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.