Lecture 1 Early Language development

The Early Stages Beginnings of Language Development

What was the first word you learned? What types of words would you expect children to learn first? Rachel’s first words: • • • • • • • • •

Jasper Socks Daddy Shoes Juice Bye-bye More Hello ball

• • • • • • • • •

Nana Grandad ta poo book duck Quack quack Woof hot

• • • • • • • • •

Hiya No Yes Please Bot-bot My Toast Marmite jam

Stages of development … • NB: Children do not all develop at the same pace. • However: Children all around the world do pass through the same set of stages. There is a universal pattern of development, regardless of the language being acquired.

Before birth … • Evidence suggests that even in the womb, the growing baby acclimatises to the sounds of its native language. • Mehler 1988: French new born babies were able to distinguish French from other languages.

Crying … • First few weeks: child expresses itself vocally through crying. • Signals hunger, distress or pleasure. • Instinctive noise (so not language).

Cooing … • Also known as gurgling or mewing. • 6-8 weeks old. • ‘Coo’, ‘ga-ga’ and ‘goo’. • Child develops increasing control over vocal chords.

Babbling … • Most important stage in the first year. • 6-9 months old. • Sounds begin to resemble adult sounds more closely.

Babbling … • Consonant and vowel combinations: ‘ba’, ‘ma’ and ‘da’. • Bilabial sounds most common (i.e. using the lips). • When these sounds are repeated = reduplicated monosyllable.

Babbling … • These sounds have no meaning. • Baby makes far more noise than before. • Exercises and experiments with its articulators (parts of the body that make sounds).

Phonemic expansion … • Phoneme: smallest element of sound in a language that can display contrast and hence change meaning or function of a word, e.g. initial sounds in ban and Dan. • During babbling, number of different phonemes produced increases (expands).

Phonemic contraction … • 9-10 months. • Number of phonemes produced reduces to those found in the native language (contracts). • Baby discards sounds not required.

Phonemic contraction … • Evidence: noises made by children of different nationalities starts to sound different. • Experiments: native adults have successfully identified babies from own country.

Intonation … • Intonation patterns begin to resemble speech. • Common: rising intonation at end of utterance. • Other variations in rhythm/emphasis may suggest greeting or calling.

Gesture … • Although they do not yet have the power of speech, desire to communicate indicated through gesture. • Example: point to object and use facial expression, ‘What’s that?’. • Beginnings of pragmatic development (i.e. recognising that social context affects meaning).

Understanding … • Although child may not begin to speak, they might understand meanings of certain words. • Word recognition: usually evident by end of first year. • Common: names, ‘no’ and ‘bye-bye’.

The first word …

• Somewhere around 12 months the child makes its first recognizable word.

Holophrastic stage • Single word utterances e.g. teddy, mamma etc • 60% of children’s first utterances are nouns e.g. ball, dog, etc. Nelson found that these are often the names of objects which are small and easily handled by a child, or things that make a noise e.g. car • Nelson (1973) identified three other categories including: Actions / events e.g. cuddle, jump, Describing / modifying words e.g. more, two, Personal / social words e.g. hiya, wassat Due to limited number of words, children may make mistakes e.g. Underextension and overextension

Two-word Stage • At around 18 months babies begin to combine words to form two-word utterances • Although their sentences are not complete, the syntax is usually correct • Utterances focus on key words, dropping function words • Inflection is used to get meaning across e.g. How many different ways can you say ‘my car’ to give it different meanings?

Telegraphic Stage • 3 and 4 word utterances begin to be produced • Some will be grammatically correct, others will miss out grammatical elements • Like a telegram, key words are used • A wider range of structures are formed e.g. Interrogatives, commands and simple statements

Post-telegraphic stage • Children make rapid progress • Their vocabulary widens considerably • By 5 years most of the basic grammatical rules have been learned, although some take longer e.g. The passive • More than one clause appears

New vocabulary … • • • • • • • •

Acclimatised Instinctive Cooing Babbling Bilabial Re-duplicated monosyllable Phonemic expansion Phonemic contraction