CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
REVISION PACK
Child Language Acquisition
The Specification says . . .
AO1: Communicate clearly the
knowledge, understanding and insight
appropriate to the study of language,
using appropriate terminology and
accurate and coherent written
expression. (2.5 %)
AO3: Understand, discuss and
explore concepts and issues relating
to language in use. (5%)
This means you must . . .
 Write your analysis and essays
clearly and accurately.
 Make sure you use proper
linguistic terminology to define
the features of language you are
discussing.
 Show you can apply your
understanding of linguistic
theories of acquisition to your
analysis and discussions of child
language data.
 Show you can identify the most
appropriate linguistic framework
to apply to a given text.
AO4: Apply and explore frameworks
for the systematic study of language
at different levels, commenting on the
usefulness of the approaches taken.
(5%)
AO5ii: Analyse and evaluate variation 
in the meanings and forms of spoken
and written language from different
times according to context. (7.5%).
Show you can analyse how
context/situation can affect
spoken and written data.
For CLA you will need to:
Know . . .
The principle milestones in linguistic
development, in terms of:
 Pragmatics / Language functions
 Phonetics
 Lexis / Semantics
 Syntax / Morphology.
The issues surrounding the question
of ‘stages’ of language development.
The principle theories that attempt to
explain the process of acquisition, i.e.
Behaviourist, Innateness, Cognitive,
Social.
The relationship between spoken and
written language and how this helps
to explain the process of learning to
read and write.
Be able to . . .
Describe and analyse examples of
child language data precisely and
accurately, using the appropriate
framework and terminology.
Analyse data with an open mind.
Relate your analysis of specific
examples of child language to these
theories, and explain how they might
explain the linguistic data you are
presented with.
Comment precisely and in an
informed way on data relating to
children’s early reading and writing.
ENB6 CLA
BEGINNINGS OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
Children all around the world seem to acquire language by passing through a similar set of
stages; although the time it takes to move from one stage to the next can differ from child to
child. The same pattern of development occurs regardless of the language, but children do not
develop at the same pace.
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
Before birth
Research suggests that whilst in the womb, babies become used to the rhythms and
intonation of the language being spoken around them.
Crying
During the first few weeks of a child’s life, the child can express itself vocally. Different kinds of
‘cry’ can be identified – from one signalling hunger or distress for example. This suggests that
cries are distinctive noises and as such, cannot really be described as ‘language’.
Cooing
This generally occurs when babies are around 6-8 weeks old. It is thought that during this stage
the child is discovering its vocal chords and sounds like ‘coo’ ‘goo’ and ‘ga-ga’ are made.
Babbling
This is the most important stage during the first year of a child’s life. It usually begins when the
child is between 6 and 9 months. At the onset of babbling, the baby begins to make sounds that
more closely resemble adult language.
Combinations of sounds are produced such as ‘ma’ ‘ga’ and ‘da’. Sometimes these sounds are
repeated producing what is known as reduplicated monosyllables eg: ‘mama’, ‘dada’, ‘baba’.
Such sounds still have no meaning, but parents are often eager to believe their child is speaking
its first words. As well as babbling, the baby is likely to blow bubbles and splutter.
Phonemic expansion and contraction
During the babbling phase, the number of different phonemes (units of sound) produced are
increased, known as phonemic expansion. Later at about 9 or 10 months the number of
phonemes occurs (phonemic contraction). In other words, the child retains the sounds of its
native language but discards the ones it knows aren’t needed. We know this happens because
research has shown that at this age, the sounds made by babies from different nationalities are
different.
Intonation and gesture
Another development during the babbling stage is the patterns of intonation begin to resemble
speech. For example, there might be a rising tone at the end of a sentence as if the child were
asking a question. Another method of communicating without speech is for a child to point at
something with a facial expression that seems to say ‘I want that’ or ‘what’s that?’
Understanding
Although the child may not yet have begun to speak properly, it doesn’t meant they don’t
understand the meaning of certain words. Words that are recognised are likely to include family
members, responses to questions such as ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and basic expressions like ’bye-bye’.
The first word
A child is usually about a year when it speaks its first recognisable word.
ENB6 CLA
PHONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT
- how children develop the ability to use and understand the sounds of language
TRENDS IN PHONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT
It is difficult to be precise about later phonological development and the way in which vowels
and consonants are acquired varies from child to child. When a sound has been mastered, it
maybe used only in the pronunciation of certain words and may be missing or pronounced
incorrectly in others. Researchers have identified certain trends in phonological development
and these are listed below:
 Command of all the vowels is achieved before all of the consonants
 By the age of two and a half the average child has mastered all of the vowels and around
two thirds of the consonants
 At four the child is likely to be having difficulty with only a few consonants
 The child may be six or seven before confidence in using all vowels and consonants has
been acquired
 Consonants are first used correctly at the beginning of words but consonants at the end
of words are more difficult for example ‘p’ and ‘b’’ sounds in ‘push’ and ‘bush’ will be
easier to pronounce than ‘rip’ and ‘rib’.
 In general, sounds that occur frequently in a large number of words will be acquired
before sounds that occur less frequently
 To make words easier to say children simplify their pronunciation in certain ways
WAYS OF SIMPLIFICATION
DELETION:
Children will often simplify pronunciation by deleting certain sounds:
 Final consonants maybe dropped eg) the ‘t’ sound in ‘hat’ and ‘cat’
 Unstressed syllables are often deleted eg) ‘banana’ becomes ‘nana’
 Consonant clusters are reduced eg) ‘snake’ becomes ‘nake’ , ‘sleep’ becomes ‘seep’
SUBSTITUTION
Another form of simplification involves substituting harder sounds with easier ones.
 R (as in rock or story) becomes w
 Th (as in there, that or thumb) becomes d, n or f
 T (as in toe) becomes d
 P (as in pig) becomes b
REDUPLICATION of sounds is another common phenomenon. This occurs when different
sounds in a word are pronounced the same way such as ‘dog’ becoming ‘gog’.
UNDERSTANDING
Berko and Brown (1960) describe how a child referred to a plastic fish as his ‘fis’. When an
adult asked ‘is that your fis?’ he replied ‘no, my fis.’ When he was told ‘that is your fish’ he
replied ‘yes, my fis.’ Another child confused card/cart and jug/duck in his speech, but when
shown pictures of the items, could correctly identify them. This proves that understanding may
develop faster than the ability to pronounce things.
ENB6 CLA
PRAGMATIC DEVELOPMENT - WHAT DO WORDS DO?
Language functions
Michael Halliday’s ‘Learning how to mean’ proposed seven main ‘functions’ that spurred a child
to want to use language.
FUNCTION
WHAT IT IS
INSTRUMENTAL
Language used to fulfil a
speaker’s need
REGULATORY
Used to influence the
behaviour of others
INTERACTIONAL
PERSONAL
INFORMATIVE
Used to develop social
relationships and ease
interaction
Used to express personal
preferences / the speaker’s
identity
Used to communicate
information
HEURISTIC
Used to learn and explore the
environment
IMAGINATIVE
used to explore the
imagination
WHAT IT’S USED FOR
Directly concerned with
obtaining food, drink
comfort etc . eg ‘I want’
Persuading / commanding /
requesting other people do
as you want ‘daddy push’
(child on swing)
The Phatic dimension of talk
eg ‘hello’
Sometimes referred to the
‘here I am!’ function –
conveys attitudes, expresses
feelings
Relaying or requesting
information eg ‘I got a new
doll
Using language to learn –
this may be questions or
answers or the kind of
running commentary that
accompanies child’s play
May also accompany play as
children create imaginary
worlds / may arise from
story telling. Also jokes,
songs etc
This can be a complex system which is difficult to apply to data, therefore, John Dore’s ‘Infant
Language Functions’ is a lot simpler to learn.
FUNCTION
EXAMPLE
LABELLING
Naming or identifying a person, object or
experience
Echoing something spoken by an adult speaker
Giving a direct response to an utterance from
another speaker
Demanding food, drink, toy, assistance etc
REPEATING
ANSWERING
REQUESTING ACTION
CALLING
GREETING
PROTESTING
PRACTISING
ENB6 CLA
GRAMMATICAL DEVELOPMENT – part 1
Attracting attention by shouting
Pretty self explanatory
Objecting to requests etc
Using and repeating language when no adult is present
One word stage / Holophrastic stage
The average child is about a year old when it speaks its first words. Roughly between 12 and 18
months is begins to speak in single word utterances such as ‘milk’ mummy’ and so on. This is
known as the ONE WORD STAGE. Occasionally more than one work may appear to be
involved but this is because the child has learned the group of words as a single unit and thinks
it is all one word. For example: ‘Allgone’.
In many situations the words simply serve a naming function, however, sometimes they convey
more complex messages. These words are called HOLOPHRASES. For example, the word
‘juice’ might mean ‘I’ve finished my juice’ or ‘I want more juice’, therefore the single word is
taking the place of a more complex grammatical construction that the child hasn’t learned yet.
Two word stage
Two word sentences usually appear when the child is around 18 months old. Usually, the two
words are in a grammatically correct sequence such as:
Subject + verb - Jenny sleep (Jenny is sleeping)
Verb + object Suzy juice (Suzy is drinking juices_
Subject + complement Daddy busy (daddy is busy)
Also, when a child tries to repeat what an adult has said, it will miss out part of the sentence, but
what is retained is usually grammatically correct:
ADULT:
CHILD:
Look Charlie, Ben’s playing in the garden
Play garden
This example shows how children in this stage focus on key words. Words that convey less
information such as ‘in’ or ‘the’ for example, are missed out.
Confusion as to what a child actually means during the two-word stage can arise because
children don’t know tenses or plurals yet. Also, depending on the CONTEXT of the utterance it
might have more than one meaning. Take the following example from Bloom (1973):
WHAT WAS SAID
ACTION
POSSIBLE MEANING
Mummy sock
Mummy sock
Child picks up sock
Mother puts sock on child
This is mummy’s sock
Mummy’s putting my sock on
The TELEGRAPHIC STAGE
From the age of about 2, children begin producing three and four word utterances. Some will be
grammatically complete such as ‘Amy likes tea’ or ‘Mummy sleeps upstairs’ but others will have
essential grammatical elements missing such as ‘Daddy home now’ or ‘Laura broke plate’.
These utterances are similar to some of those used in the two-word stage – they can often
make sense, but key elements are missing such as:
 Articles – ‘a’ ‘the’
 Auxiliary verbs – ‘is’ ‘has’
 Prepositions- ‘to’ ‘on’ ‘for’
 Conjunctions – ‘but’ ‘because’
Progress during this stage is rapid, and by the age of 5, children have usually mastered
sentences containing more than one clause, conjunctions and ‘ing’ ‘ed’ or ‘s’ endings to words
and verbs. These are known as inflectional affixes.
ENB6 CLA
GRAMMATICAL DEVELOPMENT – part 2
ACQUISITION OF INFLECTIONS
Research indicates there is a predictable pattern in the acquisition of inflectional affixes. These
are word endings such as –ed and –ing. Functional words such as articles like ‘a’ and ‘the’ and
also auxiliary verbs seem to be acquired in a regular order.
Brown (1973) studied children’s language development between the ages of 20 months and 36
months and found the sequence shown below occurred regularly. The features are also listed in
the order in which they were acquired:
1) –ing
2) plural ‘-s’
3) possessive ‘-s’
4) the, a
5) past tense –ed
6) third person singular verb ending – s (eg): he sings
7) auxiliary verb ‘be’ (eg): I am dancing
Cruttenden (1979) divided the acquisition of inflections into the following three stages:
1) In the first stage, children memorise words on an individual basis
2) In the second stage they show an awareness of the general rules of inflections. They
observe that past tense forms usually end in –ed so instead of ‘ran’ they say ‘runned’.
This kind of error is known as OVERGENERALISATION.
3) In the third stage, correct inflections are used
UNDERSTANDING GRAMMATICAL RULES
Children produce accurate grammatical constructions from an early age, and researchers have
tried to determine if they have learned this themselves or have copied adult speech. A famous
experiment was carried out by Jean Berko (1958) who showed children pictures of fictitious
creatures he called ‘Wugs’. At first, the child was shown a picture of one creature and told ‘this
is a Wug’. Then, they were shown a picture of two Wugs, and the children were asked to
complete the sentence ‘Now there are two…’. Children aged 3 and 4 replied ‘Wugs’. As they
could never have heard this word before, it because clear that they were applying the rule that
plural end in ‘-s’/ However, children between the ages of 2 and a half and 5 often
OVERGENERALISE’ with plurals, so we hear things like ’sheeps’ and mouses’.
ASKING QUESTIONS
Research suggests this happens in three stages:
1) Relying on intonation in the two-word stage eg: daddy home? Said with a rising tone
2) During their second year children acquire question words such as ‘what’ and ‘where’
resulting in questions such as ‘where daddy gone?’ They can’t yet use auxiliary verbs
such as ‘has’
3) In their third year, children can use auxiliary verbs and learn to say ‘is Joe here?’
however, they can’t always use wh-words correctly yet and might say things like ‘why Joe
isn’t here?’
NEGATIVES
This also happens in three stages:
1) Words ‘no’ and ‘not’ are used in front of other expressions eg) no want
2) During the third year ‘don’t’ and ‘can’t are used eg) I don’t want it
3) In the third stage more negative forms are acquired such as ‘didn’t’ and ‘isn’t’ and
negative constructions are used more accurately.
Case study: Genie
In Los Angeles in 1970 a social worker made a routine visit to the home of a partially blind
woman who had made an appeal for public assistance. The social worker discovered that the
woman and her husband had kept their 13 year old daughter Genie locked away in almost total
isolation during her childhood.
Genie could not speak or stand upright. She had spent every day bound naked to a child’s potty
seat and could move only her hands and feet. At night she was placed in a kind of straightjacket
and caged in a crib with wire mesh sides and a cover. Whenever Genie made a noise her father
beat her. He never communicated with her in words; instead he growled at her and barked at
her instead.
After she was rescued she spent a number of years in excessive rehabilitation programs
including speech and physical therapy. She eventually learned to walk and to use the toilet. She
also eventually learned to recognise many words and speak in basic sentences. Eventually she
was able to string together two word combinations like ‘big teeth’ then three word ‘small two
cup’. She didn’t however, learn to ask questions and didn’t develop a language system that
allowed her to understand English grammar.
Four years after she began stringing word together, she is still unable to speak fluently. A san
adult she speak in short, mangled sentences like ‘father hit leg’ ‘big wood’ and ‘Genie hurt’
which when pieced together can be understood.
This shows that children like Genie who are abandoned and abused and not exposed to
language for many years, rarely speak normally. Some language experts have argued that
cases such as these suggest the existence of a critical period for language development; but
other issues can cloud these cases.
IS THERE A CRITICAL PERIOD FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING?
Most babies learn a language by a certain age if they are to learn to speak at all. A critical
period is a fixed time period on which certain experiences can have a long lasting effect on
development. It is a time of readiness for learning, after which, learning is difficult or impossible.
Almost all children learn one or more languages during their early years, so it is difficult to
determine whether there is a critical period for language development.
In1967 Lenneberg proposed that language depends on maturation and that there is a critical
period between about 18 months and puberty during which time a first language must be
acquired. Lenneberg especially thought that the pre-school years were an important time frame
as thisis whe language develops rapidly and with ease.
Although much language learning takes place
adulthood. Therefore, young children’s
involve a biologically critical period.
during pre-school years, it continues into
proficiency in language does not seem to
A2 Language Development
David Crystal (1996)
Cries, Burps and Burbles
Cooing and going gaga
Babbling on
First Words
In the first two or three months of life
an infant makes lots of noises of pain,
hunger and discomfort, to which
parents learn to respond, but it is
difficult to attribute specific meanings
to these sounds.
Most children add a new variety of
sounds to their repertoire before they
are six months old – the ‘cooing’
which may resemble some of the first
sounds of speech.
This evolves into babbling – the first
extended repetitions by children of
some basic phonemic combinations
such as ‘babababa’ etc.
From out of these streams of sounds
eventually emerge a small repertoire
of utterances that sound something
like a word. However, these single
words may appear to serve a
multitude of functions or to have more
than one meaning.
Mean Length of Utterance (MLU), Roger Brown (1969)
MLU is used to define stages of Child Language Acquisition. MLU is calculated by dividing the
total number of words (morphemes – smallest meaningful part of a word) spoken by the number
of utterances a child makes. So if a baby used two words in two utterances the MLU would be
one. Brown has related MLU scores to stages of CLA:
MLU Score
1.1 – 2.0
2.0 – 2.5
2.5 – 3.0
3.0 – 3.5
3.5 – 4.0
Stage
1
2
3
4
5
A2 LANGUAGE ACQUISITION – REVISION OF
STAGES
Group the following features of children’s language under the appropriate
framework heading in the table provided:
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Adjacency pairs.
8-20 weeks cooing and laughing.
Young children talk about what is going on around them, the ‘here and now’.
Deixis.
Holophrastic / one-word: (nouns, verbs, some adjectives, adverbs).
Over-extension.
Early consonants /n/ /m/ /p/ /h/ /t/ /k/.
The heuristic function drives children to seek meanings.
Topic initiation.
There is a dramatic increase of lexis in the third year.
Telegraphic stage (lexical words e.g. man got car).
Turn-taking.
12-18 months melodic utterance.
Later consonants /v/ /z/.
Questions.
Age 3 compound sentences using coordinating conjunctions especially ‘and’.
Under-extension.
Role of care-takers in ‘framing’ situation to make meaning clear.
0-8 weeks basic biological noises.
Conversational repairs.
Morphology.
On average one year olds learn to say 10 new words a month.
20 – 30 weeks vocal play.
Age 3+ complex sentences using subordinating conjunctions e.g. ‘cos, so, if,
when etc…
2 word stage e.g. daddy kick, there teddy.
Topic initiation.
Forms of address and politeness markers.
Non-verbal communication is vital.
Older children acquire a wider range of words (begin to use the hyponyms).
On average one year olds understand 22 new words a month.
Lexical repetition.
25-50 weeks reduplicated babbling and variegated babbling.
Children young as 2 can produce in excess of 20,000 words a day.
LEXIS
SEMANTICS
GRAMMAR
PHONOLOGY
CONVERSATION
ANALYSIS
STAGES OF EARLY LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Stage
1
2
3
Function
What children are trying to do with
their language (e.g., make
requests, ask questions, make
statements)
Meaning
The states, events and relationships about which children talk
Meaning here refers to meaning shown in performance.
Children’s first utterances usually
serve three purposes:
 to get someone’s attention
 to direct attention to an object
or event
 to get something they want
 Next, they begin to:
 make rudimentary statements
(Bird gone)
 make requests
Children begin by naming the thing referred to (the “naming
insight”)
Soon they move beyond this to relating objects to other things,
places and people (Daddy car; There Mummy) as well as to
events (Bird gone). They are concerned with articulating the
present state of things, describing or relating things and events
in their world.
Structure
The way in which the language is put together – its grammar
Children may have competence which they have no occasion
to demonstrate.
Many of the remarks at this age are single words, either the
names of things, or words such as there, look, want, more,
allgone. They are often referred to as operators because here
(as opposed to their function in adult speech) they serve to
convey the whole of the child’s meaning or intention.
Other remarks consist of object name and operator in a twoword combination: Look Mummy, Daddy gone, There dog.
Because of the limited language forms which they can control,
children convey information by intonation, by non-verbal
means, or by the listener’s shared awareness of the situation.
(It gone – the listener has seen what it is.)
At this stage children begin to ask
Children become concerned with naming and classifying things
questions; usually where questions (frequently asking wassat?).
come first.
They may begin to talk about locations changing (e.g. people
coming or going or getting down or up).
They talk simply about the attributes of things (e.g. things being
hot/cold, big/small, nice; naughty doggy; it cold, Mummy).
Children’s questions at this stage often begin with interrogative
pronouns (what, where) followed by a noun (the object being
asked about) or verb (denoting some action): where ball? where
gone?
Articles (a/an or the) appear before nouns. Basic
[subject]+[verb] structure emerges: It gone, Man run, or
[subject]+[verb]+[object]: Teddy sweeties (=Teddy wants some
sweets).
By now children ask lots of
different questions, but often
signalling that they are questions
by intonation alone (Sally play in
garden, Mummy?).
They express more complex wants
in grammatically complex
sentences: I want daddy [to] take it
[to] work.
The basic sentence structure has expanded: [subject]+[verb]
+[object] +[adverb or other element] appears: You dry hands; A
man dig down there.
Children now begin to talk about actions which change the
object acted upon (You dry hands).
Verbs like listen and know appear as children start to refer to
people’s mental states.
Children refer to events in the past and (less often) the future.
Children talk about continuing actions (He doing it; She still in
bed) and enquire about the state of actions (whether
something is finished). They begin to articulate the changing
nature of things.
Children begin to use auxiliary verbs (I am going) and phrases
like in the basket [preposition]+[article]+[noun].
Stages of early language acquisition
Stage
4
Function
What children are trying to do with their language
Meaning
Structure
The states, events and relationships about which The way in which the language is put together – its syntax
children talk
or grammar
As children begin to use increasingly complex
sentence structures, they also begin to:
Because children are now able to use complex
sentence structures, they have flexible language tools
for conveying a wide range of meanings.
Perhaps the most striking development is their grasp
(language competence) and use (language
performance) of abstract verbs like know to express
mental operations.
Children in this stage begin to express meaning
indirectly, replacing imperatives (Give me...) with
questions (Can I have?) when these suit their
purposes better.
As well as saying what they mean, they now have
pragmatic understanding, and suit their utterances to
the context or situation.
Children by this stage use question forms (Can I have
one?) and negation (He doesn’t want one) easily, no
longer relying on intonation to signal their intent. They are
now able to use auxiliary verbs: do is the first to appear,
followed by can and will. Children may duplicate modal
verbs (Please may can I...?): this may reflect
understanding that may is required for courtesy, while can
indicates the fact of being able to do something.
Children use one part of a sentence to refer to another
part – they use (often implied) relative clauses: I know
you’re there (implied that after know); I want the pen
Mummy gave me (implied that after pen). Now they can
do this, language is a very flexible means of
communication for them.
Children are now able to talk about things
hypothetically or conditionally: If you do that, it’ll...
They are able to explain the conditions required for
something to happen: You’ve got to switch that on
first... Often they talk about things which are always
so – that is, about general states of affairs.
As well as general references to past and future,
children now talk about particular times: after tea;
before bedtime; when Daddy comes home...
They are able to estimate the nature of actions or
events, e.g., that things are habitual, repetitive or just
beginning.
By this stage, children are quite at home with all question
structures including those beginning with words like What?
and When? Where the subject and verb are inverted
(transposed): What does it mean? When is Mummy
coming?
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make a wide range of requests (e.g. Shall I
cut it? Can I do it?)
explain
ask for explanations (Why questions appear)
By now children frequently use language to do all
the things they need it for:
5
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giving information
asking and answering questions of various
kinds
requesting (directly and indirectly)
suggesting
offering
stating intentions/ asking about those of
others
expressing feelings and attitudes and asking
about those of others
Children use sentences made up of several clauses,
whether multiple (using co-ordinate clauses) or complex
(using subordinate or relative clauses, and parentheses).
Up to now grammatical development has mostly added to
the length of sentences. Now children use structures
which allow more economy (this is known as cohesion).
This model explains the sequence of language acquisition. Children will vary individually in when (relative to their peers) they reach each stage, but there is little variation in the
sequence of language learning. By the end of Stage 5, a child’s language is in place and he or she has a basic lexicon (personal vocabulary) of several thousand words. From
now on what is learned increasingly depends upon experience and environment – on opportunities to use language and to hear it used, for a wide range of purposes and a wide
range of audiences in a wide range of contexts. The model does not show the acquisition of literacy, which is more subject to environment and cultural expectations.
APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE
Read the examples below. Using your knowledge of CLA, try to make comments in the spaces provided
about the child’s language use. When you have finished refer to the comments on the next page.
Example 1
A four-year old talks about what he wants to be when he grows up.
Adult What do you want to be when you grow up?
Child A dowboy.
Adult So you want to be a dowboy, eh?
Child (irritated) No! Not a dowboy, a dowboy!
Your comment:
Example 2
Kate (2 yrs 6 mths) is sitting on the knee of a family friend.
Adult (pointing to one of Kate's feet) What's that?
Kate A footsie
Adult (pointing to both feet) What are these?
Kate Two footsies - no, two feetsies, I mean.
Your comment:
Example 3
Matthew (2 yrs) watches his mum spoon stewed rhubarb from a saucepan into a bowl.
Matthew Dis rubile looks like biscetti.
Your Comment:
Example 4
Malpreet (2 yrs 6 mths) is talking to her mother in the kitchen.
Malpreet One day there was a little horse then there was a big horse, then there was a mummy horse. They came
to my house. They went out to car, then I started to cry and I said "Sadha nell owna"(transcription of Panjabi - "I
want to go, too") and mummy said they are going, then I went safari park.
Your Comment:
COMMENTS
Example 1 Comment
This extract (from Garton and Pratt, 1989) reminds us that very young children's awareness of
phonological sound often outstrips their capacity to form the correct sounds. The child
understands the distinction between /k/ and /d/ but cannot pronounce /k/. The child knows more
about language than he is able to produce.
Example 2 Comment
Here language is being used as a ritual adult/child game rather than for purposes of genuine
instruction. In this example there is evidence of the child's awareness of over-regularization of a
rule and its self-correction. The rules are complicated by the child's use of the baby talk form
footsie. Kate remembers that the irregular plural of foot is feet and not foots, but then she
inflects the corrected plural with -s to form a double plural: feetsies. The "I mean" draws
attention to the change as the self-conscious and deliberate correction of a slip. (From Garton
and Pratt, 1989.)
Example 3 Comment
Matthew is using language to make links and comparisons. He notices that the stringy nature of
stewed rhubarb is like spaghetti. Conceptually the words are meaningful and distinct, but he
hasn't yet perfected their pronunciation. Rubile is quite like the pronunciation of rhubarb (where
the final b is often not distinctly sounded) and biscetti probably derives from the familiarity of
biscuit and the difficulty of pronouncing the /sp/ in initial position. In some families, children's
early mispronunciations are retained as part of the family code of "intimate speech" - lornwakes
for cornflakes, etc.
Example 4 Comment
Malpreet is talking to her mother in the kitchen. Her oral narrative tells the story of horses
coming to the house to go to the safari park in her car. She thinks she is being left out, and
cries. The narrative has the conventional opening ‘One day’, sustains a first-person narrative
and past tense, and includes direct speech. Elements of the story are connected, using the
adverb then. As a bilingual child, Malpreet switches into Panjabi for the dramatic centre of the
story, where she utters her own words as a character in her story.
Child-directed speech
Phonology
 Separate phrases more distinctly, leaving longer pauses between them.
 Speak more s-l-o-w-l-y.
 Use exaggerated ‘singsong’ intonation, which helps to emphasise key words. Also to exaggerate
the difference between questions, statements and commands.
 Use a higher and wider pitch range.
Lexis and semantics
 Use of concrete nouns (cat, train) and dynamic verbs (give, put).
 Adopt child’s own words for things (doggie, wickle babbit).
 Frequent use of child’s name and an absence of pronouns.
Grammar
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Simpler constructions
Frequent use of imperatives
High degree of repetition
Use of personal names instead of pronouns (e.g. ‘Mummy’ not ‘I’)
Fewer verbs, modifiers and adjectives
Large number of one-word utterances
Deixis used to point child’s attention to objects or people
Repeated sentence frames eg. “that’s a ……”
Use more simple sentences and fewer complex and passives.
Omission of past tenses, inflections (plurals and possessives).
Use more commands, questions and tag questions.
Use of EXPANSIONS – where the adult fills out the child’s utterance.
Use of RE-CASTINGS – where the child’s vocabulary is put into a new utterance.
Pragmatics
 Lots of gesture and warm body language.
 Fewer utterances per turn – stopping frequently for child to respond.
 Supportive language (expansions and re-castings).
Are there are variations due to the gender of the caregiver?
Research has suggested that fathers are more demanding than mothers, using more direct questions
and a wider range of vocabulary.
What effects do you think this kind of speech has on children?
Some claim that it retains the attention of the child, others that it makes language more accessible.
Some claim that children learn by repetition – can this explain the fact that children can produce
sentences which they have never heard before?
Others claim that ‘babytalk’ actually interferes with language development because children learn
babyish words and sentences instead of the real language.
Not every culture uses such forms of child-directed speech. In Samoa and Papua New Guinea, adults
speak to children as they speak to adults, and children acquire language at the same pace as
elsewhere.
Where else might you hear this kind of speech???
ENB6 CLA
Child directed speech / Babytalk / Motherese / Parentese
Features and purposes of CDS
CDS aims to:
 Attract and hold the baby’s attention.
 Help the process of braking down language into understandable chunks.
 Make the conversation more predictable by referring to the here-and-now.
Look at the features of CDS below. Try to rate the extent to which they might help the above 3
aims. So, if you think features A helps to attract conversation (feature 1) and makes
conversation predictable (feature 3) then in the ‘what does it do?’ column you need to write 1
and 3.
FEATURE OF CDS
Higher pitch and exaggerated
intonation and stress.
Repeated sentence frames such as
‘that’s a -------‘ and ‘that’s a-------’
whereby the gap is filled with a
different word each time.
Repetition and partial repetition of the
adults’ own words.
Questions and commands (getting
the child to do something).
Frequent use of the child’s name and
absence of pronouns.
Absence of past tenses eg threw, ran,
played.
A large number of one-word
utterances.
Use of simple sentences eg Fred eats
rats.
Omission of inflections such as
plurals (planets) and possessives
(mummy’s).
Fewer verbs, modifiers (eg adjectives
in front of nouns) and function words
such as ‘my’ ‘at’ etc…
Use of concrete nouns (cat, train
etc) and dynamic verbs (give, put
etc).
Use of expansions – where the adult
fills out the child’s utterance.
Use of re-castings – where the
baby’s vocabulary is put into a new
utterance.
WHAT DOES IT DO?
ENB6 CLA
CDS Activity
The following is a transcript of an 18 month old baby Katherine, and her mother. The numbers
at the side of the page are simply line numbers to make it easier to analyse.
1) Find as many features of CDS as you can.
2) Do you think the mother’s language appears to assist the baby?
Extract
1
K: I stuck
2
M: You’re stuck. There. Is that better?
3
K: Yeh.
4
M: You alright now?
5
K: Got my socks on.
6
M: You have. What colour are your socks ?
7
K: Pink.
8
M: Yes they are pink.
9
K: (indecipherable) put my slippers on.
10
M: Mmm. What colour are your slippers?
11
K: Um. Red.
12
M: Red. Red and…
13
K: O…don’t’ know… and
14
M: And…(2) red and …. What?
15
K: Red and blue.
16
M: Red and blue. Yes, they are. They’re red and blue slippers.
17
K: With a zip.
18
M: With a zip.
Child-directed speech – research
Clarke-Stewart (1973)
Found that children whose mothers talk more have larger vocabularies.
Katherine Nelson (1973)
Found that children at the holophrastic stage whose mothers corrected them on word choice
and pronunciation actually advanced more slowly than those with mothers who were generally
accepting.
(Brown, Cazden and Bellugi 1969)
Found that parents often respond to the TRUTH value of what their baby is saying, rather than
its grammatical correctness. For example, a parent is more likely to respond to “there doggie”
with “Yes, it’s a dog!” than “No, it’s there is a dog.”
Berko and Brown (1960)
Brown spoke to a child who referred to a “fis” meaning “fish”. Brown replied using “fis” and the
child corrected him again but saying “fis”. Finally Brown reverted to “fish” to which the child
responded “Yes, fis.” This shows that babies do not hear themselves in the same way that they
hear others and no amount of correction will change this.
CDS – some conclusions
 Recent research argues the CDS doesn’t directly help babies learn language, instead it
helps parents communicate with children = its purpose is social rather than educational.
 In some cultures (non-western) babies are expected to blend in with adult interaction and
no special accommodation is made in speech addressed to them. These children still go
through the same developmental stages at roughly the same time as long as there is
EXPOSURE to language. However Clark & Clark’s research suggests that children who
are only exposed to adult speech do not acquire the same standard of language as those
whose parents speak to them directly in a modified manner.
 The older argument that baby-talk is ‘harmful’ to a child learning a new language is being
replaced. People now think it’s beneficial to the child.
 A child’s language improves when in contact with an adult who speaks to them directly.
Theory Memory Test
Complete the following table using the key. Match the description to the associated theory:
 B = Behaviourist
 C = Chomsky
 P = Piaget
 V = Vygotsky
 S = Social process
1.
A child acquires increasingly complex forms of
language only when their intellectual development is
ready for it.
2.
A child’s language acquisition and development is
enriched and accelerated according to the quantity and
quality of its social interactions with adults.
3.
Children are encouraged to imitate the language of
their caregivers and receive positive reinforcement in
terms of gratification of needs and attention/praise.
4.
Children usually acquire the pronunciations of their
caregivers.
5.
Egocentric speech (i.e. that used during play and when
no one else is nearby) demonstrates children using
language themselves to make sense of the world they
are experiencing.
6.
It is only through interaction with caregivers/adults that
children learn the pragmatics of language use.
7.
Children everywhere seem to learn language at a more
or less similar pace.
8.
Politeness strategies appear to be explicitly taught
through imitation.
9.
When egocentric speech becomes internalised (as
children learn it can be consider anti-social), it
becomes the language of thought and, therefore, part
of the means of cognitive development.
10.
Children consistently overgeneralise grammatical
constructions.
CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
REVISION
Write, using a single paragraph for each, a clear and concise explanation for each of the following terms
and concepts that you have looked at in this unit:
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Imitation and reinforcement
Cognition (intellectual development)
Innateness and the ‘L.A.D.’
Input theory – ‘motherese / parentese’
Cooing
Babbling
Single-word’ stage
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‘Two-word’ stage
‘Telegraphic speech’
Analogy
Asking questions
Forming negatives
Turn-taking
Attention holding
Write a commentary that discusses the contrast in the following two examples, approximately eighteen
months apart, of an interaction between a mother and her young child.
IMPORTANT! As well as discussing the stages of language acquisition in the two exchanges, consider
using as many of the following technical terms as you can in your response:
Participation
Conversation
Utterances
Questioning
Erratic
Attentionholding
Disjointed
Turn-taking
Monologue
Initiation
Dialogue
Clarification
1. The child at 2 years old and mother:
CHILD:
MOTHER:
CHILD:
MOTHER:
CHILD:
MOTHER:
CHILD:
MOTHER:
CHILD:
Ball. Kick. Kick. Daddy kick.
That’s right, you have to kick it don’t you?
Mmm. Um. Um. Kick hard. Only kick hard. Our play that. On floor. Our play
that on floor. Now. Our play that. On floor. Our play that on floor. No that. Now.
All right.
Mummy, come on floor with me.
Yes.
You tip those out.
Mm. All right.
That one broke.
2. The child at 3½ years old and mother:
CHILD:
MOTHER:
CHILD:
MOTHER:
CHILD:
MOTHER:
CHILD:
MOTHER:
CHILD:
MOTHER:
CHILD:
MOTHER:
Hester be fast asleep, mummy.
She was tired.
And why did her have two sweets, mummy?
Because you each had two, that’s why. She had the same as you. Ooh dear,
now what?
Daddy didn’t give me two in the end.
Yes, he did.
He didn’t.
He did.
Look he given one to – two to Hester, and two to us.
Yes, that’s right.
Why did he give?
’Cos there were six sweets. That’s two each.