UTSA SHAH

CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

First draft

There have been many theories hypothesising how a child picks-up or learns a particular language. What is the driving force behind grasping a language? Whether it is innate or acquired? Mentioned below are a few contrasting theories that have been put down by experts. 1. Native/ generativist / universal grammar (UG) These theories assume that the linguistic knowledge or the basic principles of a language are innate and not acquired. Childrens knowledge of grammar, syntax, (syntactic operation: verb phrase, noun phrase) or morphological operation (inflectional morphology) i.e. when past tense is added to a regular verb (called inflectional morpheme) are all present since the birth of the child. 2. Constructivist / socio-pragmatic / emergentist / usage based proposals These theories assume that children do not have innate knowledge of grammar that is they are not born with grammatical categories such as verb or a noun, but they acquire them by generalizing across the adult speech that they hear. These approaches are an input based approach that is they believe that characteristics of the input are a driving force in childrens language acquisition. (Children will most easily acquire the words and constructions that they encounter most frequently). For eg inflectional morphemes are produced by using the analogy of similar sounding words. Childrens language acquisition is driven by their desire to use language to perform communicative functions.

Language is not a genetic gift, it is a social gift. -- Frank Smith

STAGES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

There are five basic stages of language acquisition: Cooing (3 5 months) Babbling (8 10 months) One-word utterances (10 months 1 year) Telegraphic speech (20 months 2.5 years) Normal speech (between 5 6 years)

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UTSA SHAH

CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

First draft

Cooing: Appears at about 6 months or so. All infants coo using all the phonemes from every language. It comprises mostly of vowel sounds like aaa, ooo etc. Babbling: Appears at around 9 months. Infants are starting to selectively use the phonemes from their native language. Consonants are also introduced along with vowels and he is able to correlate words with objects or people. It starts using words with repetitive sounds like dada, mama etc. One-word utterances: At around 12 months, children start using words. They can also recognize correct pronunciation of familiar words. The next stage observed is two word utterances by age of 18 months. Telegraphic speech: Children start making multi-word utterances that lack function words i.e. conjunctions & articles (at about 2 years) for eg. Daddy office Normal speech: By about 5-6 years of age, children have almost normal speech with good command over syntax and semantics. In later stage development of vocabulary and pragmatics takes place.

Language acquisition has the following areas: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Semantics Pragmatics Syntax Morphology Phonology

SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT IN A CHILD Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, like words, phrases, signs, and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotation. Linguistic semantics is the study of meaning that is used for understanding human expression through language. Other forms of semantics include the semantics of programming languages, formal logics, and semiotics. Semantic development is more complex and slower than phonological or syntactical development and we keep expanding our semantic knowledge throughout our entire lives. The development of semantics involves two main activities: a constant expansion of vocabulary and a reorganisation of the semantic networks between words that constitute the semantic structure of language. Infants semantic development thus involves the gradual refinement of the meaning of words until their words approaches the composite of the adult meaning. Children tend to produce their first words sometime between nine and twelve months. One-yearolds have about 5 words in their vocabulary on average, although individual children may have none or as many as thirty; by two years of age, average vocabulary size is more than 150 words, with a range among individual children from as few as 10 to as many as 450 words. Children possess a vocabulary of about 14,000 words by six years of age; adults have an estimated average of 40,000 words in their working vocabulary at age forty. In order to achieve such a vocabulary, a child must learn to say at least a few new words each day from birth. 5-August-2013 Page 2

UTSA SHAH STAGES:

CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

First draft

There are several categories of meaning that all children seem to express. These are semantic categories, which literally means meaning categories. They are:
(1) AGENT (2) OBJECT (3) ACTION (4) LOCATION

AGENT
Children usually make a distinction between animate beings and inanimate objects. Animate beings are things that are alive such as dogs, cats, horses, people, and so on. All of these are capable of acting under their own volition. The term used to describe the semantic category that includes words that refer to animate beings is AGENT. Examples: mummy, daddy.

OBJECT
In contrast to animate beings, inanimate objects are not alive and they are, therefore, not capable of acting independently or of making decisions. The semantic category used to include all inanimate objects is simply labelled OBJECT. This category would, therefore, include such things as table, spoon, cup, usually concrete, objects.

ACTION
A third semantic category is that of ACTION. Words in this category which express the idea of action include such words as kick, run, bark, and so on.

LOCATION
Words in this semantic category express the notion of place. They may indicate where an AGENT or OBJECT is, or moves to, and where an ACTION is performed. Examples include garden, house.

Children begin to combine words into short combinations when their expressive vocabulary has reached between 50-100 words. However, the two-word utterances that children produce are not the product of random combinations of words. Rather, children are systematic and logical in the way they combine words to express meaning.

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UTSA SHAH AGENT + ACTION

CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

First draft

A common relation found in the majority of children between the ages of about 20-30 months is that of AGENT + ACTION. Consider the following. AGENT daddy ACTION Go

Here the word daddy represents an animate being, one that can act by its own will and make independent decisions. The word go expresses the meaning of an ACTION, in this case going. A further example is set out below. AGENT Dog ACTION Bark

Again, dog refers to an animate being. Whilst a dog may not be considered capable of making decisions in the same way a human is, it nevertheless is alive and can act independently. It is, therefore, considered to be an AGENT. The word bark is another expression of an ACTION. Further examples include the following. AGENT Mummy Bird Horse ACTION run sing jump

ACTION + OBJECT Another common semantic relation is that of ACTION + OBJECT. Here is an example: ACTION Kick OBJECT ball

Here, kick is an ACTION in the same way that bark was considered an ACTION in dog bark and go was considered an ACTION in daddy go. The inanimate OBJECT in this two-word utterance is clearly the ball. Now, the exact meaning the child intends when uttering a phrase like kick ball needs to be picked up from the context in which it is said. For example, if the child is kicking a ball then this utterance may be intended to mean, Im kicking the ball. However, if the ball is on the floor in front of you and the child points to you and says, kick ball! then this may be meant as, you kick the ball now. The first interpretation is more like the child describing what he or she is doing and the second more like giving an instruction. Further examples of ACTION + OBJECT include the following.

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UTSA SHAH ACTION drink cut eat

CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION OBJECT Milk Paper Dinner

First draft

From the above examples we can derive a faint idea how semantic development in a child takes place. Given below is a chronology of semantic development in a child:
812 mos. Understand 350 words. First words are used for names of familiar people and objects; communicative games and routines; to talk about appearance, disappearance, recurrence. Average expressive vocabulary size: 50100 words at 18 mos. Semantic roles are expressed in one-word speech, including agent, action, object, location, possession, rejection, disappearance, nonexistence, denial. Words are understood outside of routine games; still need contextual support for lexical comprehension. Average expressive vocabulary size: 200300 words at 24 mos. Prevalent relations expressed: agentaction, agent object, actionobject, actionlocation, entitylocation Understanding and use of questions about objects (What?), people (Who?), and basic events (What is x doing? Where is x going?). Use and understand Why? questions. Use and understand basic spatial terms (in, on, under, etc.). Use and understand semantic relationship between adjacent and conjoined sentences, including additive, temporal, causal, contrastive. Understand basic color words. Use and understand basic kinship terms. Use and understand when and how questions. Understand words for basic shapes (circle, square, triangle). Use and understand basic size vocabulary (big, small). Use conjunctions and and because to conjoin sentences. Knowledge of letter names and sounds emerges. Knowledge of numbers and counting emerges. Use conjunctions when, so, because, and if. Reorganization of lexical knowledge from episodic to semantic networks occurs. Average expressive vocabulary size: 5,000 words.

1218 mos.

1824 mos.

2430 mos.

3036 mos.

3642 mos.

4248 mos.

4860 mos.

57 years

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