Child language acquisition

1. Child language acquisition To what extent do children acquire language by actively working out its rules? 7361

2. What are rules? A rule is – according to Wiktionary: • a regulation, law, guideline • something to keep order. How do we relate this to language? 7361

3. Language rules Morphology Semantics Syntax Rules Pragmatics … 7361

4. Some grammar rules -ed past tense -er/-est comparative/ superlative -ing progressive aspect Morphology -’s possessive -s plural … 7361

5. Morphology rules: examples ‘I falled over’ ‘Mummy sawed me’ ‘He’s bigger than me’ ‘I’m the oldest’ ‘I drawing’ ‘Me walking’ Morphology ‘Mummy’s shoes’ ‘Dolly’s pushchair’ ‘Wugs’ ‘Mans’ ‘Mouses’ … 7361

6. Syntax rules Each stage has its own set of rules Post- telegraphic Two word Telegraphic … 7361

7. Two word stage • Look at the combinations of words created at the two word stage: • I draw (subject + verb) • My hat (possessor + possession) • Drink gone (object + quality) • Explore Roger Brown’s research into semantic relations and the typical two word combinations. 7361

8. Questions and negation • The two word stage is where questions and negative constructions start to appear and there are rules for how these are formed too. • Take the syntax of declarative sentences, for example. They are usually subject – verb – object (‘I ate the apple’) or subject – verb – complement (‘I am five’), but to form a question, syntax has to be changed: ‘Am I five?’ or ‘Did I eat the apple?’. 7361

9. Telegraphic stage • Children tend to follow adult syntax at this stage, but miss out grammatical words. • If there’s a rule here, it’s that children opt for lexical words rather than grammatical ones – they go for meaning over grammar. • Mummy work (Mummy is going to work). 7361

10. Post-telegraphic stage • The missing words (auxiliary verbs, determiners and prepositions) start to reappear, and clauses start to get linked together. • Children start to link clauses with co-ordinating conjunctions to begin with, moving on to subordinating conjunctions later. 7361

11. Semantics • Semantic rules might be defined as the ways in which children tend to make distinctions in meanings between different objects, or how they ‘learn to mean’. • Children apply three strategies: the whole object assumption, type assumption and the basic level assumption. • The whole object assumption is that a new word usually refers to a whole object, not part of it or a quality the object possesses. 7361

12. Semantics • The type assumption prevents children from underextending most new words. In other words, if they are told that the new thing they have seen is a dog, they don’t assume that only that dog is a dog and every other dog isn’t. • The basic level assumption prevents the child from overextending meanings too far. So, once a child has recognised what dog refers to, they seem to understand that it also refers to things with similar properties (appearance, behaviour, size). 7361

13. Pragmatics • As well as the more language-based rules covered here, children have to acquire pragmatics, which might be defined as an understanding of the unspoken rules of communication: irony, turntaking, implicature etc. • These can only be acquired through exposure to others’ language, and are the hallmarks of a child moving from early speech to more adult patterns. 7361

14. Exceptions to rules • And finally… • One of the big things children have to learn is that there are exceptions to rules. They’re pretty good at applying rules regularly to verbs, nouns and adjectives, but need time and exposure to language (notcorrection, as such) to master the exceptions. Roger Brown’s U-shape helps demonstrate this. 7361