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Child Language Aquisition - Coggle Diagram
Child Language Aquisition
Grammatical acquisition
Terminology
A morpheme is the the smallest grammatical unit in a language. A morpheme is not identical to a word because a morpheme may or may not stand aline, whereas a word, by definition, is freestanding
Bound morphemes: don't make sense on their own, they are used in addition to exisiting words e.g. un, dis, er, est
Free morpheme: do make sense on their own e.g. "small" in "smallest"
An inflection: is a change in the form of a word (typically to the ending) to express a grammatical function or attribute such as tense, mood, person, number e.g. the inflection 's' is often added to make something plural.
Virtuous Error:
are syntactic errors made by young children in which a non-standard utterance reveals some understanding of standard syntax ( a logical error/ a error made that still makes sense )
Overgeneralisation:
Children begin to acquire grammatical rules at an early age. This is where a child makes an error, but its a logical error.
This is commonly found in the application of the past tense "ed" e.g. I runned. this is an overgeneralization of the past tense rule for regular verbs, creating a virtuous error.
Testing Grammatical Understanding: JEAN BERKO
created the WUG test to support the notion that children have a more sophisticated understanding of linguistics morphology than they have ever been explicitly taught.
she used the word WUG to ensure that children had not been exposed to the word before.
her finding suggested that children have INTERNALISED GRAMMATICAL RULES and can apply these rules to novel situations.
it disapproves some of the behaviorist arguments that children only learn grammar through observation and imitation
The study:
she drew a fictional animal and labelled it WUG asking the child ages 4-7 to repeat the word
she drew more than one of the animal and asked the children to label it. 76% of the children tested replied with "WUGS"
INFLECTION THEORY: CRUTTENDEN
divided the acquisition of inflection into three stages:
1) in the fist stage, children memories words on an individual basis.
2) in the second stage they show an awareness of the general rules of inflection. They observe that past tense forms usually end in "ed" so instead of "ran" they say "ruined"
3) in the third stage, correct inflection are used
URSULA BELLUGI (1966)
Studied the way in which children acquired negatives. this can be categorized in three stages:
1- the child uses "no" or "not" to form a negative e.g. No like book.
2- the child learns to move the negative into the main body of the utterance e.g. I'm not happy
3- the child learns to attach negatives to auxiliary verbs e.g I'm not happy
PRONOUN AQUISITION
she also categorized the development of pronoun acquisition in terms of complexity
THE THREE STAGES:
1- the child will use a name rather than a pronoun e.g" Emily go now" instead of "I go know"
2- the child begins to recognize that there is a difference between subject and object pronouns but will not be able to apply this understanding correctly e.g they may be able to understand and use " I left him" but not " he left me"
3- the child will correctly apply subjects and object pronouns e.g
mother: I love you Thomas / Thomas: you love me mommy
PHONOLOGY AQUISITION
The main explanation for why children acquire some sounds before others is down to articulatory ease and perceptual discriminability
ARTICULATORY EASE refers to how easy it is for the children to say the sounds, using the muscles in their mouth and vocal cords
PERCEPTUAL DISCRIMINABILITY refers to how easy it is for the children to distinctly hear the sounds
The research suggests that children tend to acquire bilabial sound first (pub,m,w) particularly the plosive (p,b) this could be due to the articulatory ease of these consonants.
Next, children tend to acquire velar sounds (k,g,n) particularly the plosive sounds again (keg)
The research also reveals that children struggle with fricatives as they don't acquire them until much later in their acquisition 4yr+. This is more than likely due to perceptual discriminability as opposed to articulatory ease as these sounds are more complex to break down and internalisze. However, it could also be due to the articulatory difficulty involving the tongue.
PHONOLOGY ACQUISITION:THEORY
BERKO AND BROWN(1960) "FIS STUDY"
Berko and Brown researched children's phonological understanding and found that for most, if not all children, comprehension of phonetics and phonology precedes production.
In the experiment the children could not correctly produce the noun "fish" and instead referred to it as "fis", however all the children rejected the adults incorrect pronunciation of the noun "fish" if they too pronounced it "fis". Despite the adult modeling the correct form of the word, the child still replied "yes, fis" suggesting that children can hear the correct pronunciation of the words before they can correctly produce them themselves.
PHONOLOGICAL AQUISITION: ERRORS
there where other phonological eerie not recognized by brown which where:
ADDITION: where children ass a phoneme, usually to create a CVCV (consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel) pattern e.g dagu, piggy, egger.
REDUPLICATION: where children repeat an initial phoneme rather than pronouncing the end of the word e.g dada, mama, baba.
PRAGMATIC AND DISCOURSE AQUISITION:
A child that has acquired a sophisticated grasp of lexis, semantic and grammar might still struggle to understand that adults do not like to be interrupted when talking, or telling their grandparents that "daddy doesn't like your cooking" this type of understanding is known as PRAGMATIC UNDERSTANDING
PRAGMATIC AQUISITION:
Pragmatic understanding is crucial to children successful language development. It involves:
implication (what we mean rather than what we say)
inference (interpreting what others mean)
politeness (using the right words and phrases to be polite)
conversational management (knowing when to speak)
Politeness is one of the earliest pragmatic developments that parents attempt to teach their children. These elements of social interaction begin to develop as soon as a child starts to engage in conversation and interact with others. One of the first things that children are taught, is the use of basic manners:
a greeting followed by a greeting
saying please and thank you
asking for something rather than demanding something
not raisig their voice
not using taboo language
However, children cannot possibly be taught the politeness for every situation that might arise before it arises, and they often struggle to decipher implied meaning
6 REASONS TO WHY:
denotation (the literal meaning of a word, image, sign act.)
connotation (the associations made with a word, image, sign, color etc)
infer (to deduce meaning based on evidence and reasoning)
locution (the literal speech act.)
illocution (the implied meaning)
perlocution (the perceived meaning)
HALLIDAYS FUNCTIONS
M.A.K Halliday identified seven different functions that might be served when a child uses language. He suggested that by having an intended motivation for using language a child will be futher motivated to use language.
INSTRUMENTAL - fulfill a need (e.g 'want milk'
REGULATORY - Influence the behavior of others (e.g 'pick up')
INTERACTIONAL - develop and maintain social relationships (e.g 'love you')
PERSONAL - convey individual opinions, ideas and personal identity (e.g 'me like it')
REPRESENTATIONAL - convey facts and information (e.g 'it hot')
IMAGINATIVE - create an imaginary world as seen in plays (e.g ' me shopkeeper')
HEURISTIC - learn about the environment (e.g 'wassat?')
DORE'S FUNCTIONS
John Dore identified eight different functions that might be served when a child uses language. His language functions focus more on speech acts as individual utterance, rather than Hallways broader approach to pragmatic/ discourse functions.
LABELLING - naming a person, object or thing
REPEATING - repeating an adult word or utterance
ANSWERING - responding to an utterance of another speaker
REQUESTING ACTION - asking for something to be done for them
CALLING - getting attention by shouting
GREETING - greeting someone or something
PROTESTING - objecting to requests from others
PRACTISING - using language when no adult is present
PAUL GRICE'S
"Co-operative" is informally known as Grice's maxims.
Grice (1975) says that when we communicate, we assume, without realizing it, that we and the people we are talking to will be conversationally cooperative
This is known as THE COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE. In order to do this we abide by certain CONVERSATIONAL MAXIMS it is a set of explicit principles that provide a backdrop of conversation to take place so that speakers can easily understand one another.
However children struggle to acquire Grice Maxim's and many of the errors that they make in pragmatic development can be attribute to not understanding one of the Maxims
1) MAXIM OF QUALITY - speakers should tell the truth. They should not say what they think is false, or make statements foe which they lack evidence
2) MAXIM OF QUNTITY - a contribution should be informative as is required for the conversation to proceed. It should be neither too little nor to much. (it is not clear how one can decide what quantity of information stratifies the maxim in a given case.)
3) MAXIM OF RELEVANCE - speakers contribution should relate clearly to the purpose of the exchange
4) MAXIM OF MANNER - speakers contribution should be perspicuous: clear, orderly and brief avoiding obscurity and ambiguity.
If a speaker does not follow these maxims it is known as FLOUTING. So if someone gives an answer that is not detailed enough, it would be defines as 'flouting the maxim of quality' CHILDREN LOVE TO FLOUT THE MAXIMS
PRAGMATIC ACQUISITION: GOFFMAN'S FACE THEORY
Erving Goffman wrote about 'face' in conjunction with how people interact in daily life. He claims that everyone is concerend, to some extent with how others perceive them. When we talk we try to maintain our identity whilst also remain polite. This identity or public self-image is what we project when we interact socially.
To lose face is to publicly suffer a diminished self-image
Maintaining face is accomplished by taking a line while interacting socially. A line is what the person says and does during that interaction to show that they care about the needs of others.
The ways in which speakers protect, support or challenge each other's face is called FACEWORK. Children often struggle to maintain face, and often lose face due to their misunderstanding of pragmatic politeness.
Goffman believed that an individual has both positive and negative face needs.
Positive face is the desire to be likes, appreciated and approved (starts at the post telegraphic stage)
Negative face is the desire to feel independent and not to be imposed upon.
Interactions between people therefore have the potential to be Face Threatening Acts.
Face ThreateningAct - a speech act which has the potential to damage someones self esteem
In order to avoid an FTA, a speaker may employ a politeness strategy.
POSITIVE POLITENESS STRATEGY - shows you recognize that your hearer has a desire to be respected. It also confirms that the relationship is friendly and expresses group reciprocity
NEGATIVE POLITENESS STRATEGY - also recognizes the hearers face. But it also recognizes that you are in some way imposing on them. Some other examples would be to say, 'I don't want to bother you but...' or 'I was wondering if'