Child Language Acquisition Part 2

This section covers questions and negatives, morphology with overgeneralisation, phonology,pragmatic development and the wonderful WUGS!

Research by Bellugi and McNeill is summarised by David Crystal,  and suggests that there are 3 stages of question development:

1. Use of intonation to signal a question.  'Dada' in rising intonation might suggest the child is asking the location of a parent.
2. The use of questioning words e.g. what, where, when and why
3. Manipulating syntax (word-order) to create longer more detailed questions eg where doggie going?

It is at the two word stage when an understanding of syntax is developed.

David Crystal states that using negatives has 6 stages:

1. Use of a negative word on its own e.g. no, not
2. Combining with other words in two word and telegraphic stages, most common at the start of an utterance e.g. no bed
3. Using a negative in the middle of an utterance.  e.g. me not like
4. The increased accuracy of negative words within utterances, often in form of a contraction used with an auxiliary verb e.g. she isn't going
5. Increased complexity and range of negative words e.g. I haven't got any
6. Saying no without actually saying no - a trick that is used by adults that children can then pick up

MORPHOLOGY

MEAN LENGTH OF UTTERANCE (MLU): is a calculation based on the average number of morphemes used across a number of utterances.

This aspect of grammar becomes increasingly more important as the child's language develops:

Word endings create distinctions between:

• Singular and plural
• Present and past tense
• Comparative and superlative

MORPHEME is the smallest unit of grammatical meaning e.g. I ran = 2 morphemes (1st = I 2nd = ran).
FREE MORPHEME is a morpheme that can stand on its own as a meaningful unit e.g. eat.
BOUND MORPHEME is a morpheme that can only have meaning when joined with a free morpheme e.g. ing.

Example: the word eating consists of 2 morphemes (1 free and 1 bound) eat = free   ing = bound

Inflectional Morphology - studies how morphemes are used to create different functions grammatically
Derviational Morphology - studies how morphemes can be used to create new words

3 patterns in derivational morphology:
Conversion - using one word as a different class of word e.g. I jammed the bread (the noun jam is used here as a verb).
Affixation - when endings are applied to words to create new ones e.g. Its crowdy in here
Compounding - when two existing words are joined together to form new combinations e.g. horsey-man

OVERGENERALISATION
Is the over application of a grammatical rule; a form of 'virtuous error' (see below for definition)  If children have not heard these combinations or rule applications how do they create them?  One idea suggests that these rules are heard in adult or other people's language and then the children start to apply it to their own language.  It is common for children to apply the regular verb ending for the past simple tense (-ed) to irregular verbs.  Therefore, they are not creating nonsense, but making a logical error, as they rigidly, but logically apply an incorrect ending.  This is an overgeneralisation of a grammatical rule.

Virtuous error - is a mistake that is made for logical reasons and helps to shed light on the progress and processes of a child's language development e.g. I runned, I eating - the tenses are incorrect but the errors have been made logically.

Children can also regress in their language development - as per ROGER BROWN's research.  A child at three may correctly use a verb ending, but at a later stage, perhaps five, regress to an incorrect form.  Brown suggests that this is caused by the child's own deductive and cognative powers are increasing and where previoulsy they may have copied an adult, purely an incident of repetiton, now they are actively applying known rules and then 'virtuous errors' appear.

PHONOLOGY
This looks at the sounds and not spelling.There are 7 phonological features that are common in child language acquistion.
Addition - The addition of an extra vowel sound to create a vowel, consonant, vowel consonant strucure e.g. horsey
Deletion - Leaving out the final consonant of a word, so mouse would be come simply mou
Reduplication  - The repetition of partiular soundsand structures such as choochoo
Substitution - Where one sound is replaced or swapped for another e.g. rabbit becomes wabbit
Consonant Cluster Reduction - Children can find the production of consonant cluster difficult, so they have a tendancy to reduce them to smaller units e.g. dry becomes dai
Deletion of unstressed syllables - The removal of an entire unstressed syllable from a word e.g. banana simply becomes nana
Assimilation - The process where substiution occurs but sounds change due to other sounds around it, so the sound produced is closer to the other sounds around it e.g. doggie becomes goggie.

PRAGMATIC DEVELOPMENT
Michael Halliday created a 'taxonomy of language.'  Halliday a grammarian in 1975 identified 7 functions of language that children have in their early years.  Suggesting that children are motivated to learn language as it serves functions or purposes for them.

Instrumental - Child uses language to express their needs.
Regulatory - Language is used to tell others what to do.
Interactional - Here language is used to make contact and build relationships with others.
Personal - Where language is used to express emotion, feelins, opinions and a sense of individual identity.

The following aid children to come to terms with their personal environment:

Heuristic - Language is used to gain knowledge about the environment.
Imaginative - This language is used to create stories, imaginary environments, tell jokes.
Representaional - This conveys facts and information


WUGS
In 1958 pyscholinguist Jean Berko Gleason created an experiment to test the use of the -s plural.  She created an imaginary creature called a WUG.  Then using a simple statement children were tested to see if they could complete the following statement:
               "This is a wug.  Now there is another one.  There are two of them.  There are two..."
Upwards of 75% of the children tested correctly answering 'wugs'.  Berko used other nonsense words to test this experiment with broadly similar results.

This is a bit dull I know, but necessary to hammer these details back into my mind ahead of my exam.  I love the wugs test, I always imagine them to be a bit like the Gruffalo, a creature made up of parts of other animals, with shaggy fur and claws, but a friendly smile.  The next post will look at theories and theorists who have ideas about how children acquire language whether it is innate or interactional.  Personally I feel it needs to be a combination of both, but I think I might let Kit work that one out!