Child's language acquisition

                                      Child Directed Speech (CDS)

Researchers of CDS:

Clarke Stewart: Found that children whose mothers talks more have larger vocabularies.

Katherine Nelson: Found that children in the holophrastic stage whose mothers have corrected them on word choice actually develop more slowly than those with mothers who were more accepting.

Berko and Brown: ‘Fis’ and ‘Fish’ phenomenon, this found that children do not hear themselves in the same way that they hear others.

Features:

Phonology

• Separate phrases more distinctly, leaving longer pauses between them.

• Speak more s-l-o-w-l-y.

• Use exaggerated  ‘singsong’ intonation, which helps to emphasise key words.  Also to exaggerate the difference between questions, statements and commands.

• Use a higher and wider pitch range.

Lexis and semantics

• Use of concrete nouns (cat, train) and dynamic verbs (give, put).

• Adopt child’s own words for things (doggie, wickle babbit).

• Frequent use of child’s name and an absence of pronouns.

Grammar

• Simpler constructions

• Frequent use of imperatives

• High degree of repetition

• Use of personal names instead of pronouns (e.g. ‘Mummy’ not ‘I’)

• Fewer verbs, modifiers and adjectives

Large number of one-word utterances

• Deixis used to point child’s attention to objects or people

• Repeated sentence frames eg. “that’s a ……”

• Use more simple sentences and fewer complex and passives.

• Omission of past tenses, inflections (plurals and possessives).

• Use more commands, questions and tag questions.

• Use of expansions – where the adult fills out the child’s utterance.

• Use of re-casting – where the child’s vocabulary is put into a new utterance.

Pragmatics

• Lots of gesture and warm body language.

• Fewer utterances per turn – stopping frequently for child to respond.

• Supportive language (expansions and re-castings).

Bibliography:

http://revisionworld.com/a2-level-level-revision/english-language/child-language-acquisition/child-directed-speech


http://revisionworld.com/a2-level-level-revision/english-language/child-language-acquisition/phonological-development

                                      Children’s language features

 Phonological development

Simplifying language:

Deletion:

Children will often simplify pronunciation by deleting certain sounds:

• Final consonants maybe dropped eg) the ‘t’ sound in ‘hat’ and ‘cat’

• Unstressed syllables are often deleted eg) ‘banana’ becomes ‘nana’

• Consonant clusters are reduced eg) ‘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