4.1 Developmental Theory

• Behaviourism (Skinner)

  Behaviourism: The theory that language acquisition is a result of conditioning

  Positive Reinforcement: Responding positively to a behaviour to encourage it

  Conditioning: A process of training or accustoming a person or animal to behave in a particular way through reinforcement and repetition
• Nativism (Chomsky)

  Nativism: The theory that language acquisition is innate

  LAD: Language Acquisition Device – the ‘hard-wiring’ of the human brain to have the innate ability to acquiesce language

  Virtuous error: Non-standard forms of language that a child uses that has its own internal logic

  Poverty of Stimulus: Children do not get enough linguistic stimulus to account for what they learn
• Interactionist Theory

  Interactionist theory: Theories that argues social interaction and the input of caregivers is important to language acquisition

  (Bruner) LASS: Language Acquisition Support System – there is an innate ability for language, however language development is assisted by carefully structured input from significant people in a child’s environment.

  (Bruner) CDS: The supportive way a caregiver adapts their speech in interaction with a child to support language development

  Scaffolding: The concept that adult language usage models how to speak and support children in learning and developing

  Diminutives: Adding the /i:/ (ee) sound to the end of words (such as, doggie)

  Recast: A child’s grammatically non-standard utterance is repeated back to them in a standard form

  Expansion: A caregiver elaborating on or developing on what a child has said

  Mitigated imperative: Phrasing imperatives as questions
• Cognitive Theory 

  Cognitive theory: Theories that place an emphasis on the importance of a child’s ability to think and their level of understanding 

  Egocentrism (Piaget): Children’s inability to see a situation from another person’s point of view  

  Egocentric language (Piaget): Language that comes before a child has grasped theory of mind, that reflects a child’s own thoughts, feelings, interests, and struggle to engage with others.  

  MKO (Vygotsky): A caregiver positioned to support language and cognitive development by knowing more about it 
• Modern theories of development 

  Statistical learning (Saffran): Children learn language as a result of brain’s ability to perceive patterns in the environment, which is how they’re able to detect word segments. 

  Usage-based learning (Tomasello): Children learn the language that they need to use 

  Intention reading (Tomasello): Ability to understand intentions and mental states of others during social interactions, allowing a child to learn how language is used to achieve social goals. 

  Pattern finding (Tomasello): The ability to identify recurring patterns in the language that one hears  

  Scheme/ schema (Tomasello): A mental web of associated ideas 

  Slot-and-frame (Tomasello): Re-used structures in which words can be swapped in and out 
• Stages of development 

  Pre-verbal stage: When a child cannot yet talk, though will use babbling to familiarise themselves with the sounds of the language and turn-taking. 

  Holophrastic stage: A child’s speech being limited to one word at a time 

  Holophrase: A single word that conveys a more extensive meaning 

  Two-word stage: Following the holophrastic stage, a child’s linguistic output being limited to two words at a time 

  Pivot-open grammar: The structure of the two-word stage 

  Pivot word class: Words low in quantity, but high in frequency

  Open word class: Words that are high in quantity, but low in frequency

  Surface form: The expression 

  Deep structure: The meaning 
• Stages of development

  Telegraphic stage: Following on from the two-word stage, when children use simple clauses and almost adult-like language 

  Telegraphic utterance: A condensed sentence, similar to adult language, though omitting function words 

  Deficit approach: Focussing on what a child can’t do 

  Post-telegraphic stage: A child’s ability to speak in full clauses, using function words, like adult language