Stages of Language development- Małgorzata Szulc-Kurpaska

Biological foundations of language

Eric Lenneberg 1967

The Biological Foundations of Language

• The behaviour emerges before it is necessary.

• (The law of anticipatory maturation)

• Its appearance is not the result of a conscious decision.

• Its emergence is not triggered by external events (though the surrounding environment must be sufficiently `rich' for it to develop adequately). 

• There is likely to be a `critical period' for the acquisition of behaviour.

• Direct teaching and practice have relatively little effect.

• Child: Want other one spoon daddy.

• Father: You mean, you want the other spoon.

• Child: Yes, I want other one spoon, please daddy.

• Father: Can you say `the other spoon'?

• Child: Other...one...spoon.

• Father: Say `other'.

• Child: Other

• Father: `spoon'

• Child: spoon.

• Father: `other spoon'.

• Child: other...spoon. Now give me other one spoon?

• There is a regular sequence of `milestones' as the behaviour develops, and these can usually be correlated with age and other aspects of development.

Stages of language development

• The incremental nature of first language development

• The length of the utterances increases step by step

• The grammatical complexity gradually increases

Caretaker speech

Motherese, Fatherese, Parentese

Two functions:

• To communicate with the child

• To direct child's behaviour

Features of caretaker speech:

• higher pitch

• explicit intonation

• careful articulation

• slow pace

• using gestures and facial expressions

• simplified vocabulary

• diminutives, 'baby talk', onomatopoeic words

• short utterances

• simple sentences

• grammatical correctness

• topic referring to the 'here and now'

• general questions and imperatives

• attention getters

• repetitions

• paraphrases

• comprehension checks

• expansions

• redundancy

Stages of language development

Crying Cooing Babbling Intonation patterns 1-word utterances 2-word utterances Word inflections Questions, negatives Complex constructions Mature speech

Birth 6 weeks 6 months 8 months 1 year 18 months 2 years 2 and ¼ years 5 years 10 years

• Babbling drift

a child's babbling gradually moves in the direction of the sounds he hears around him

One-word utterances

Four theories

• the child has overgeneralised the word `ba'; that is the child has learned the name `ba' for `bath' and has wrongly assumed that it can apply to anything which contains liquid

• Russian psychologist Lev Vygotski (1893-1934) suggested that when children over-generalise they do so in a quite confusing way - they appear to focus attention on one aspect of an object at a time

• according to David McNeill, the child is uttering holophrases - single words that stand for whole sentences

• Lois Bloom put forward another hypothesis - the meaning of a one-word utterance varies according to the age of the child

Two-word utterances

• Roger Brown

• Adam, Eve and Sarah

	Eve	Adam
Two words	20 months	26 months
Three words	22 months	36 months
Four words	28 months	42 months

• Telegraphic speech (18-28 months)

• One explanation (Martin Braine)

• Pivot grammar

• a small number of words such as allgone, this, more, no which occurred frequently, never alone and in a fixed position- pivots, because the utterance appears to pivot round them;

• many more words which occurred less frequently but in any position and sometimes alone (often nouns), e.g. open class words, since an `open' class is a set of words which can be added to indefinitely;

• Relations

• Mummy push

• Agent action

• Eat dinner

• Action and object

• Mummy pigtail

• Agent and object

• Play garden

• Action location

• Cookie plate

• Entity and location

• Mummy scarf

• Possessor possession

• Green car

• Attributive and entity

• That butterfly

• Demonstrative and entity

• Operations

• This (is a) truck

• Nomination

• More milk

• Recurrence

• Allgone milk

• Non-existence

Grammatical morphemes

In the acquisition of grammatical morphemes:

• -ing progressive and -s plural are early acquired

• past irregular is acquired earlier than past regular

• copula `be' is acquired earlier than auxiliary `be'

• uncontractible `be' is acquired earlier than contractible `be'

• 3rd person present tense is late acquired

• Why is the plural -s early early acquired and the third person singular present tense -s late acquired?

Because plural `s is more frequent than third person singular present tense.

• Overgeneralisation - the use of a grammatical form in all contexts even if it does not apply, e.g. childrens, wented, goed.

• A grammatical morpheme is acquired when it is used in 90% of obligatory occasions over w two week period

• Obligatory occasion instances where an adult native speaker would use a particular grammatical morpheme

• Bilingual Syntax Measure an instrument for collecting data on the acquisition of grammatical morphemes (it contains a series of pictures to which questions are asked)

Question formation

• Intonation questions?

• After the second birthday, a child places the wh-word in front of the rest of the sentence

• What Mummy doing? (FRONTING)

• A second stage 3-4 months later the child adds an auxiliary verb such as can or will to the main verb

• Where you will go? (FRONTING)

• Before the age of 3, the child realises that the subject noun must change places with the auxiliary

• Where will you go? (INVERSION)

Negation formation

• `Put no, or not in front of the whole sentence'

• No play that (EXTERNAL NEGATION)

• `Put the negative after the first noun phrase and before the rest of the sentence' (At this stage can't and don't seemed to be treated as alternatives to no)

• He no bite you (INTERNAL NEGATION I)

• The negative was placed in the third slot in the sentence, after the noun and auxiliary and copula and before the rest of the sentence.

• Paul can't have one (INTERNAL NEGATION II)

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