Language Acquisition

Gareth Price - Duke

Some Basic Principles of Child Language Acquisition

• Children generally acquire language sequentially• Simple Complex

• Cooing• Babbling• One Word• Two Word / ‘Telegraphic’ speech• Complex utterances

• Don’t necessarily hit all stages at the same age• But e.g. questions won’t come before babbling, for example

Stage Age Description Framework

Cooing < 2 mo

2 – 4 mo

4 – 6 mo

Vegetative noises

Comfort noises – vowels, nasals, velars

Vocal play – pitch, loudness, friction noises, nasal murmurs, glottal stops and fricatives

Can gaze at correct object and recognise correct phonological inventory (discriminate between talk / non-talk)

Phonetics

Phonology?

Semantics?

Babbling 6 – 8 mo Canonical – reduplication of C/V/CV

Variegated – recombination of different CV patterns

Usually velars and stops.Fricatives and affricates / clusters – less common

*** simplified ‘caretaker’ speech

Phonetics

Phonology

Salome, age 3 weeks

Stage Age Description Framework

Cooing < 2 mo

2 – 4 mo

4 – 6 mo

Vegetative noises

Comfort noises – vowels, nasals, velars

Vocal play – pitch, loudness, friction noises, nasal murmurs, glottal stops and fricatives

Can gaze at correct object and recognise correct phonological inventory (discriminate between talk / non-talk)

Phonetics

Phonology?

Semantics?

Babbling 6 – 8 mo Canonical – reduplication of C/V/CV

Variegated – recombination of different CV patterns

Usually velars and stops.Fricatives and affricates / clusters – less common

*** simplified ‘caretaker’ speech

Phonetics

Phonology

age 2 months

Stage Age Description Framework

Cooing < 2 mo

2 – 4 mo

4 – 6 mo

Vegetative noises

Comfort noises – vowels, nasals, velars

Vocal play – pitch, loudness, friction noises, nasal murmurs, glottal stops and fricatives

Can gaze at correct object and recognise correct phonological inventory (discriminate between talk / non-talk)

Phonetics

Phonology?

Semantics?

Babbling 6 – 8 mo Canonical – reduplication of C/V/CV

Variegated – recombination of different CV patterns

Usually velars and stops.Fricatives and affricates / clusters – less common

*** simplified ‘caretaker’ speech

Phonetics

Phonology

age 5 months

Stage Age Description Framework

Cooing < 2 mo

2 – 4 mo

4 – 6 mo

Vegetative noises

Comfort noises – vowels, nasals, velars

Vocal play – pitch, loudness, friction noises, nasal murmurs, glottal stops and fricatives

Can gaze at correct object and recognise correct phonological inventory (discriminate between talk / non-talk)

Phonetics

Phonology?

Semantics?

Babbling 6 – 8 mo Canonical – reduplication of C/V/CV

Variegated – recombination of different CV patterns

Usually velars and stops.Fricatives and affricates / clusters – less common

*** simplified ‘caretaker’ speech

Phonetics

Phonology

age 5 ½ months

Stage Age Description Framework

Cooing < 2 mo

2 – 4 mo

4 – 6 mo

Vegetative noises

Comfort noises – vowels, nasals, velars

Vocal play – pitch, loudness, friction noises, nasal murmurs, glottal stops and fricatives

Can gaze at correct object and recognise correct phonological inventory (discriminate between talk / non-talk)

Phonetics

Phonology?

Semantics?

Babbling 6 – 8 mo Canonical – reduplication of C/V/CV

Variegated – recombination of different CV patterns

Usually velars and stops.Fricatives and affricates / clusters – less common

*** simplified ‘caretaker’ speech

Phonetics

Phonology

age 7 months

Stage Age Description Framework

Cooing < 2 mo

2 – 4 mo

4 – 6 mo

Vegetative noises

Comfort noises – vowels, nasals, velars

Vocal play – pitch, loudness, friction noises, nasal murmurs, glottal stops and fricatives

Can gaze at correct object and recognise correct phonological inventory (discriminate between talk / non-talk)

Phonetics

Phonology?

Semantics?

Babbling 6 – 8 mo Canonical – reduplication of C/V/CV

Variegated – recombination of different CV patterns

Usually velars and stops.Fricatives and affricates / clusters – less common

*** simplified ‘caretaker’ speech

Phonetics

Phonology

age 7 months

Stage Age Description Framework

Cooing < 2 mo

2 – 4 mo

4 – 6 mo

Vegetative noises

Comfort noises – vowels, nasals, velars

Vocal play – pitch, loudness, friction noises, nasal murmurs, glottal stops and fricatives

Can gaze at correct object and recognise correct phonological inventory (discriminate between talk / non-talk)

Phonetics

Phonology?

Semantics?

Babbling 6 – 8 mo Canonical – reduplication of C/V/CV

Variegated – recombination of different CV patterns

Usually velars and stops.Fricatives and affricates / clusters – less common

*** simplified ‘caretaker’ speech

Phonetics

Phonology

Stage Age Description Framework

One-Word[one morpheme]

9 – 18 mo Open-class lexical items, esp. nouns, some verbs

-Uninflected- Non-derivational roots

-Often naming: ‘Dada’ when doorbell heard, ‘cat’ when seeing the cat walk by.

Underextension / overextension:

‘Bottle’ – one type of bottle‘Dog’ – all animals‘Kick’ – kicking, flapping wings etc.‘Apple’ – all spherical objects

BUT: can understand which one is the apple, etc., if not produce it

Mid-level hyponymy

Phonology

Morphology

Semantics

Stage Age Description Framework

Two-Word 18 - 24 mo Open-class, lexical items; no function or grammatical words / morphemes

Simple phrases: two words with semantic relations

‘Cat black’N + Adj. (NP)

‘Big car’Adj. + N (NP)

‘Fall down’V + P (phrasal verb)

Simple sentences: two words with grammatical relations

‘Mummy go’

S [N] + V

Initially uninflected, though inflection comes later

Semantics

Syntax

Morphology

Phonology?

• Matthew (2 yrs) watches his mum spoon stewed rhubarb from a saucepan into a bowl.

• Matthew Dis rubile looks like biscetti.

• /d/ for /t/• CVL for CVC• CV for CCV• lexical mis-targeting (biscuit spaghetti)• inflectional morphology• syntactic structure• semantic awareness (comparison of qualities)

• 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

• Increased complexity of ‘caretaker speech’ (full syntax)• Comprehension of question / production of answer• Perception of wrong target phoneme /d/ /k/• Misperception of production of wrong target phoneme

• Kate (3 yrs 1 mth) is sitting at the table.

• Kate Can I have a bit of cheese, please? - "Cheese, please?" - that's a rhyme.

• awareness and critical reflection on language• phonological awareness• full syntactic structure• ‘Can’ … ‘please’ – pragmatic intent

• 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.

• 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’ * and mummy said they are going, then I went safari park.

• *[transcription of Panjabi - "I want to go, too“]

• A teacher has asked a group of nursery children (exact ages not given in source)"What is a story?"

• Child 1 Something you read.• Child 2 You could say that it's something that you read to

children.• Child 3 It's got words in it.• Child 4 And it's got the title of the book.• Child 5 Sometimes it's got a tape with it...like a book tape.• Child 6 Sometimes it starts "Once upon a time"...and

sometimes it's got chapters in it.• Child 7 Sometimes at the end it goes..."Happily ever after".

Role of Correction

Child: Want other one spoon, DaddyAdult: You mean, you want the other spoon.Child: Yes, I want other one spoon, please Daddy.Adult: Can you say “the other spoon”?Child: Other … one … spoonAdult: Say “other”Child: otherAdult: “spoon”Child: Spoon.Adult: “other … spoon”Child: other … spoon. Now give me other one spoon.

Martin Braine (1971)