"infants are not born silent"
Vegetative Sounds (0-6 weeks)
crying, burping sucking
→
1.
Cooing and Laughter (6-16 weeks)
cooing - 6 weeks
→
laughter - 16 weeks
→
2.
Vocal Play (16 weeks - 6 months)
speech-like sounds
→
vowel before consonants
→
3.
Babbling (6-10 months)
true syllables (vowels + consonants)
→
often with repetitions
→
jargons
between Babbling and One Word
Utterances
•
a syllable already has meaning
•
ex. "pipom" = pacifier
•
a sound cooccur with a situation
•
ex. every time mother appears, child
would babble a specific sound
•
not true words yet
•
→
4.
One Word Utterances (10-18 months)
single word utterances
→
ex. "mama", "milk"
→
5.
Two Word Utterances (18 months)
rapid expansion of vocabulary size
→
utterance of two-word sentences
→
ex. "Mama, milk."
→
6.
Telegraphic Speech (2 years)
contain a number of words but with many
grammatical errors
→
at two years old, children are like sponges
→
absorb a lot of words
→
7.
Basic Adult-Like Sentences (2-6 years)
increases in complexity
→
8.
Brief Overview of Language Development
Views on Language Acquisition
Empiricist Perspective
ideas from Locke and Hume
→
premise that all knowledge is derived from
experience
→
humans were born "tabula rasa" = blank slate
→
developed into behaviorist viewpoints and plays
a role in Piagetian perspective
→
Nurture-based
→
Behaviorist Approach
principles of B.F. Skinner with his Skinner's Box
experiment
rat associated food with the green button
•
→
Skinner's Box
→
language is acquired through a process of
stimulus-response-reward
→
creating associations between words and
real-life objects
→
constant repetition makes the association a
habit
→
Constructivist Approach
language develops as cognitive skills develop
→
a child's conception of the world is different
from an adult's conception because a child
starts with no concept of an external world
→
contributions from Jean Piaget by creating
Stage Theory
infants will go through different stages
that will end in adult understanding
•
suggests that a child first becomes
aware of a concept before they can
acquire the words for that concept
•
→
Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor (0-2 years old)
child interacts with environment by
manipulation objects
→
1.
Preoperational (2-7 years old)
child begins to represent the world
symbolically
→
starts association
→
kind of imaginative
→
difficulty grasping abstract concepts
→
2.
Concrete Operational (7-12 years old)
child begins to mentally operate on
objects
→
logical reasoning for things they can see
→
cause and effect
→
can tell some abstract concepts (ex.
mass, weight)
→
3.
Formal Operational (12+ years old)
child can think hypothetically
→
use logic to solve problems
→
4.
1 - Theories on Language Acquisition
Tuesday, 20 September 2022
Theories on Language Acquisition Page 1
