Child language acquisition

• Child Language Acquisition (CLA)

  Topic area designed to teach candidates about the nature and functions of language acquisition and social development of children from 0 - 11 years
• Decasper and Spence (1986)

  Theorists that discuss the development of language in the womb
• Critical period


  A specific time during which an organism has to experience stimuli in order to progress through developmental stages properly
• Instinctive responses in babies

  • Hunger
  • Crying
  • Pre-verbal
  • Caregiver
  • Pain
  • Conscious act
  • Discomfort
  • Pre-language
• Stages of early language development

  1. Instinctive response

  2. Crying

  3. Cooing stage

  4. Babbling stage
• Cooing stage


  Starts when a child is between six and eight weeks old, babies start making a small range of sounds as they get used to moving their tongue and lips
• Babies start by making vowel sounds like /u/ and /a/
• Velar consonants


  Consonants made using the back part of the tongue, like /k/ and /g/
• Babbling stage


  Follows the cooing stage, babies start producing repeated consonant and vowel combinations like ma-ma-ma, ba-ba-ba, ga-ga-ga
• Reduplicated (canonical) babbling


  Repeating the same consonant-vowel combinations
• Variegated babbling

  Producing different consonant-vowel combinations, not repeated
• Consonants commonly used in reduplicated or variegated babbling are h, w, j, p, b, m, t, d, n, k, g
• Deaf babies who've had some exposure to sign language will babble with their hands
• Babbling is an innate activity, pre-programmed to happen in the process of language development
• Babbling is a continuation of the baby's experimentation with sound creation, not the production of words with meaning
• Petitto and Holowka (2002)


  Researchers who found that most babbling comes from the right side of the mouth, suggesting babbling is a form of preliminary speech
• Phonemic expansion


  In the babbling stage, the number of different phonemes (sounds) a baby produces increases
• Phonemic contraction


  Later in the babbling stage, the baby reduces the number of phonemes they use, concentrating on reproducing the phonemes they hear in their native language
• Babies exposed to different languages in the first 9 months have less phonemic contraction, allowing them to better pick out sounds of those languages later
• Even in early babbling, babies use rhythms and intonation that resemble adult speech patterns</b>
• Proto-words


  Certain combinations of consonants and vowels that start to carry meaning, like mmm for more food
• Jargon


  The made-up language babies start to sound like they're speaking around 9 months old
• Timeline of early child language development

  1. Pre-birth

  2. Cooing stage (6-8 weeks)

  3. Babbling stage (6 months)

  4. 9 months

  5. 10 months
• Outline a piece of research that suggests language development begins in the womb
• When does the cooing stage usually start?
• What is it called when babies produce repeated consonant/vowel combinations?
• What evidence is there to suggest that babbling is the beginning of speech?
• Phonological development


  How children learn to pronounce sounds and words
• Pragmatic development


  How children learn to use language appropriately in social contexts
• Children learn vowels and consonants at different speeds, mastering some earlier than others
• Consonant groups


  • Plosives: b, p, t, d, k, g
  • Fricatives: f, v, s, z, sh, ch, j
  • Affricates: ch, dj
  • Nasals: m, n, ng
  • Approximants: r, j, w
• Word-initial consonants


  Consonants at the beginning of words
• Word-final consonants


  Consonants at the end of words
• Berko and Brown (1960) found that children can recognise and understand a wider range of phonemes than they can produce
• Types of phonological simplification

  • Deletion: dropping a consonant
  • Substitution: replacing a consonant with an easier one
  • Cluster reduction: dropping one consonant in a cluster
• With reference to the Berko and Brown study, the child simplified their communication by using a simpler version of the word 'fish'
• Other features of phonological development

  • Addition: adding a vowel to the end of a word
  • Assimilation: changing one consonant due to the influence of another
  • Reduplication: repeating a phoneme
  • Voicing: replacing voiceless consonants with voiced ones
  • Devoicing: replacing voiced consonants with voiceless ones
• There are about 24 consonant choices used in English words
• Addition


  When a vowel is added to the end of a word, e.g. dog is pronounced dogu
• Assimilation


  When one consonant in a word is changed because of the influence of another in the same word, e.g. tub becomes bub because of the influence of the final /b/