Stages of CLA (David Crystal and Shirley Russel)

• What happens in year 1?

  - Biological noises (crying) - 0/2 months

  - Cooing and laughing - 2/5 months

  - Vocal play- 5/8 months

  - Babbling - 6/12 months

  - Melodic utterances- 9/18 months
• What happens in year 1? Child directed speech

  • Use of simple vocabulary and short sentences
  • speak slowly
  • widen pitch of their voice
  • have conversations before the child can respond meaningfully
• Fathers and mothers exhibit similar linguistic behaviour to their child but fathers tend to:

  • Use a wider range of vocabulary
  • Ask more direct questions
  • interact with the baby in a more intense way
  • be less likely to understand the baby's vocalisation
• Year 2: The Holophrastic Stage

  • occurs at 12-18 months
  • single word utterances
  • 60% of childrens first utterances are nouns
  • Katherine Nelson showed that these first words are often names of objects which are small and easily handled by the child, or things which move or make noise
• Children's acquisition of vocabulary may exhibit errors of:

  • Underextension- the child restricts the application of a word e.g uses 'white' only to describe snow but not a blank pages
  • Overextension- the child uses a word in a wider context than an adult would
• The two word stage:

  • Around the age of two
  • Once children have about 50 words in their vocabulary, they put words together
  • During this stage, there are no inflections to mark number,tense or person
  • Pronouns are rare although children may use 'me' to refer to themselves
• The Telegraphic Stage:

  • When a child starts stringing 2 words together, the utterances maybe 2 words or longer
  • Utterances at this stage (around 2-3 years old) are characterised by lack of function words such as prepositions, conjunctions and articles
  • Mainly consists of content words i.e nouns and verbs
• Pre-school years/post telegraphic stage:

  • Use of 'and' to form complex/compound sentences
  • Non-fluency features occur
  • Use of 'and then' to tell stories
  • Conjunctions around 4 years old