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English Language: CLD - Coggle Diagram
English Language: CLD
Developmental patterns
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Substitution - Babies substitute one sound for another (usually more observable in fricative sounds)
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Consonant cluster reduction - Babies miss out a consonant when they occur in groups
- e.g. spider becomes pider
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Overextension - When a child uses a term too broadly e.g. calling all four-legged animals “doggy”
Underextention - When a child uses a word too narrowly e.g. only calling their own pet dog “doggy” and not other dogs
Development Stages
Pre-verbal Stage
0-4 months - Vegetative
- Reflexive responses to stimuli such as sounds of pain, hunger, pleasure etc
4-7 months - Cooing
- Vocal play using random, unpatterned sounds, often open-mouthed vowel sounds
6-12 months - Babbling
- Repeated or patterned sounds including both vowels and consonants (e.g. dadadadadad)
9-12 months - Protoword
- Word-like sounds that are not actual words but used consistently e.g. 'mmm' accompanied by a gesture meaning 'give me that'
12-18 months - Holophrastic (one-word) Stage
- Children's understanding exceeds their ability to articulate themselves
- Developing phonemic ability
- Understanding the world around them
- Developing pragmatic awareness
- Communicate their wants and needs
18-24 months - Two Word Stage
- Beginning to understand grammar for the first time
- Types of utterances - action affects object, an action performs an action, an object is given a location
24-36 months - Telegraphic Stage
- Utterances consist of 3 or more words
- Key content words are used while grammatical function words are omitted
- e.g. Where daddy gone? , That my doll.
36+ months - Post Telegraphic
- Utterances where grammatical words missing from the telegraphic stage start to appear, and clauses begin to be linked into longer sentences
- e.g. That baddy got eaten by the dragon
Theorists cont.
Behaviourism
Skinner
- A child learns language based on positive and negative reinforcement of ideas
- Positive reinforcement is applied to strengthen the behaviour that is rewarded i.e. a child is praised by a caregiver for using standard English
Cognitivism
Argues that children need a cognitive understanding in order to use language, children cannot linguistically articulate what they do not understand.
Piaget
- Argues that children start life in a very egocentric way
- Supported by the notion of object permanence, an object does not exist when a child cannot see it
- Explains naming explosion in 3 year - child expands vocabulary
Vygotsky
- Proposes that there exists a cognitive deficiency - a gap in knowledge (zone of proximal development (ZPD)); he states that a More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) is needed to fill the gap
- Language has two separate roles: communication and thought
Deb Roy
- Speech home project
- Studied how language evolved from babble -> proto word -> real word
- Early language is quite narrow and through the influence of their environment and parents, a child's language develops - supports constructivists idea of rich environment
- Takes elements from cognitive - focuses on child's inbuilt ability as humans to draw connections between language they have heard and their own language output
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Contructivism
Tomasello
- states that children listen to language and do two things:
-Intention reading – children learn how to use language to achieve social ends
- Pattern finding – children look at many utterances and develop schemas based on patterns in language
Braine
- proposed that children learn language in a ‘slot and frame’ manner.
- the child develops a schema in which variables can be placed to suit the situation.
- i.e. a child may the learn the scheme ‘I + want + a + non-specific item’ to form utterances like ‘I want a drink’ or to form the past tense, use a scheme like ‘I + Xed + it’ and substitute a verb into the X – like ‘I liked it’.
Challenging this theory:
- Children may understand social concepts (like 'mummy' and 'daddy') before the intention reading stage starts
Key ideas + theorists
Nativism
Chomsky
- LAD (Language Acquisition Device) built into humans
- Universal Grammar - a set of grammar rules are innate and inbuilt to include features such as nouns that are apart of all languages
- The data children take in is processed and applied to try and make new sentences
- Evidence for an internal blueprint: 'mistakes' in children's language that they would not have copied from adults so allude to an internal blueprint trying to apply what they've heard to their own output
- Language specific ability - we learn language very easily compared to other skills
Chomsky's theory states that children cannot learn through the imitation of their caregivers because they provide a ‘poverty of stimulus’- caregivers of children do not provide a good enough standard of language
- Chomsky states that children make virtuous errors (errors which are made with good intentions e.g. ‘I hurted his feelings’.)
- he states that children have a universal grammar which states a set of rules on how to structure language.
Case study: Genie
- In the 1970s, a 13-year-old girl was found by authorities. When authorities found her, she was withered and held her hands like a rabbit.
- they discovered she could barely speak (limited to a very small number of words).
- Linguists worked extensively with Genie, but because she had passed the critical period, she could not properly acquire language.
This case study supports Chomsky. As Genie had passed the critical age, Chomsky would argue that the LAD has expired and so cannot be activated.
This case study also supports the idea that children cannot learn language by interaction with caregivers alone.
Jean Burko - WUG test
- Using the made up word 'WUG', she asked children to then make it plural. The majority did this by adding an 'S' suffix ("WUGS)
- Suggests children have a set of internal rules they use to estimate the right grammar.
Social Interactionist
Bruner
- A learner even of a very young age is capable of learning any material so long as
the instruction is organized appropriately
- Caregivers "scaffold" a child's language and their language develops within the
scaffolding. Parents provide a structure for their children.
- Scaffolding is gradually removed and the child speaks alone
- Agrees with LAD and also proposed LASS - Language Acquisition Support System - adults helping children by correcting their language and encouraging conversation by asking questions
John Snarey
- Fathers interact with their children in different ways to the way mothers do
- 'roughhousing' with the father teaches that biting, kicking and other forms of violence are unacceptable
Fatherese Process
- Tickling, wrestling and throwing the child in the air
- Chasing
- Loud Volume
- Encouragement of competition
- Promotion of independence over security
- Less simplification of speech
- Challenging the child to expand vocab and linguistic skills
Interactionism - Grice's maxims
- Quanitity - contributions must carry enough information
- Quality - contributions must be truthful
- Relation - contributions must be relevant
- Manner - contributions must be clear and limit ambiguity
Catherine Snow
- Coined the term 'motherese' to describe language used by mothers when talking to their children
- Language acquisition happens as a result of mother and child interaction
Ibbotson
- Children learn language in ‘chunks’, often in the form of short phrases or mini sentences such as 'I want milk' or in idioms 'down in the dumps'
- Young children learn local patterns such as 'it's a X' and 'I am X-ing' where X is a variable element and they learn that they can fill the slot with different items
Bruner & Snow Strategies
- Recasting and reformulation - the caregiver repeats what the child has said containing anything missing and needed to make a grammatically standard utterance
- Expansion - the caregiver makes the utterance more complex by expanding on what they said e.g. 'Amy runned' might be expanded to form 'Amy ran the race'.
Strategies cont.
- Exaggerated prosodic cues – exaggerating intonation, varying pitch and using higher intonations.
- Expatiation – expressing what the child said giving more information. e.g. ‘food hot’ might be expatiated to ‘the food is too hot! We’ll let it cool down first’.
- Overarticulation – the caregiver stretches out vowel sounds in words. e.g. ‘mummy’s going to get a drink of teeeeeeeeea’.
Rhoades
- Rhoades adds that the following are also used:
- Short and simple sentences which are melodic
- Focus on what the child is doing
- Repetition of what the child and caregiver say
- Higher frequency of interrogatives and imperatives
- Slower speech