Stages of Child Language Acquisition

• Behaviourism - B.F. Skinner

  The acquisition of language comes from imitation; positive & negative reinforcement
• Innateness - Noam Chomsky


  Children learn language mainly by following an inborn program. The LAD (Language Acquisition Device)
• Cognitive - Jean Piaget


  A child must be able to comprehend the meaning of a word in order to acquire it in their everyday language
• Input/interaction - Jerome Bruner


  A child learns through interaction with their environment, particularly with their parents, carers or elder peers acting as their LASS (Language Acquisition Support System)
• Child-Directed Speech (CDS)


  Form of speech often used in talking to babies or toddlers; includes slow, simplified speech, a high-pitched tone, exaggerated vowel sounds, short words and sentences, and much repetition; also called parentese (outdated)
• Katherine Nelson


  Children first words are normally proper nouns (people and close family members)

  actions or events (give)

  personal social words (hi/bye)

  modifying things (more, down)
• Halliday's functions of language


  Instrumental- fulfilling a need such as obtaining food

  Regulatory- Asking, commanding, requesting in order to persuade

  Interactional- develops social relationships

  Personal- expresses personal opinions

  Representational- relaying or requesting information

  Heuristic- used to explore the world and learn and discover

  Imaginative- tell stories and create imaginary
• Ursula Bellugi


  Stages of negative formation: children find it difficult to use negatives correctly at first and learn forms of the negative in three stages, from 'no' through to 'don't' and 'am not'.
• Roger Brown


  Found that children's understanding of grammatical rules develops as they make hypotheses about how syntax works and the self-correct with experience. -ing is the easiest for a child to acquire.
• Aitchison


  Labelling, packaging, network building
• Leslie Rescorla

  Overextension and under extension
• Brian Baldie


  Passive voice
• Jean Berko Gleason


  Wug test (shows how children use plurals)
• David Olmstead


  Children of 4-5 struggle with the following sounds:

  *'l' in the middle of words such as 'yellow'

  *'ng' at the end of words such as 'sing'

  *'t' in the middle of words such as 'bottle'

  *'z' at the beginning of words such as 'zebra'

  *'th' at the beginning of words such as 'thin'

  * The triple consonant sound 'dge' in words like 'judge'

  *'ch' in the middle of words such as 'teacher
• Harriet Emerson


  Children begin to understand conditional stance in ages 5-7.
• Babies may not produce speech until nearly two years old

  False
• TV can 'teach' babies how to talk

  False
• A baby will still learn to talk when isolated as language is innate

  False
• Children can speak through imitation


  True
• Children can communicate using just two words

  True
• Children's language acquisition can be made faster


  True- to an extent (encouragement can support development but there is a limit due to memory formation and the age of the child)
• All children are capable, when born, of acquiring language

  It is dependant on the enviornment
• vegetative state

  0-2 months

  Basic Biological Noises

  -Coughing - Breathing -Burping etc
• cooing stage

  4-7 months

  vowel sounds with spacing at times
• The babbling stage

  6-9 months

  Phonemic expansion and phonemic contraction
• Proto words stage


  Vocalisations used for the same meaning - 9-12 months
• child-directed speech (CDS)


  0-12 months
• First 50 words

  12-18 months
• holophrastic stage


  12-18 months, one word utterances
• two-word stage

  18-24 months
• Telegraphic stage


  (18-27 months) Higher degree of linguistic development. Most are content words that convey more meaning and can be used in multiple situations. Function words...nouns, adjectives, verbs. "milk all gone" "that's not nice"
• Post-telegraphic stage

  2-3 years