With only three days left to prepare for the resit of my AS English language exam I felt it prudent to do some revision. These are just my notes, due to illness and snow I managed to miss the entire module on child language acquisition last year, though surprisingly I felt this was the strongest section in my exam. As I hope (really hope) to improve my grade this time round I need a way to relearn the information, so these notes may descend into one of Kit's commentaries, as I am just spilling out information as I attempt to relearn it!!
Where to begin?
Well the beginning is a good place obviously! When a child is born it has no immediate capacity to speak in language, but is capable of making sound. I remember the sleepless nights well. Within 24 hours the child is able to competently recognise the voice of the primary care giver, usually mum.
After 6 weeks children discover that different sounds, or screams/crying, instigate different responses from care givers. This allows a child to learn the interactive nature of communication. The fact that parents react and respond to what are apparently meaningless utterances allows the child to become familiar with the idea of turn taking. In this period a child will learn to develop the control they have on their verbal equipment, experimenting with air flow through the vocal organs to create rhythmic sounds.
This is the initial period of the PRE-VERBAL STAGE leading into COOING - this is when the child creates open mouthed vowel sounds at around the approximate age of 3 -6 months.
At 6 - 12 months the child is into the BABBLING phase of this stage, making repeated consonant sounds and in combination. Children are also capable of responding to different tones and certain words. This stage often sees an increased use of body language and gesturing, which suggests that the child is developing an understanding of the language that they are not able to express verbally.
As this understanding of language begins to grow at 12 - 18 months children enter the PROTO-WORD phase. Making sounds that resemble actual words, but they are not always consistently applied in reference to the same object. This is also the phase where most children actually utter their first 'full' word often applied to a care giver e.g. mama, dada.
Once the proto-words begin to become words with meaning, the child enters the HOLOPHRASE (one word) phase. Here one word utterances are used to communicate in a variety of ways. e.g. 'cup', this could mean; "this is my cup", "I want a drink", "who's cup is that?" At this stage it is usually the primary care giver that understands this form of communication and responds to the child, as the vocabulary is quite small and often the words are unrecognisable as adult English words. It should also be noted that in this phase a child has a vocabulary of up to 50 words; however, research shows that children are capable of understanding 5 times as many in this phase.
From approximately 18 - 24 months the child enters the TWO WORD phase of development. This also marks the point where a child enters the GRAMMATICAL stage of language development. As the child develops a larger vocabulary, syntax comes into the language. Using a range of patterns consisting of two-word utterances. e.g. daddy go, where mummy? drink allgone. In this phase a child will begin to OVEREXTEND or UNDEREXTEND the meaning of these words. e.g. with overextension 'dog' may refer to any animal of a particular size with four legs e.g. cats, sheep, goats. With underextesion the same word may only apply to the family dog, as the child has not made the connection that there are many variants of creatures that have four legs and go 'woof'.
Hyponym - word within the category of a hypernym e.g. apple
Hypernym - category into which hyponyms fit e.g. fruit
LESLIE RESCORLA stated that there are 3 forms of overextension:
Categorical - most common form is when the label of apple is extended to other fruit, but as the other hyponyms are learnt within the hypernym the overextension begins to disappear.
Analogical - association of unrelated objects due to similarity of features e.g. a cement mixer and a ball, as both have a round appearance.
Predicate - conveys a form of abstract meaning e.g. looking into an empty play cot a child might utter 'dolly', which suggests that the child knew that a doll should be present.
From 24 - 40 months children move into the TELEGRAPHIC phase able to use 3,4, 5 and six word combinations, these phrases often omit grammatical words, such as determiners, auxiliaries and prepositions, but lexical items such as nouns, verbs and adjectives are present. From 36 months onwards children move into the POST-TELGRAPHIC phase, similar to the previous phase, but more grammatically complete.
Theorist JEAN AITCHISON states there are 3 model stages in language acquisition:
Labelling - The association of sounds with objects in the immediate world of the child - allows words to be linked to everyday objects, gives an understanding of the concept of labels.
Packaging - Starting to explore the extent of the label - often the point where overextension and underextension occurs most frequently.
Network Building - Making connection between the labels they have developed. Allows an understanding of opposites, similarities, relationships and contrasts.
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