Key terms

• CDS

  Child directed speech
• Pre-verbal stage

  Name for the stage in which children do not speak language
• Holophrastic Stage

  Stage in which kids speech infrequently and use often 1 word to communicate full ideas
• Two word stage

  Stage in which kids begin to combine two words often being noun and verb
• Telegraphic stage

  Children begin to communicate with consistent language and develop awareness of grammar rules
• Post telegraphic stage

  Stage in which kids begin to fully grasp language and utterances are less context bound
• Non verbal communication

  Physical gestures and actions that convey meaning during conversation
• Operant conditioning

  Positive and negative reinforcement used to encourage or discourage behaviour
• Positive reinforcement

  Positive feedback given to a child to encourage this behaviour
• Negative reinforcement

  Negative feedback used to discourage this behaviour
• LAD

  Language Acquisition Device; proposed by Chomsky in Innateism. All humans are born with an innate language capacity
• Virtuous Errors

  Grammatical errors that are logical through incorrect application of grammar rules
• Cognitive Development

  A child’s development of thinking and understanding
• Expansion

  A caregiver developing a child’s incomplete utterance to make it more grammatically correct
• Recast

  Where a caregiver corrects a child’s incorrect utterance by repeating it back to them correctly
• Mitigated imperatives

  An instruction given in a way that makes it less bossy and more like a suggestion
• Instrumental function

  Where a child’s utterance is is trying to fulfil a need
• Proto word

  A made up word that children’s use as substitute to difficult words e.g ‘ray-rays’ for raisins
• Reduplicated babbling

  Repetition of the same sounds such as ‘bababababa’
• Variegated babbling

  Variation of the consonant and vowels being pronounced
• Reduplication

  Repeated syllables within a word e.g moo-moo, wee-wee
• Diminutives

  Adding extra suffixes to make it more easier and more appealing to say e.g dog/doggie doll/dolly
• Substitution

  Swapping around one sound for another to make it easier to pronounce
• Assimilation

  One consonant or vowel being swapped for another
• Deletion

  Omitting a particular sound within a word
• Vocabulary spurt

  Cognitive change occurs and child moves into stage of rapid vocabulary acquisition
• Content words

  Words in a sentence that are vital to the meaning
• Grammatical words

  Words in a sentence that are necessary to the grammatical correctness