Idea's about attitudes to language change UNFINISHED

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/06/language-fashion-weather-speak
This link is to an article in which David Shariatmadari explores language change. The article includes other links which could be interesting to explore for more information on language change.


Jean Aitchison's metaphors for prescriptive language change:


There are two main attitudes to language change, they are : Prescriptive and Descriptive. Descriptive tries to explain things how they actually are and not what we want them to be, tries to find the unconscious rules that people follow then they are writing and speaking. Prescriptive tries to tell us how we should speak and write and what rules of language people should know.


Jean Aitchison is a descriptivist who came up with three metaphors to describe how the prescriptive view could be a myth. There are three myth idea's:


1. The crumbling castle: This is used to describe the English Language as once being a great castle but how overtime it has crumbled and decayed. However, Aitchison disagrees with this as she believes that language is constantly changing and there has been no time in history where language ahs remained the same and is perfect.


2. The damp spoon: This myth suggests that 'Bad English' sticks to people who are lazy and passive. Jean says, that this is not the case


Bibliography:
https://a2englishlanguagerevision.wikispaces.com/Attitudes+towards+Change+and+Variation
http://akinomisoon.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/7-what-is-meant-by-prescriptive-and.html

Language Change

Howard Giles developed a theory whereby people accommodate their language in accordance with who they are talking to called Communication Accommodation Theory. There are two types of accommodation processes in Giles’ Theory:

Convergence– convergence is a process where people tend to adapt the other person’s communication characteristics to reduce the social differences

Divergence-the process contradicts the method of adaptation and in this context the individual emphasise is on the social difference and nonverbal differences between the interactants. It is often linked to overt prestige.


Either one depends on the characteristics of the interactant.

Dr. Baratta is a lecture of sociolinguistics in University of Manchester; he looked at ‘accentism’. He looked at how people modify their accents; his investigation has 98 participants varying from young children to adults and from teachers to students and other staff members from a variety of institutes.

Dr. Baratta said: “Many Brits consciously modify their accent in social situations as a means to create a better impression.” Many of the participants of the investigation

 

Bibliography:

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/article/?id=12449

 

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

 

 

Standardisation as a language change issue- 11/04/16

Standardisation is a gradual process and began in England around the 14^th century. One of the most influential factors is Samuel Jonson’s Dictionary which developed in 1755 which brought standardisation to spelling, definitions and meanings. Jonson was well educated and wealthy which contributes to a social and political issue as it is seems to always be people of a higher social class that decides things for the rest of us.

English is a hybrid language and made up of different dialects which resulted in a language that was inconsistent, therefore it was important that English needed to become standard if it was going to be taken seriously. The diagram to the left shows the 4 stages of standardisation, by Haugen in 1966.

Robert Lowth was a bishop and wrote one of the most influential textbooks of English grammar “ A short introduction to English grammar” . This website https://archive.org/details/shortintroductio00lowtrich is his book and shows some really interesting bits of information and comments on the way in which Shakespeare writes.

 

Bibliography:

https://elevate.cambridge.org/elevate/Reader/viewer.aspx#book/151/Ch16_07

http://nfgsa2englishlanguage.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/standardisation.html

 

 

 

Reasons for language change

Language is always changing and adapting this is due to many different factor including external factors and internal factors. We borrow words from foreign influences as well as, clipping, using initialisms, blends, propriety names and many other ways. Types of external factors such as: Technology, society and foreign influences are some of the main points in language change. In my opinion technology is possibly the biggest factor as the internet is used by millions of people from all over the world, each generation coining new words and meanings by blending, clipping, using jargon and lots more. The influence that technology has on today’s generation will no doubt increase into the next generation and language will keep on expanding. In addition society plays a big part in language change especially when children start going to school, as they are mixing with children their own age they start to pick up new words and phrases. This could have more of an influence of language change as teenagers and young adults as you more commonly socialise with a variety of people, who each speak in a different way and are from different places. We pick up new words and phrases from different people that we talk to and sometimes these turn into constructions that can be particular for one generation. However, sometimes there is resurgence in popularity which can be due to a Sociolect e.g. fab was a popular word which started to weaken and now is slowly making its way back. Foreign influences are what have made the English language what it is; the English language has borrowed many different words from all over the world which is due to globalisation but more commonly due to music, television and sometimes fashion. Rap is one of the main genres of music in today’s generation, especially American rap the language and the way that they talk impact the way that teenagers talk. As that genre of music is associated with being ‘cool’ and well known it then makes some people feel as though they are accepted in society if they listen to that type of music and act or dress in a certain way. It then can mean that anyone who doesn’t look a certain way could be looked down upon or ‘not cool’.

Bibliography:

http://revisionworld.com/a2-level-level-revision/english-language/language-change-0/language-change-0

http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/english-changing

 

 

14/03/16 computer lesson. Language change- unfinished.

English is often perceived as a hybrid language, from periods in history where there were settlements and invasions- each one bringing in their own language. In addition to this it’s seen as hybrid because it is made up of so many sources of language; borrowing, technology, compounding and many more techniques have helped to shape the words we use and the way that English language is today.

Old English 5^th Century: Before we had English as a language, we used Celtic. English language was developing from: the Saxons (Anglo-saxons). The Anglo Saxons and Old Norse had the biggest impact as language was drawn from both. Latin was the basis of language and was one of the most influential factors in the English language growing. As with the UK now, back in the 5^th century different settlements resulted in different dialects.

Middle English 11^th Century:  The most significant event to influence English language was the Norman invasion; French was the verbal language of the court and was widely spoken alongside Latin which was still very important in written documentation.  Towards the end of the Middle English period English became well known.

Early Modern English 15^th Century: Caxton introduced printing press from Europe, many of them printed in English which helped establish the standard form of English. Shakespeare produced his work in English.

Modern English 18^th Century:  The English language was growing at an incredible rate as many words were being borrowed from Greek, Latin and more from all over the world. Grammarians established structure and patterns in the way that language is used and led to people establishing the correct ways of speaking and writing.  

Present Day English 20^th Century: English is an every changing language with the help of various influential factors including: technology, media and travel; therefore making English a global language.

The inkhorn Controversy:  During the 16-17^th Century the English language was spoken with pride as for many years with French rule it was important to speak the mother tongue with pride. Writers of the Renaissance expanded the vocabulary by coining, , compounding, borrowing  or affixation from many different languages such as: Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.   

Pidgin/ Creoles Research

Pidgin language is nobody's native language, this may occur when two speakers of different languages with no common language try to have a conversation. Creole was originally pidgin but has become nativized.

When children start learning a pidgin as their first language and it becomes the mother tongue of a community, it is called a creole. Like a pidgin, a creole is a distinct language which has taken most of its vocabulary from another language, the lexifier, but has its own unique grammatical rules. Unlike a pidgin, however, a creole is not restricted in use, and is like any other language in its full range of functions.

1. Pidgin language (origin in Engl. word `business'?) is nobody's native language; may arise when two speakers of different languages with no common language try to have a makeshift conversation. Lexicon usually comes from one language, structure often from the other. Because of colonialism, slavery etc. the prestige of Pidgin languages is very low. Many pidgins are `contact vernaculars', may only exist for one speech event.
2. Creole (orig. person of European descent born and raised in a tropical colony) is a language that was originally a pidgin but has become nativized, i.e. a community of speakers claims it as their first language. Next used to designate the language(s) of people of Caribbean and African descent in colonial and ex-colonial countries (Jamaica, Haiti, Mauritius, Réunion, Hawaii, Pitcairn, etc.)

Bibliography:
http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/pidginterm.htm
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Linguistics/explainpidgin.html

Language Change - AWESOME (unfinished)

                                                     Awesome

 

Awesome didn’t always have such a carefree connotation, it dates all the way back to the English versions of the bible. Psalms mentioned “the great and awesome God”. However the King James Bible which was published in 1611 doesn’t use the word ‘awesome’ to refer to God but instead the word ‘terrible’ is used, this changed for modern translations of the bible as they wouldn’t have referred to God in such a way.

The word then appeared in the Oxford dictionary in 1598 and was used to describe the feeling of ‘awe’, the phrase to be “filled with awe” actually meant: to be filled with the feeling of dread or fear. It was closely associated with the word ‘awful’ which actually had positive connotations unlike today where it is used as a negative. They both originally started off by meaning “awe-inspiring” , but  then the word awesome stepped in to take the positive connotations of the word whilst awful was becoming more negative.

‘Awesome’ was constructed from ‘awe’ and ‘- ful’ as well as ‘some’.  However the suffix of ‘some’ doesn’t mean to have a quantity of something but for the having the quality of something.

I looked at Fairclough’s  Informatlization to look at how words have become more or less formal and from what I can find I think that the word awesome has got less formal. When I think of the word it makes me think of American/ Australian surfers saying “that’s totally awesome dude” therefore it is more than likely that this word has undergone Americanization or American English as it is a word that Americans use more than English.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2733912/No-longer-marvellous-awesome-Britons-using-American-words-traditional-English-decline.htmlhttp://english.stackexchange.com/questions/6802/awesome-vs-awful

 

 

Child's Language Acquisition Test Sheet

1. Stages in correct order: Cooing, Babbling, Holophrastic, Two word, Telegraphic and Post Telegraphic.

 2. A- Nativist – Children are born with a language acquisition device. They have an innate ability to acquire language. N. Chomsky.

    B- Cognitive- Children develop their linguistic competence alongside their ability to understand the world around them. J. Piaget.

    C- Behaviourist- Children learn primarily through imitation and patterns of positive or negative reinforcement from their parents. B.F.Skinner

    D- Interactional- Children learn through the input of their parents, correcting and supporting their linguistic development. J.Bruner.

   E- Critical Period- Children have a limited period in which their language can develop rapidly. After this their language development is much harder. E.Lennenberg.

3. This process is an overextension- the child sees similar shapes to an object that she knows and overextends the terms she knows to include those objects.

4. This is an underextension- the child cannot relate any word she knows to any other similar item.

5. This is an overgeneralisation- the child applies regular rules to irregular verbs.

6. This would be the telegraphic stage- the child has used part of the subject verb and part of the prepositional phrase (to) but has missed the auxiliary verb is going.

7. The child has used the correct word order but has misuses the pronoun. She uses first person object pronoun me instead of first person subject pronoun.

8. This is a substitution the child replaces the “ch” with a “t” which is a simpler sound.

9. This is a deletion the child may not have heard or is having trouble producing the last consonant vowel ‘t’.

10. This is a deletion of an unstressed syllable- the child deletes the ‘ba’ syllable.

11. Regulatory – To control behaviour of others “Do this”.

 Heuristic – To explore and gain knowledge of the environment “What’s that?”

Personal – To express self “Watch me”.

Instrumental – to obtain goods and services “I want”.

Imaginative – To use language imaginatively, for example telling stories, jokes or creating an imaginary environment “Lets pretend”. Interactional – To relate to others, to interact “Me and you”.

 Informative (representational) – To convey facts and information “I’ve got something to tell you”.

12. Jean Berko- using a made up animal she tested the childrens application of the ‘-s’ plural rule and found that nearly all of them applied it to a noun they had never heard before.

13. Nouns- mostly concrete- the most common items are around the child and easily understood the link between object and label.

14. Asking a child questions and responding to them, or the other way around.

15. Child Directed Speech (CDS) or caretaker language- tag questions, emphasised lip or mouth action which draws the attention to the mouth, simplified grammar, scaffolding etc.

16. A ‘wild’ or ‘feral’ girl who lived in California in the 1970’s and discovered by social workers. At the age of 13 her vocabulary was limited to only 20 words. This case study is sometimes used to support the Critical learning period hypothesis or the interactive theory.

17. A boy from the Devilliers and Devilliers study in 1978. He was born deaf to his parents they put him in front of the television and hoped that he would pick up the language. This is used to support the interactive theory.

18. David Crystal

19. Language Acquisition Device

20. Determiners (the, a)

      Auxiliary verbs (is doing, am shouting)

Halliday's Functions

Halliday's functions of Child's Language Development:


Instrumental: The child uses language to express their needs, directly concerned with obtaining food/drink/comfort e.g 'I want to...'.


Regulatory: Child uses language to influence the behaviour of others, Persuading/commanding/ requesting others to do things e.g ' Go away'.


Interactional: The child uses language to develop social relationships and ease the process of interaction, concerned with the phatic dimension of talk e.g 'I'll be the cashier'.


Personal: Child uses language to express personal preferences and individual identity, sometimes referred to as the 'Here I am' function- announcing oneself to the world.


Representational: Child uses language to exchange information, concerned with relaying or requesting facts or information. e.g. 'I'll tell you'.


Heuristic: Child uses language to learn of and explore the environment and to learn. This may be questions or answers or the kind of running commentary that frequently accompanies children's play e.g 'What is the tractor doing?'.


Imaginative: Child uses language to tell stories and jokes and to crate an imaginative environment, may also accompany play as children create imaginative worlds or may arise from story telling. e.g. 'Let's pretend'.

Jean Piaget cognitive development theories

Piaget developed various theories to how children learn, his cognitive development theory consists of four stages( as shown in the table below). It shows the process to how mental processes develop from child to adulthood.

Stage	Characterised by
Sensori-motor  (Birth-2 yrs)	Differentiates self from objects  Recognises self as agent of action and begins to act intentionally: e.g. pulls a string to set mobile in motion or shakes a rattle to make a noise  Achieves object permanence: realises that things continue to exist even when no longer present to the sense (pace Bishop Berkeley)
Pre-operational  (2-7 years)	Learns to use language and to represent objects by images and words  Thinking is still egocentric: has difficulty taking the viewpoint of others  Classifies objects by a single feature: e.g. groups together all the red blocks regardless of shape or all the square blocks regardless of colour
Concrete operational  (7-11 years)	Can think logically about objects and events  Achieves conservation of number (age 6), mass (age 7), and weight (age 9)  Classifies objects according to several features and can order them in series along a single dimension such as size.
Formal operational  (11 years and up)	Can think logically about abstract propositions and test hypotheses systemtically  Becomes concerned with the hypothetical, the future, and ideological problems

In the first stage;

The sensori-motor stage which is from a baby to a toddler the child learns by trial and error. They are taking in the world by using each of their senses by looking, hearing, touching, grasping and mouthing, they use these as their tools to learn new things.

In the pre-operational stage children are more hands on, therefore tasks such as playing with sand, play dough, water, clay etc. things that they can interact with are the most useful for helping this stage of development. There are also four main stages to the pre-operational stage of development, these are: Centration , ego centrism, irreversibility and animism.

The concrete operational stage shows logical thinking as well as being able to view things from other peoples perspectives.

The formal operational stage is the final stage of the development, in this process the childs thinking is advanced but their knowlege will continue to grow and change as they learn and are exposed to new things.





Bibliography:
http://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html
http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/piaget.htm

Sample data anaylsis

This is a transcript of a video taken on the 24^th of September. There are two participants speaking: myself and my cousin K who in the video is 3years and 9months old. We had just finished playing a snake game with an orange feather boa when I asked him what his favourite colours are.

I have labelled myself (m) and K (k).

M: what’s your favourite colour kai?

K: Orange

M: why?

K: Because your da dis (inaudible) scarf (mumbles) fevvers

M: what do you think of the colour pink?

K: I do love the (mumbles) colour pink

M: do you?

K: yeah!

M: why?

K: Because it’s really beautiful and the bright pink

M: what about the colour blue?

K: yeah

M: why do you like blue?

K: Because it’z my favourite blue corrouler, it makes all the different colours love the mix up

M: and yellow?

K: yeah

M: why?

K: Because it’z the mixed up colourz nd the blue ann all the everything is blue

M: what about black?

K: yeah it’z really dark

M: it’s a dark colour

K: yeah

M: does it make you feel happy or sad?

K: happy

M: black makes you happy?

K: yeah because,yeah cause, but in the dark rollercoasters it makes me go huh kai in dark uh, woah there’s some scary stuff in there I nowhere to get out of here den go and went up the bottom I say phew that was close.

M: and what do you think of the colour purple?

K: yeah that’s my favourite colour

M: Oh I thought orange was your favourite colour?

K: It is, orange is my favourite colour as well

M: so you’ve got lots of favourite colours? (1) Yeah?

K: yeah

M: good




The theory that I have been looking at is Stephen Krashen he related his theory to Chomsky's LAD. He said that 'humans acquire language in only one way - by understanding messages or by receiving "comprehensible input"'.











K is at the age of language development where he can understand what I am asking him and answer back correctly. He also goes of on a tangent and starts telling me an anecdote which does relate to what I am asking him but it was amusing to listen to how his story had developed from me asking him about the colour black.

K answers "yeah" a total of 8 times, this could possibly be because he is unsure about what I am actually asking him or because he is trying to think about a correct response.  I ask K a total of 16 questions, 4 of those asking him "why?" I was doing this to try to see how he responds to what I was asking him and for him to think about why he likes the colour.


I have been looking at Michael Halliday's  (1978) suggested 7 stages of development which show the function of child's language. K would come under the final stage as the transcript proves that he is in the 'Imaginative stage' as he is accompanying his play which is helping his to explore his imagination which we can see in the part of the transcript where K is telling a story about a rollercoaster.  


Bibliography:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/SLA/Krashen.htm

P.E.E of "All the things" transcript

"To what extent is this an example of a child led discourse?"

It could be said that this is not child led discourse as grandma and Evie have near enough the same amount of utterances (E:52:51:G) , the grandma takes up the most airtime, and leads most of the conversation. However this is more than likely because Evie's vocabulary isn’t as broad as her grandmas and she is two years and 7 months when this was recorded this means that she would have been in the telegraphic stage of her development. Although her short sentences "some more" and "yeah" don't necessarily show this.

G: "Two cats (2) how many things have we got in the picture?

E: inaudible

G: How many? Count them"

This is not only building the conversation but it is also helping Evie learn to count.

In the transcript it is clear to see that grandma elaborates on Evie’s sentence, or repeats what she has just said and adds tag questions, this is to make Evie contribute to the conversation. This is seen in part of the transcript:

E: Picture [pitf it] wolf

G: what's it we'll take a picture of wolf?

Evie says the word "Picture" in four different ways, I think by Evie repeating herself what she is doing is she is aware that she has pronounced it wrong and is trying to correct herself, this is also with the help of grandma as she keeps on repeating the word too.

Evie's grandma could help develop Evie’s language further by correcting her mispronunciation but instead she adapts her speech for the benefit of Evie which isn’t necessarily the right thing to do because it won’t help Evie in the future.

Coursework Idea's unfinished

For my investigation I am going to be looking at my three year old cousin, and how his gender affects his language. Additionally I will be looking at grammar, lexis and phonology as well as other theories that I am expecting to come across whilst listening and watching him.

I am going to be looking at the choices he makes etc. I have already filmed him where I asked him what his favourite colour was and I am going to analyse this. I am going to ask him to tell me a story, I have looked through magazines with him and he pointed out which things were his favourite.

I could potentially look at Bruner's theory, and look at how the rest of my family interact with him, looking at how they accommodate to his style of speech and how they speak slowly.

 

Stages of child language development- spoken language

 

 

It genuinely interests and surprises me how quickly babies learn to communicate, and not only that aspect but also from the perspective of the parents and how they understand what the child is asking them for. in my research i am going to be looking at stages of child language development from being in the womb up to the age of 5.Even though it may seem that there is no order of how children learn this is not the case. They will start off speaking vowels which they will do with a rounded mouth "oo", "ah" , then consonants "b","p","g","k","m","d","t","n" because these are easier to pronounce rather than "s" or "z" which many children aren't able to do at that age.

The Womb:

In my research i found that even when babies are in the womb they are already starting to detect some noise although the sound is limited, by week 16 of the pregnancy babies can hear what is happening for example: when the mother's stomach rumbles or when air is travelling in and out of the lungs and by week 24 the baby starts responding to the noises and voices.

0-3 months: Babies have distinguished cries for different situations, a cry could mean a variety of things; hungry, tired, unhappy etc. At this age they are able to smile and usually do this to voices or faces that are familiar to them.

 4-6 months:


This is usually the stage where babies become fascinated with toys, especially toys that make noise or have a certain texture for them to touch. They will start to tell you what they want by using hand gestures eg. pointing or making a grabbing motion with their hands. At this stage this is where the child becomes more vocal, by gargling or babbling, it often sounds like he/she is talking, they also use a lot of bilabial sounds such as "p", "m","w", and "b".

 7-12 months:


At this stage he/she have probably said their first words which could be anything but the most common ones are: "dada" ,"mama","no","bye bye" and "night night".  More consonants, long and short vowels are used too, they will start to use words or other noises rather than crying to tell you what they want. They can also recognise and respond to questions "where's daddy gone?" , they have learnt their own name and will look at you when you call them. Games and nursery rimes become fun and they will start to lean the tune.

 1-2 years:

Words are developing and are becoming easier to understand as more consonants are used. They might start asking their own questions "more chippies", "what's that?" and in return will respond to more questions. They can learn each of their boys parts and point them out. They also will want the same story, game or song repeated numerous amounts of times.

 2-3 years:

Toddlers will understand two stage commands "bring your cup over here and put it on the table", they will also understand meanings and concepts "yucky", "nice". At this stage the child's vocabulary is developing rapidly, they will use a lot of utterances which will be easy for family members to understand.



3-4 years:
Speech is now becoming fluent, clearer and easier for people other than family members to understand, they will talk about anything! usually to do with nursery or what they did at the park etc. Sentences are longer as they can combine together four or more words.



4-5 years:
Detailed and long sentences are used at this stage "Molly said my dress was pretty and she is going to ask her mummy to buy her one the same like mine". They can tell descriptive and imaginative stories to engage with other people. Sounds are normally pronounced correctly although they could have some difficulty with "th","r" and "v".


There are four main stages of spoken language: Babbling, the Holophrastic or one-word stage, the two-word stage and the Telegraphic stage. The babbling stage isn't as important as the other stages as this is where the child is experimenting with sounds, it is learning its surroundings and is attempting to imitate the noises around them. When the baby understands the concept of non verbal and verbal communication then it will move onto the next stage of language acquisition.

The Holophrastic/ one word stage:
In this stage nouns make up around 50% of the infants vocabulary while verbs and modifiers make up around 30% and questions and negatives make up the rest, it is made up of one word stages and utterances "play". Infants would use this stage to show that they need or want something although this might not be so obvious as it could be for attention. When they have learned to speak in one word sentences successfully then they will move onto the next stage.

The two word stage:
The two word stage is made up of two word sentences, single modifiers are also being used "that cat", along with questions "mummy eat?"

Telegraphic stage:
This stage contains three or four word sentences and is considered to be the most important stage in language development. This is sometimes the stage where the child learns the links between words and objects e.g "daddy playing with ball". At this stage of development a childs vocabulary will epand from 50 words to up to 13,000, the child will then start to learn how to join words, incorporate plurals and get a grip on tenses.





References:
Bowen, c (1998). (2014 (updated)). Ages and stages summary . Available: http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=34:ages&catid=11:admin&Itemid=117. Last accessed 9th september 2015.

unknown?. (2015). Fetal Hearing . Available: http://www.whattoexpect.com/pregnancy/fetal-hearing/. Last accessed 9th september 2015.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=child's+language+development&biw=1280&bih=929&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAWoVChMIj-XhrtruxwIVBL0aCh0s4AEF#tbm=isch&q=child+language+acquisition&imgrc=_



https://enlsac2max.wordpress.com/stages-of-language-acquisition/