Babies’ hand movements, facial expressions, voice tone and lip movements are different when their mothers are talking to them.
Mothers then respond to babies gestures as if they are real conversational partners. This is called turn-taking, as the baby and mother are taking turns in conversation. If a baby points, it’s like saying ‘Look at that!’; therefore, it’s important that the parent responds.
Turn-taking then transfers into language between the child and parent (child-directed speech is used).
1. In pairs, brainstorm routines that parents and baby might share during a day.2. For each one suggest baby activities that might count as responses for the parent (i.e. crying during nappy-changing might be seen as the baby objecting).
Read the article ‘A baby’s babble leads to language’ and complete the questions below:
1. What was the hypothesis for the experiment?2. What did the researchers conclude?3. Which theory is this article supporting?4. Check yourself in the mirror. Do you notice any lopsidedness?
Easy
Difficult
stopped sounds: where air is momentarily stopped from being released (‘p’) (aspiration)
reduplication: where the same vowel-consonant combination is repeated (da da)
variegated babbling: as above except that the vowel sound changes (da de)
consonant cluster: where a number of consonants are combined, as in /fr/
friction sounds: where there is vibration whilst air is released (the ‘s’ in pleasure)
1. To look at how children develop their understanding and use of spoken English up to the age of about five.2. To explore some of the main theories that try to explain how this happens.3. To analyse real examples of child language data.
?Behaviourists believe… language is developed through
imitating others’ language and gaining positive and negative feedback from adults.
Social Interactionists believe… children’s early language can be influenced and improved by adult carers adjusting their own speech patterns.
Nativist Theorists believe… language is innate; we are ‘pre-programmed’ to acquire it.
Cognitive Theorists believe… language will grow when children’s ideas about the world develop.
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Write a 1-2 sentence definition for each of the key terms (language development theorists) below. Also, state which linguist or psychologist is primarily associated with each theory.
1. Behaviourists2. Social Interactionists3. Nativist theorists
All children have an inbuilt language acquisition device (LAD) that enables them to extract the rules of the particular language from the words and structures they hear.
universal grammar: a theory that all languages share a similar grammatical structure under the surface.
critical period: children’s LADs must be activated with sufficient input before the age of 12, or the child’s language acquisition will be impaired.
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BEHAVIO
URISM
Father: Urr, that food’s disgusting!Ruby: Dat’s digusting.
Skinner coined the ‘Skinner Box’ where he tested positive and negative reinforcement with rats and pigeons; therefore, some people are sceptical of his findings, as he did not focus on humans.
He believed that language is learnt through positive and negative reinforcement.
Theorists Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget Language comes with understanding; a child cannot
linguistically articulate concepts he/she does not understand A child needs to understand the idea of the past in order to
use past tense
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THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENTThe Examination Board wants you to know this term
Who? Vygotsky What? The difference between what a child can do with
help and what he can do without guidance
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Object permanence the ability to understand that an object still exists
even though it is no longer in sight
Vygotsky believed that collaborative play is essential to children’s learning. He believed that, “What a child can do in co-operation today, he can do alone tomorrow”
Virtuous error: a logical mistake made by children based on the rules
✎ Which theory is this article supporting? ✎ What happens if the gene is mutated?
✎ What is another theory on why the KE family suffer the linguistic disorder?
✎ What ethical issue arises from the topic?✎ Use the Internet to research ‘feral children’ or ‘The Case
of Genie’. How are they affected?
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The article you will be using was in The Observer on October 7th, 2001, and was written by Robin McKie. The title is 'Whisper it quietly, but the power of language may all be in the genes'. It is an article about the nativist theory of language (Chomsky) and a family (KE is their scientific codename). It supports the fact that a single misplaced gene can affect your ability to control language and pronounce words; therefore, it is highly supportive of Chomsky's theory.
* Which theories were mentioned in the film?* When was the critical period of language development? Who proposed that if a child did not learn language before puberty, s/he
would not be able to fully acquire language?* What linguistic conclusions did you make from the film?
* Do you believe the psychologists were ethical in the treatment and care of Genie? If not, how could they have been better?
* Genie did not fully acquire language in the end. Which theory does this evidence support?
More pronounced intonation that draws attention to key morphemes or lexemes.
Simplified vocabulary that helps establish keywords (‘dog’ rather than ‘German shepherd’).
Repeated grammatical ‘frames’ that help draw attention to new elements within those frames (e.g. ‘What animal lives in a kennel? What animal lives in a sty?).
Simplified grammar – shorter utterances.
Actions that accompany speech: pointing, smiling, shrugging shoulders).
More obvious lip and mouth movement.24
Meaning Example
EXAGGERATING PROSODIC CUES
using more exaggerated intonation patterns and slightly higher frequencies, greater pitch variations.
Uh oh!
RECASTING phrasing sentences in different ways, such as making it a question.
“dada byebye daddy… Is daddy going byebye?
ECHOING repeating what the child said.
EXPANSION restating what the child said in a more linguistically sophisticated form.
“ball all gone” = “Yes, we lost the ball.”
EXPATIATION expounding further on the word by giving more information.
(baba hot) > Yes, the bottle is hot. We’ll wait
until later.
LABELING providing the name of objects, using simplified vocabulary
OVERARTICULATING using more precise sounds contained in the words, stretching out sounds, sounding out ‘super-vowels’
High-socioeconomic status (SES) mothers use longer utterances and more different words when they talk to their children than low-SES mothers and, in turn, their children have larger vocabularies.
Low-SES mothers are found to talk less and use less varied vocabulary during interaction with their children than high-SES mothers.
It is estimated that children from the high-SES families they observed heard approximately 11,000 utterances in a day, compared to 700 utterances for the children from low-SES families.
Low-SES mothers more often use speech to direct their children’s behaviour and high-SES mothers more often use speech to elicit conversation from their children.26
Linguists have studied striking differences in the way middle-class mothers in the US communicate with their children compared to Gusii mothers of Kenya, with the Gusii mothers rarely making eye contact with their children and only responding to child vocalizations if the children are in distress (Richman, Miller & LeVine, 1992). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - The communicative actions (or non-actions) of the Gusii mothers follow from their beliefs that babies cannot understand speech and thus it is senseless to talk to them before they are older and can understand what is being said (LeVine, 2004). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - Similar conclusions have been drawn based on research with the Kaluli of Papua New Guinea (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984), who believe their children to be helpless and have no understanding, and thus do not engage them in dyadic communicative interactions.
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TASK* Use the characteristics of child-directed speech to create 3 scripts
between a child and a parent when out shopping/watching television/eating dinner.
* In each script, include at least two characteristics.* You can also puts actions into parentheses.
English Language: Lexical and semantic development
LO: To develop an understanding surrounding the lexical and semantic development of children’s acquisition
Baby talk contributes to mental development, as it helps teach the child the basic function and structure of language.
Studies have found that responding to an infant's babble with meaningless babble aids the infant's development.
While the babble has no logical meaning, the verbal interaction demonstrates to the child the bidirectional nature of speech, and the importance of verbal feedback.
1 Can you notice any patterns of ‘virtuous error’?2 What are the characteristics of their speech? 3 What can they do? 4 Link what the children are saying to the different theoretical models we have explored.
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Liam: The goodies are going on their ship cos they’ve catched a baddie.Stan: Yeah, they’ve caught him and throwed him in the dungeons.Liam: The cavemans are laughing. This one’s much more braver than the baddies though…I’m going to build a whole army of goodies.Stan: Yeah, cos the baddies are coming.Together: Charge!
A conversation between twin boys aged 3 years 6 months
Morphology the study of word structure, especially in terms of morphemes.
Pre-verbal the stages before actual words are uttered.
Referent: the object or person in the real world to which a sound consistently relates.
Plural the marking of a noun to indicate how many are being talked about.
Possession the marking of a word to indicate that it possesses or owns something.
Cooing open-mouth vowel sounds made by babies of about 3 to 6 months old.
Babbling repeated consonant-vowel sounds and a combination of these made by babies of about 6 to 12 months old.
Proto-words sounds that resemble actual words but that are not consistently applied to their referents.
Productive vocabulary the words a child can actually speak.
Holophrase a one-word utterance that is used to communicate more than the one word on its own.
Overextend to stretch the meaning of a word (i.e. labeling rats and rabbits as ‘mouse’).
Underextend to contract the meaning if a word.
Overextension a feature of a child’s language where the word used to label something is stretched to include things that aren’t normally part of that word’s meaning.
Hyponym a word within a hypernym’s category (i.e. apple or broccoli)
Hypernym a category into which other words fit (i.e. fruit or vegetable)
Telegraphic the stage during which children use three or more words, usually omitting grammatical words (i.e. determiners, auxiliary verbs and prepositions) but keeping lexical words (i.e. nouns, verbs and adjectives)
Post-telegraphic the stage after telegraphic during which many of the omitted words from the stage before start to appear (i.e. auxiliary verbs, prepositions, etc.)
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1. What could be some influences on language acquisition?2. What words might a child brought up in the country say?
3. In the city?
Child’s words Context to utterance“Tiger” Used when looking at pictures of tigers, lions and leopards in a picture book.
“Socks” Used when referring to gloves.
“Duck” Used when talking about feeding ducks, pigeons and other birds in a park.
“Cat” Used when pointing at door where cat normally waits.
“Shoes” Used when referring to own pair of shoes but not when talking about any other type of shoe.
What sort of characteristics do the objects named in List A have which might account for them being among the first to be labelled by children? Why wouldn’t words from List B be used as frequently?
A child’s first recognisable word usually appears at about 12 months of age, but this varies depending on the child.Once children reach 18 months, they will have a productive vocabulary of around 50 words.At 24 months, most children will have reached at 200-word productive vocabulary, and by 36 months, it will be around 2,000 words.On average, children will learn 10 words a day.The early words of children fall into four categories: naming, action, social and modifying.
1 Learn how children’s early language develops through different identifiable stages.2 See how children build up longer and more complicated utterances as they get older.3 Study the patterns in children’s early grammatical development.
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What do we mean
by syntax?
Syntax is another name for word order
A child’s development of syntax refers to how a child puts words into patterns and he/she develops an understanding of how words control meaning
THE TWO WORD STAGE
With a partner, attempt to hold a conversation using only two words for about a minute. Choose the
conversation topics below:* where you’re going on holiday
* what you’re doing for the weekend* what happened at the football match.
Record your two word utterances in a transcript format after you have the conversations
At around 18 months of age, babies begin to combine words to form two word utterances.
Studies on infants have shown that newborns have a natural preference to attend to the human voice above all environmental sounds. When listening to the human voice they show a distinct preference for listening to speech over non-speech sounds like laughing and coughing. Linguists have demonstrated that 3-day old babies can distinguish between utterances in their mothers’ language and those in another language. Children are born universal; they are capable of producing any sound in the human language (i.e. rolling their ‘r’s in Spanish or saying the ‘ch’ sounds of Scots). At the age of 12 months, they contract their range to the language in their native country; they concentrate on the phonemes used in the native language.
Intonation is particularly important at the one and two word stages. Why?
A child who says ‘my car’ may use different strengths of intonation to produce a different meaning for each utterance. How could a child say it differently?
Pitch is an important component of intonation. Mandarin Chinese can have as many as four
different meanings for one sound depending on the intonation that is being used.
Cruttenden (1974) demonstrated that understanding of patterns of intonation is still developing in the teens.
FRICATIVE a sound that is created by the slow and controlled release of air through the mouth, creating friction.
STOPS sounds where the air flow is completely stopped. They are created in the throat (e.g. glottal stop), at the back of the mouth (e.g. ck), at the alveolar ridge (e.g. t) or by the lips (e.g. p)
Berko and Brown (1960) described how a child referred to his plastic fish as a ‘fis’. When the observer responded, “Is this your fis?” the child said, ‘No – my fis.’ He continued to reject the adult’s mimicry of his speech until he was told, “Is this your fish?” He then replied, “Yes, my fis.”
A woman asks where the post office is and is told in reply, “It’s a Sunday.”A student says to her friend: “Mmmm, nice jacket. Are there lots of charity shops in Peckham?”A father says to his daughter, who has just dropped his mobile phone in the paddling pool, “Thanks very much, that makes life a lot easier.”
] You will need to comment about five linguistic features in a text. The more you expand on the features, the more points you will earn.] You will need to write about language development theories and how they affect a child’s development. Give examples and also be open-minded.
