CMD 306

Unit 3

PRE-LINGUISTIC AND EARLY

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
 Learning Objectives
After participating in class and reading the text, students will be able to:
• Discuss how caregivers establish and maintain interactions with infants that
promote language development

• Explain the importance of child-directed speech

• Describe the ways caregivers expand and extend children’s utterances

• Distinguish between free and bound morphemes

• Count the number of morphemes in an utterance & calculate the MLU of a

sample utterance

• Identify the components of Brown’s stage I

0 - 24 Months
 Infant Communication Milestones
• Undifferentiated cry
• Differentiated cry
• Cooing
• Babbling
• Variegated babbling
• Jargon
• Single words
• Putting words together
 Child –Caregiver Interactions that Promote
Communication Development
Pre-intentional communication
Crying
Moving arms/legs
Smiling

Caregiver or adult attaches

meaning to interaction
Caregiver interest/adaptation
to infant’s abilities
Infant’s corresponding
interaction (smile, laugh, coo)
 Contingent Responses

Caregiver’s reaction/response to
infant’s behavior influences
infant’s behavior
 Turn-taking
 Responding to infant as a
communicating/feeling person
 Mirroring infant

Joint reference/joint attention:

Caregiver and child focusing on the
same object at the same time
 Necessary in infant
development
 Progresses language
 Contingent Response Example

Father: Yum yum. Yogurt! You like yogurt?

Baby: mmm mmm, (smiles, reaches for spoon)
Father: Looks like you do. More yogurt?
Baby: eeeooo! (shrieks and laughs, reaches again)
Father: Okay. More yogurt. Here it comes. Yummy yogurt!
Baby: aaah (opens mouth)
 Joint Attention
 Caregiver and child are focusing on
the same object or event at the same
time
 Joint focus of attention/joint
reference
 Basis for shared experiences
 Necessary aspect of infant
development

Necessary for language development

 ~ 9 months
 Need:
Gaze following (2 mos)
Shift gaze to follow adult’s shift (3
mos)
Coordinated attention & point-
following
Means-ends
 Motherese/Parentese
Example of Motherese

 Type of speech used with babies  Short, simple sentences

 Talk about subjects child is
 Not the same as adult-directed attending to/engaged in (can
speech see/hear)
 Repeat own utterances
 AKA motherese, parentese, child-  Repeat child’s utterances
directed speech  Use slightly higher pitch &
exaggerated intonation
 Frequent use of pitch extremes –
 Unique characteristics facilitate
language acquisition highs and lows
 Significant pauses between
utterances
 Infants use perceptual abilities to tune  Use lots of questions and
in to speech sounds, pitch changes,
syllable/word stress, overall melody, commands
facial expression, movement, gesture  Exaggerated facial expressions
 Expansions

“Mommy Daddy”  Yes, Mommy and

Daddy are here.
Expansions: Caregiver expands a “Mommy book.”  Mommy, get a
child’s utterance into a complete book for me?
form. He/she does not change
the order of the words in the “Maura Daddy push.”  Look, Maura
child’s utterance and maintains and Daddy are pushing the cart.
what is believed to be child’s
communicative intent. ~20% of child utterances expanded
upon.

Children often respond to expansions by

imitating them.
 Expansions
Expansions are believed to assist acquisition of language by:

 Helping child better understand the grammatical functions of words

and rules for combining them

 Keeping communicative effort focused on subject the child selected

 Reinforcing turn-taking in conversation

 Also may be helpful in acquiring grammatical morphemes, such as

plurals, possessives, and tense markers
 Caregivers tend to produce shorter utterances with toddlers than with
infants

 Relationship between shorter adult utterances in 2nd half of child’s

second year and receptive language abilities at 18 mos. (provide clear
and attainable language targets)
 Extensions

Definition of Extension:
When a caregiver does more than expand the child’s utterance by
providing a more syntactically accurate model and additional semantic
information

“Daddy go.”  “Yes, Daddy went to work.”

Expansions, Extensions, and Imitations:

Provide models with enriched syntactic and semantic information for
the child
Encourage and reward successful communicative attempts
 Child-Directed Speech Matters
Hart & Risley (1995) conducted a longitudinal study of parent-
child talk

42 families over 3 years; children 7-36 months

Key findings:
Amt of parent talk to child directly relates to variation in IQ
and language ability
Amt of talk to children birth – 3 years predicts academic
success at 9 & 10 yrs
Children with advanced language have parents who talk to
them significantly more
Amount of talk that children hear directed to them is a
powerful determinant of language learning
Word gap
 Child-Directed Speech Matters
Hart and Risley results confirmed by Gilkerson & Richards (2008) LENA
Foundation study:

 Parents estimated that they talked more than they did

 Most language from mothers (75% of total talk)

 Mothers talked 9% more to daughters than sons

 Parents talked more to 1st born, than to others, particularly to 1st born
males

 Most talk in child’s environment in late afternoon/early evening

 Talkative parent, talkative child

Gilkerson & Richards (2008) LENA Foundation
 Child-Directed Speech Matters
 Higher average daily talk from parents with college degrees;
average daily talk from top 50% of parents without HS degrees
significantly higher than bottom 50% of college grad parents

 More TV in a child’s day, language scores tend to be lower.

 Patterns of talk similar in monolingual Spanish-speaking

families and monolingual English-speakers

 Parents of children with autism talked less the more severe the
symptoms were

 Parents are variable in amt of day-to-day talk with children;

given feedback, they consistently increase the amount of talk
Gilkerson & Richards (2008) LENA Foundation
 LENA Foundation Study:
Predictability of Language Growth
27 child sample from longitudinal study revealed:

The more adult words children were exposed to, the higher the
language scores a year or more later

The amount of talking makes a very big difference in children’s

language development

Gap in the amount of conversational turns children take

(depending on input from parents) widens 5 months – 3 years

Parents have a very important role as language teachers for their

children.

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LENA Foundation Study: Summary
• There is great variability in parent talk, but tend to be either high or
low talker.

• Parents’ talking pattern influences how talkative their children

become.

• There are peak talking times and low talking times throughout the
day. (both Spanish- and English-speaking)

• Talking plays a critical role in the development of language,

especially in the first three years.

• There are implications of the results of this study in education, early

intervention, public policy, directing future research. 17
 Early Language & TV
Since advent of television programming for children: (Rideout &
Hamel, 2006)
1-year-olds average 80 min in front of TV/day
2-year-olds average 2 hours in front of TV/day

When TV is on: (Christakis et al., 2009)

Caregivers reduce words by 7%
Children decrease their vocalizations

Exposure to language via TV is not sufficient to teach new words to

new language learners. Early language learners require active
engagement with an adult; guiding focus, attention, minimizing other
stimulation. Older children (22 months +) may experience new learning
through educational media. (Krcmar, Grela, & Lin, 2007)
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 Consider…
How might children’s use of screens/screen How might parents’ use of smartphones and
time and impact language development? increased demands from technology impact
children’s language development?
 Expressive Language Milestones
(0-12 months)
Predictable sequence of prelinguistic verbalizations in first year:

• 0-1 mo – reflexive cries, vegetative sounds http://Reflexive Cry Example

• 1-4 mos – cooing, differentiated crying

• 4-6 mos – transitional/marginal babbling, single syllable productions of vowel

& consonant-like sounds Http://Babble Example

• 6-8 mos – reduplicated babbling/variegated babbling:

http://Variegated Babble Example

• 8-12 mos – echolalia, variegated babbling, jargon babbling,

vocables/protowords
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 Early Emerging Language
• Reference personally relevant things (people, objects, actions interesting to baby)
• Limited sounds used
• Limited phonetic forms:
1. Typical: CV (no, kee); VC (up); CVCV (mama)
2. CVC rare: often becomes CV (early phonological process)

• Same word used to express multiple meanings; overextension: (e.g., apple)

• Narrow application of word meaning; underextension (i.e., cookie=choc chip
cookie)
• Uses single words and nonlinguistic utterances such as babbling, emotive sounds,
jargon

• Context is important when transcribing language samples of early talkers (e.g.,

multiple meanings of “doggie”)

• Classifying by function can take into consideration single words and nonlinguistic
utterances.
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From Anderson & Reilly (2002)
 Brown’s Stages
Stage model of grammatical development:

• 1-5 yrs
• 5 stages
• Mean length of utterance (MLU)

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 Brown’s Stages
Stage/Description Age Range (mos) MLU

1 – Semantic roles and grammatical 12-26 1.0-2.0

relations

2 – Grammatical morphemes and the 27-30 2.0-2.5

modulation of meanings

3 – Modalities of the simple sentence 31-34 2.5-3.0

4 – Embedding of one sentence within 35-40 3.0-3.75

another

5 – Coordination of simple sentences and 41-46 3.75-4.50

propositional relations
 Morphemes

Morpheme: smallest unit of meaning in a word

Morphemes can be free or bound

25
 Free Morphemes
Free morpheme: Stands alone. Is a single word. Exists by
itself as a unit of meaning.

cup
table
book
in
window
coffee
sauce
26
 Bound Morphemes
Bound morpheme: Unit attached to words that adds information to the meaning. Can be derivational or
inflectional.

Inflectional: May only be a suffix. Changes meaning of word by marking grammatical meaning.
Marks syntax such as: plural, possession, and verb tense.

Derivational: May be a prefix or a suffix. The addition of the grammatical marker changes the class or
category of the word. i.e., slow vs slowly.

Examples:
desks
played
buyers
happiest
unhappier
distrustful
pumpkin

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28
Morpheme Search

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 Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)
Mean length of utterance Examples:
(MLU) - average # of units of
meaning expressed in I go
utterances across a sample of More help
language Baby
Baby go
• Count number of morphemes Baby goes
• Count number of utterances My baby
• Divide # of morphemes by # Boots
of utterances Kitty go
This book
Up 30
 Brown’s Stage One
Brown’s Stage 1: semantic Syntax: Begins with putting 2 words
roles & grammatical relations together at 18-24 months
Age range 12-26 mos
Sentences: Words arranged
MLU 1.0 - 2.0 together creating meaning greater
than the individual words. Meaning
Early Stage 1: is based on the interactive meanings
MLU 1-1.5 of words. This is based on semantic
Age 12-22 mos and grammatical relationships and
word order.
Late Stage 1: Significance of 2-word utterances
Age 22-26 mos can be considered in 3 areas:
semantic, syntactic,& pragmatic
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 Examples

“Mommy Daddy.”

“Mommy book.”

“Mommy go”

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 Summary – Stage 1
(12-26 mos, MLU 1-2 morphemes)
• 1st word around 12 months
• Combines words around 18 mos/@ 50 words
• Expressive vocabulary (1 word – 200-300 words)
• Initial words typically nouns
• End of stage I producing 2-word & some 3-word
utterances
• Ask questions, make statements, express negatives,
make demands
• Functions: get things done, manipulate others’
behavior, exchange info in basic conversation (early
turn-taking & presuppositional skills)
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 Vocabulary
• Babbling (reduplicated & variegated)
• Contingent response
• Joint reference/attention
• Motherese/parentese/child-directed speech
• Expansion
• Extension
• Word gap
• Morpheme (free, bound, derivational,
inflectional)
• MLU