CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

REVISION PACK
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
around them.

intonation of the language being spoken

Crying
During the first few weeks of a childs 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 childs 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 e.g.: 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 arent 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 whats that?
Understanding
Although the child may not yet have begun to speak properly, it doesnt mean they dont 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 e.g.) the t sound in hat and cat
Unstressed syllables are often deleted e.g.) banana becomes nana
Consonant clusters are reduced e.g.) 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 Hallidays Learning how to mean proposed seven main functions that spurred a child to want to use language.

FUNCTION

WHAT IT IS
Language used to fulfil a

WHAT ITS USED FOR

Directly concerned with

INSTRUMENTAL

speakers 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 speakers
identity
Used to communicate
information

HEURISTIC

Used to learn and explore the

environment

IMAGINATIVE

used to explore the

imagination

obtaining food, drink

comfort etc . e.g. I want
Persuading / commanding /
requesting other people do
as you want daddy push
(child on swing)
The Phatic dimension of talk
e.g. hello
Sometimes referred to the
here I am! function
conveys attitudes, expresses
feelings
Relaying or requesting
information e.g. I got a new
doll
Using language to learn
this may be questions or
answers or the kind of
running commentary that
accompanies childs 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 Dores Infant Language Functions is a lot simpler to learn.

FUNCTION

EXAMPLE

LABELLING

Naming or identifying a person, object or

experience

REPEATING
ANSWERING
REQUESTING ACTION
CALLING
GREETING
PROTESTING
PRACTISING
ENB6 CLA
GRAMMATICAL DEVELOPMENT part 1

Echoing something spoken by an adult speaker

Giving a direct response to an utterance from
another speaker
Demanding food, drink, toy, assistance etc
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 Ive 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 hasnt 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, Bens 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 dont 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 mummys sock

Mummys 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 childrens 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 (e.g.): he sings
7) auxiliary verb be (e.g.): 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 e.g.: 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 cant 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 cant always use wh-words correctly yet
and might say things like why Joe isnt here?
NEGATIVES
This also happens in three stages:
1) Words no and not are used in front of other expressions e.g.) no want
2) During the third year dont and cant are used e.g.) I dont want it
3) In the third stage more negative forms are acquired such as didnt and isnt 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 childs 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 didnt however, learn to
ask questions and didnt 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
this is when language develops rapidly and with ease.
Although much language learning takes place during pre-school years, it continues into adulthood. Therefore, young childrens proficiency in
language does not seem to involve a biologically critical period.

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

STAGES OF EARLY LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Stage

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.

Structure
The way in which the language is put together its grammar

Childrens first utterances usually

serve three purposes:
to get someones 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.

At this stage children begin to ask

questions; usually where
questions come first.

Children become concerned with naming and classifying

things (frequently asking wassat?).
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).

Childrens 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.

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
peoples 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.

The basic sentence structure has expanded: [subject]+[verb] +

[object] +[adverb or other element] appears: You dry hands; A
man dig down there.

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 childs 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 listeners shared awareness of the situation.
(It gone the listener has seen what it is.)

Children begin to use auxiliary verbs (I am going) and phrases

like in the basket [preposition]+[article]+[noun].

Stages of early language acquisition

Stage

Function
What children are trying to do with their language

Meaning
The states, events and relationships about which
children talk

Structure
The way in which the language is put together its syntax
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 doesnt 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
youre 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, itll...
They are able to explain the conditions required for
something to happen: Youve 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?

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

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).