of fictitious creatures he called ‘Wugs’. At first, the child was shown a picture of one creature and told ‘this is a Wug’. Then, they were shown a picture of two Wugs, and the children were asked to complete the sentence ‘Now there are two…’. Children aged 3 and 4 replied ‘Wugs’. As they could never have heard this word before, it because clear that they were applying the rule that plural end in ‘-s’/ However, children between the ages of 2 and a half and 5 often OVERGENERALISE’ with plurals, so we hear things like ’sheeps’ and mouses’.

ASKING QUESTIONSResearch suggests this happens in three stages:

1) Relying on intonation in the two-word stage eg: daddy home? Said with a rising tone2) During their second year children acquire question words such as ‘what’ and ‘where’

resulting in questions such as ‘where daddy gone?’ They can’t yet use auxiliary verbs such as ‘has’

3) In their third year, children can use auxiliary verbs and learn to say ‘is Joe here?’ however, they can’t always use wh-words correctly yet and might say things like ‘why Joe isn’t here?’

NEGATIVESThis also happens in three stages:

1) Words ‘no’ and ‘not’ are used in front of other expressions eg) no want2) During the third year ‘don’t’ and ‘can’t are used eg) I don’t want it3) In the third stage more negative forms are acquired such as ‘didn’t’ and ‘isn’t’ and

negative constructions are used more accurately.

Case study: Genie

In Los Angeles in 1970 a social worker made a routine visit to the home of a partially blind woman who had made an appeal for public assistance. The social worker discovered that the woman and her husband had kept their 13 year old daughter Genie locked away in almost total isolation during her childhood.

Genie could not speak or stand upright. She had spent every day bound naked to a child’s potty seat and could move only her hands and feet. At night she was placed in a kind of straightjacket and caged in a crib with wire mesh sides and a cover. Whenever Genie made a noise her father beat her. He never communicated with her in words; instead he growled at her and barked at her instead.

After she was rescued she spent a number of years in excessive rehabilitation programs including speech and physical therapy. She eventually learned to walk and to use the toilet. She also eventually learned to recognise many words and speak in basic sentences. Eventually she was able to string together two word combinations like ‘big teeth’ then three word ‘small two cup’. She didn’t however, learn to ask questions and didn’t develop a language system that allowed her to understand English grammar.

Four years after she began stringing word together, she is still unable to speak fluently. A san adult she speak in short, mangled sentences like ‘father hit leg’ ‘big wood’ and ‘Genie hurt’ which when pieced together can be understood.

This shows that children like Genie who are abandoned and abused and not exposed to language for many years, rarely speak normally. Some language experts have argued that cases such as these suggest the existence of a critical period for language development; but other issues can cloud these cases.

IS THERE A CRITICAL PERIOD FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING?

Most babies learn a language by a certain age if they are to learn to speak at all. A critical period is a fixed time period on which certain experiences can have a long lasting effect on development. It is a time of readiness for learning, after which, learning is difficult or impossible. Almost all children learn one or more languages during their early years, so it is difficult to determine whether there is a critical period for language development.

In1967 Lenneberg proposed that language depends on maturation and that there is a critical period between about 18 months and puberty during which time a first language must be acquired. Lenneberg especially thought that the pre-school years were an important time frame as thisis whe language develops rapidly and with ease.

Although much language learning takes place during pre-school years, it continues into adulthood. Therefore, young children’s proficiency in language does not seem to involve a biologically critical period.

A2 Language Development

David Crystal (1996)

Cries, Burps and Burbles In the first two or three months of life an infant makes lots of noises of pain, hunger and discomfort, to which parents learn to respond, but it is difficult to attribute specific meanings to these sounds.

Cooing and going gaga Most children add a new variety of sounds to their repertoire before they are six months old – the ‘cooing’ which may resemble some of the first sounds of speech.

Babbling on This evolves into babbling – the first extended repetitions by children of some basic phonemic combinations such as ‘babababa’ etc.

First Words From out of these streams of sounds eventually emerge a small repertoire of utterances that sound something like a word. However, these single words may appear to serve a multitude of functions or to have more than one meaning.

Mean Length of Utterance (MLU), Roger Brown (1969)

MLU is used to define stages of Child Language Acquisition. MLU is calculated by dividing the total number of words (morphemes – smallest meaningful part of a word) spoken by the number of utterances a child makes. So if a baby used two words in two utterances the MLU would be one. Brown has related MLU scores to stages of CLA:

MLU Score Stage1.1 – 2.0 12.0 – 2.5 22.5 – 3.0 33.0 – 3.5 43.5 – 4.0 5

A2 LANGUAGE ACQUISITION – REVISION OF STAGES

Group the following features of children’s language under the appropriate framework heading in the table provided:

Adjacency pairs. 8-20 weeks cooing and laughing. Young children talk about what is going on around them, the ‘here and now’. Deixis. Holophrastic / one-word: (nouns, verbs, some adjectives, adverbs). Over-extension. Early consonants /n/ /m/ /p/ /h/ /t/ /k/. The heuristic function drives children to seek meanings. Topic initiation. There is a dramatic increase of lexis in the third year. Telegraphic stage (lexical words e.g. man got car). Turn-taking. 12-18 months melodic utterance. Later consonants /v/ /z/. Questions. Age 3 compound sentences using coordinating conjunctions especially ‘and’. Under-extension. Role of care-takers in ‘framing’ situation to make meaning clear. 0-8 weeks basic biological noises. Conversational repairs. Morphology. On average one year olds learn to say 10 new words a month. 20 – 30 weeks vocal play. Age 3+ complex sentences using subordinating conjunctions e.g. ‘cos, so, if,

when etc… 2 word stage e.g. daddy kick, there teddy. Topic initiation. Forms of address and politeness markers. Non-verbal communication is vital. Older children acquire a wider range of words (begin to use the hyponyms). On average one year olds understand 22 new words a month. Lexical repetition. 25-50 weeks reduplicated babbling and variegated babbling. Children young as 2 can produce in excess of 20,000 words a day.

LEXIS SEMANTICS GRAMMAR PHONOLOGY CONVERSATIONANALYSIS

STAGES OF EARLY LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

StageFunctionWhat children are trying to do with their language (e.g., make requests, ask questions, make statements)

MeaningThe states, events and relationships about which children talkMeaning here refers to meaning shown in performance.

Children may have competence which they have no occasion to demonstrate.

StructureThe way in which the language is put together – its grammar

1

Children’s first utterances usually serve three purposes: to get someone’s attention to direct attention to an object

or event to get something they want Next, they begin to: make rudimentary statements

(Bird gone) make requests

Children begin by naming the thing referred to (the “naming insight”)Soon they move beyond this to relating objects to other things, places and people (Daddy car; There Mummy) as well as to events (Bird gone). They are concerned with articulating the present state of things, describing or relating things and events in their world.

Because of the limited language forms which they can control, children convey information by intonation, by non-verbal means, or by the listener’s shared awareness of the situation. (It gone – the listener has seen what it is.)

Many of the remarks at this age are single words, either the names of things, or words such as there, look, want, more, allgone. They are often referred to as operators because here (as opposed to their function in adult speech) they serve to convey the whole of the child’s meaning or intention.Other remarks consist of object name and operator in a two-word combination: Look Mummy, Daddy gone, There dog.

2

At this stage children begin to ask questions; usually where questions come first.

Children become concerned with naming and classifying things (frequently asking wassat?).They may begin to talk about locations changing (e.g. people coming or going or getting down or up).They talk simply about the attributes of things (e.g. things being hot/cold, big/small, nice; naughty doggy; it cold, Mummy).

Children’s questions at this stage often begin with interrogative pronouns (what, where) followed by a noun (the object being asked about) or verb (denoting some action): where ball? where gone?Articles (a/an or the) appear before nouns. Basic [subject]+[verb] structure emerges: It gone, Man run, or [subject]+[verb]+[object]: Teddy sweeties (=Teddy wants some sweets).

3By now children ask lots of different questions, but often signalling that they are questions by intonation alone (Sally play in garden, Mummy?).They express more complex wants in grammatically complex sentences: I want daddy [to] take it [to] work.

Children now begin to talk about actions which change the object acted upon (You dry hands).Verbs like listen and know appear as children start to refer to people’s mental states.Children refer to events in the past and (less often) the future.Children talk about continuing actions (He doing it; She still in bed) and enquire about the state of actions (whether something is finished). They begin to articulate the changing nature of things.

The basic sentence structure has expanded: [subject]+[verb] +[object] +[adverb or other element] appears: You dry hands; A man dig down there.

Children begin to use auxiliary verbs (I am going) and phrases like in the basket [preposition]+[article]+[noun].

Stages of early language acquisition

StageFunctionWhat children are trying to do with their language

MeaningThe states, events and relationships about which children talk

StructureThe way in which the language is put together – its syntax or grammar

4

As children begin to use increasingly complex sentence structures, they also begin to:

make a wide range of requests (e.g. Shall I cut it? Can I do it?)

explain ask for explanations (Why questions appear)

Because children are now able to use complex sentence structures, they have flexible language tools for conveying a wide range of meanings.Perhaps the most striking development is their grasp (language competence) and use (language performance) of abstract verbs like know to express mental operations. Children in this stage begin to express meaning indirectly, replacing imperatives (Give me...) with questions (Can I have?) when these suit their purposes better.As well as saying what they mean, they now have pragmatic understanding, and suit their utterances to the context or situation.

Children by this stage use question forms (Can I have one?) and negation (He doesn’t want one) easily, no longer relying on intonation to signal their intent. They are now able to use auxiliary verbs: do is the first to appear, followed by can and will. Children may duplicate modal verbs (Please may can I...?): this may reflect understanding that may is required for courtesy, while can indicates the fact of being able to do something.Children use one part of a sentence to refer to another part – they use (often implied) relative clauses: I know you’re there (implied that after know); I want the pen Mummy gave me (implied that after pen). Now they can do this, language is a very flexible means of communication for them.

5

By now children frequently use language to do all the things they need it for:

giving information asking and answering questions of various

kinds requesting (directly and indirectly) suggesting offering stating intentions/ asking about those of

others expressing feelings and attitudes and asking

about those of others

Children are now able to talk about things hypothetically or conditionally: If you do that, it’ll...They are able to explain the conditions required for something to happen: You’ve got to switch that on first... Often they talk about things which are always so – that is, about general states of affairs.As well as general references to past and future, children now talk about particular times: after tea; before bedtime; when Daddy comes home...They are able to estimate the nature of actions or events, e.g., that things are habitual, repetitive or just beginning.

By this stage, children are quite at home with all question structures including those beginning with words like What? and When? Where the subject and verb are inverted (transposed): What does it mean? When is Mummy coming?

Children use sentences made up of several clauses, whether multiple (using co-ordinate clauses) or complex (using subordinate or relative clauses, and parentheses).Up to now grammatical development has mostly added to the length of sentences. Now children use structures which allow more economy (this is known as cohesion).

This model explains the sequence of language acquisition. Children will vary individually in when (relative to their peers) they reach each stage, but there is little variation in the sequence of language learning. By the end of Stage 5, a child’s language is in place and he or she has a basic lexicon (personal vocabulary) of several thousand words. From now on what is learned increasingly depends upon experience and environment – on opportunities to use language and to hear it used, for a wide range of purposes and a wide range of audiences in a wide range of contexts. The model does not show the acquisition of literacy, which is more subject to environment and cultural expectations.

APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE

Read the examples below. Using your knowledge of CLA, try to make comments in the spaces provided about the child’s language use. When you have finished refer to the comments on the next page.

Example 1A four-year old talks about what he wants to be when he grows up.

Adult What do you want to be when you grow up?Child A dowboy.Adult So you want to be a dowboy, eh?Child (irritated) No! Not a dowboy, a dowboy!

Your comment:

Example 2Kate (2 yrs 6 mths) is sitting on the knee of a family friend.

Adult (pointing to one of Kate's feet) What's that?Kate A footsieAdult (pointing to both feet) What are these?Kate Two footsies - no, two feetsies, I mean.

Your comment:

Example 3Matthew (2 yrs) watches his mum spoon stewed rhubarb from a saucepan into a bowl.

Matthew Dis rubile looks like biscetti.

Your Comment:

Example 4Malpreet (2 yrs 6 mths) is talking to her mother in the kitchen.

Malpreet One day there was a little horse then there was a big horse, then there was a mummy horse. They came to my house. They went out to car, then I started to cry and I said "Sadha nell owna"(transcription of Panjabi - "I want to go, too") and mummy said they are going, then I went safari park.

Your Comment:

COMMENTS

Example 1 Comment This extract (from Garton and Pratt, 1989) reminds us that very young children's awareness of phonological sound often outstrips their capacity to form the correct sounds. The child understands the distinction between /k/ and /d/ but cannot pronounce /k/. The child knows more about language than he is able to produce.

Example 2 Comment Here language is being used as a ritual adult/child game rather than for purposes of genuine instruction. In this example there is evidence of the child's awareness of over-regularization of a rule and its self-correction. The rules are complicated by the child's use of the baby talk form footsie. Kate remembers that the irregular plural of foot is feet and not foots, but then she inflects the corrected plural with -s to form a double plural: feetsies. The "I mean" draws attention to the change as the self-conscious and deliberate correction of a slip. (From Garton and Pratt, 1989.)

Example 3 Comment Matthew is using language to make links and comparisons. He notices that the stringy nature of stewed rhubarb is like spaghetti. Conceptually the words are meaningful and distinct, but he hasn't yet perfected their pronunciation. Rubile is quite like the pronunciation of rhubarb (where the final b is often not distinctly sounded) and biscetti probably derives from the familiarity of biscuit and the difficulty of pronouncing the /sp/ in initial position. In some families, children's early mispronunciations are retained as part of the family code of "intimate speech" - lornwakes for cornflakes, etc.

Example 4 Comment Malpreet is talking to her mother in the kitchen. Her oral narrative tells the story of horses coming to the house to go to the safari park in her car. She thinks she is being left out, and cries. The narrative has the conventional opening ‘One day’, sustains a first-person narrative and past tense, and includes direct speech. Elements of the story are connected, using the adverb then. As a bilingual child, Malpreet switches into Panjabi for the dramatic centre of the story, where she utters her own words as a character in her story.

Child-directed speech

Phonology Separate phrases more distinctly, leaving longer pauses between them. Speak more s-l-o-w-l-y. Use exaggerated ‘singsong’ intonation, which helps to emphasise key words. Also to exaggerate

the difference between questions, statements and commands. Use a higher and wider pitch range.

Lexis and semantics Use of concrete nouns (cat, train) and dynamic verbs (give, put). Adopt child’s own words for things (doggie, wickle babbit). Frequent use of child’s name and an absence of pronouns.

Grammar Simpler constructions Frequent use of imperatives High degree of repetition Use of personal names instead of pronouns (e.g. ‘Mummy’ not ‘I’) Fewer verbs, modifiers and adjectives Large number of one-word utterances Deixis used to point child’s attention to objects or people Repeated sentence frames eg. “that’s a ……” Use more simple sentences and fewer complex and passives. Omission of past tenses, inflections (plurals and possessives). Use more commands, questions and tag questions. Use of EXPANSIONS – where the adult fills out the child’s utterance. Use of RE-CASTINGS – where the child’s vocabulary is put into a new utterance.

Pragmatics Lots of gesture and warm body language. Fewer utterances per turn – stopping frequently for child to respond. Supportive language (expansions and re-castings).

Are there are variations due to the gender of the caregiver?Research has suggested that fathers are more demanding than mothers, using more direct questions and a wider range of vocabulary.

What effects do you think this kind of speech has on children?Some claim that it retains the attention of the child, others that it makes language more accessible. Some claim that children learn by repetition – can this explain the fact that children can produce sentences which they have never heard before?

Others claim that ‘babytalk’ actually interferes with language development because children learn babyish words and sentences instead of the real language.Not every culture uses such forms of child-directed speech. In Samoa and Papua New Guinea, adults speak to children as they speak to adults, and children acquire language at the same pace as elsewhere.

Where else might you hear this kind of speech???

ENB6 CLAChild directed speech / Babytalk / Motherese / ParenteseFeatures and purposes of CDS

CDS aims to: Attract and hold the baby’s attention. Help the process of braking down language into understandable chunks. Make the conversation more predictable by referring to the here-and-now.

Look at the features of CDS below. Try to rate the extent to which they might help the above 3 aims. So, if you think features A helps to attract conversation (feature 1) and makes

conversation predictable (feature 3) then in the ‘what does it do?’ column you need to write 1 and 3.

FEATURE OF CDS WHAT DOES IT DO?Higher pitch and exaggerated intonation and stress.Repeated sentence frames such as ‘that’s a -------‘ and ‘that’s a-------’ whereby the gap is filled with a different word each time.Repetition and partial repetition of the adults’ own words.Questions and commands (getting the child to do something).Frequent use of the child’s name and absence of pronouns.Absence of past tenses eg threw, ran, played.A large number of one-word utterances.Use of simple sentences eg Fred eats rats.Omission of inflections such as plurals (planets) and possessives (mummy’s).Fewer verbs, modifiers (eg adjectives in front of nouns) and function words such as ‘my’ ‘at’ etc…Use of concrete nouns (cat, train etc) and dynamic verbs (give, put etc).Use of expansions – where the adult fills out the child’s utterance.Use of re-castings – where the baby’s vocabulary is put into a new utterance.

ENB6 CLACDS Activity

The following is a transcript of an 18 month old baby Katherine, and her mother. The numbers at the side of the page are simply line numbers to make it easier to analyse.

1) Find as many features of CDS as you can.2) Do you think the mother’s language appears to assist the baby?

Extract

1 K: I stuck

2 M: You’re stuck. There. Is that better?

3 K: Yeh.

4 M: You alright now?

5 K: Got my socks on.

6 M: You have. What colour are your socks ?

7 K: Pink.

8 M: Yes they are pink.

9 K: (indecipherable) put my slippers on.

10 M: Mmm. What colour are your slippers?

11 K: Um. Red.

12 M: Red. Red and…

13 K: O…don’t’ know… and

14 M: And…(2) red and …. What?

15 K: Red and blue.

16 M: Red and blue. Yes, they are. They’re red and blue slippers.

17 K: With a zip.

18 M: With a zip.

Child-directed speech – research

Clarke-Stewart (1973) Found that children whose mothers talk more have larger vocabularies.

Katherine Nelson (1973) Found that children at the holophrastic stage whose mothers corrected them on word choice and pronunciation actually advanced more slowly than those with mothers who were generally accepting.

(Brown, Cazden and Bellugi 1969) Found that parents often respond to the TRUTH value of what their baby is saying, rather than its grammatical correctness. For example, a parent is more likely to respond to “there doggie” with “Yes, it’s a dog!” than “No, it’s there is a dog.”

Berko and Brown (1960)Brown spoke to a child who referred to a “fis” meaning “fish”. Brown replied using “fis” and the child corrected him again but saying “fis”. Finally Brown reverted to “fish” to which the child responded “Yes, fis.” This shows that babies do not hear themselves in the same way that they hear others and no amount of correction will change this.

CDS – some conclusions

Recent research argues the CDS doesn’t directly help babies learn language, instead it helps parents communicate with children = its purpose is social rather than educational.

In some cultures (non-western) babies are expected to blend in with adult interaction and no special accommodation is made in speech addressed to them. These children still go through the same developmental stages at roughly the same time as long as there is EXPOSURE to language. However Clark & Clark’s research suggests that children who are only exposed to adult speech do not acquire the same standard of language as those whose parents speak to them directly in a modified manner.

The older argument that baby-talk is ‘harmful’ to a child learning a new language is being replaced. People now think it’s beneficial to the child.

A child’s language improves when in contact with an adult who speaks to them directly.

Theory Memory Test

Complete the following table using the key. Match the description to the associated theory: B = Behaviourist C = Chomsky P = Piaget V = Vygotsky S = Social process

1. A child acquires increasingly complex forms of

language only when their intellectual development is

ready for it.

2. A child’s language acquisition and development is

enriched and accelerated according to the quantity and

quality of its social interactions with adults.

3. Children are encouraged to imitate the language of

their caregivers and receive positive reinforcement in

terms of gratification of needs and attention/praise.

4. Children usually acquire the pronunciations of their

caregivers.

5. Egocentric speech (i.e. that used during play and when

no one else is nearby) demonstrates children using

language themselves to make sense of the world they

are experiencing.

6. It is only through interaction with caregivers/adults that

children learn the pragmatics of language use.

7. Children everywhere seem to learn language at a more

or less similar pace.

8. Politeness strategies appear to be explicitly taught

through imitation.

9. When egocentric speech becomes internalised (as

children learn it can be consider anti-social), it

becomes the language of thought and, therefore, part

of the means of cognitive development.

10. Children consistently overgeneralise grammatical

constructions.

CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITIONREVISION

Write, using a single paragraph for each, a clear and concise explanation for each of the following terms and concepts that you have looked at in this unit:

Imitation and reinforcement ‘Two-word’ stage Cognition (intellectual development) ‘Telegraphic speech’ Innateness and the ‘L.A.D.’ Analogy Input theory – ‘motherese / parentese’ Asking questions Cooing Forming negatives Babbling Turn-taking Single-word’ stage Attention holding

Write a commentary that discusses the contrast in the following two examples, approximately eighteen months apart, of an interaction between a mother and her young child. IMPORTANT! As well as discussing the stages of language acquisition in the two exchanges, consider using as many of the following technical terms as you can in your response:

Participation Utterances Erratic Disjointed Monologue DialogueConversation Questioning Attention-

holdingTurn-taking Initiation Clarification

1. The child at 2 years old and mother:

CHILD: Ball. Kick. Kick. Daddy kick.MOTHER: That’s right, you have to kick it don’t you?CHILD: Mmm. Um. Um. Kick hard. Only kick hard. Our play that. On floor. Our play

that on floor. Now. Our play that. On floor. Our play that on floor. No that. Now.MOTHER: All right.CHILD: Mummy, come on floor with me.MOTHER: Yes.CHILD: You tip those out.MOTHER: Mm. All right.CHILD: That one broke.

2. The child at 3½ years old and mother:

CHILD: Hester be fast asleep, mummy.MOTHER: She was tired.CHILD: And why did her have two sweets, mummy?MOTHER: Because you each had two, that’s why. She had the same as you. Ooh dear,

now what?CHILD: Daddy didn’t give me two in the end.MOTHER: Yes, he did.CHILD: He didn’t.MOTHER: He did.CHILD: Look he given one to – two to Hester, and two to us.MOTHER: Yes, that’s right.

CHILD: Why did he give?MOTHER: ’Cos there were six sweets. That’s two each.