Child Language Development
Paper 1, Section B
CLD Speaking
Terminology
Contingent talk - style of communication where the parent talks about objects in the infant's current focus
of attention.
Recasting - repeating and building sentences. (Word order and syntax)
Decontextualising - talking about the past and future
Phonological awareness - reading and writing
Proto words - made up words that a child will use to represent a word they might not yet be able to
pronounce, for example ‘blankie’ for blanket.
Communicative competence - ability to form accurate and understandable utterance, using the grammar
system and to understand social context for using them.
Stages of spoken language development
1. Preverbal stage
● crying can signal hunger, wind or tiredness
● the baby begins to exercise vocal cords to gain others attention and understand discourse structure.
cooing - ab 2 months
- Experiments with noises distinct from crying
babbling - ab 6 months
- Reduplicated babbling - appears first and involves child repeatedly creating same sounds,
eg.bababa
- Variegated babbling - involves variation in consonant and vowel but doesn’t resemble
recognisable words, eg.daba
2. Holophrastic
● Between 12-18 months (first word around 12 months)
● Child conveys whole sentence worth of meaning in single word or labels things around them
- Deliberately conveys meaning (unlike babbling)
- First word is often ‘mummy’ or ‘daddy’
- Large proportion of words are concrete nouns
● Child relies heavily on non-verbal communication in order to clarify intended meaning
● Caregiver often expands on a child’s utterance to model accurate form/clarify the child’s need
Groups of sounds ordered development
● Early 8: m, b, j (y), n, w, d, p, h - by age 3
● Middle 8: t, (ng), k, g, f, v, (ch), (j), - by age 4 5
● Late 8: (sh), (th), s, z, l, r, (dg)
The main explanation for why children acquire some sounds before others is down to ‘articulatory ease’ and
‘perceptual discriminability’ - how easy it is for a child to create sounds and how easily they can distinctly
hear specific sounds.
Parentese
- Parentese is a simplified and repetitive type of speech, with exaggerated intonation and rhythm,
often used by adults when speaking to babies. This might include diminutives.
, - Diminutives ‘reduce’ the scale of an object by adding a suffix e.g. doggie and dolly. This is
supposedly more accessible, phonologically easier and more appealing to children.
● Substitution - The process of swapping one sound for another (that is easier to
pronounce) eg fink (instead of think)
● Assimilation - Assimilation is the process that illustrates how some sounds change
because of other words around them.
● Take "gog" and "babbit" for example. So, in both cases, the first consonant sound has
been influenced by the second.
("doggie" becomes "goggie" and "rabbit" becomes "babbit")
● Deletion - Omitting a particular sound within a word, eg flyin(g) or tephone
(telephone)
● Consonant cluster reduction - Reducing phonologically more complex units into
simpler ones - from two (or more) consonants down to one, eg dis (not dish)
3. Two words
● Around 18 months, child starts putting two words together to convey meaning, eg mummy sit
● Utterance more refined than holophrases as potential meaning has narrowed, the further acquisition
progress the clearer language becomes
● Begin understanding grammar
● Cognitive change occurs, ‘naming insight’ realising everything around them has names so they
acquire 2 or 3 new words daily and by age of 2, will,squire 300 words.
4. Telegraphic
● Around 2 years , longer complex utterances
● Includes key content words within sentence to convey meaning
1. Omits grammatical words required for structural accuracy but not convey meaning. Eg. Me
going on trip. Syntax is largely accurate but the child uses object pronoun ‘me’ instead of ‘I’
as well as omitting auxiliary verb ‘am’ and indefinite article ‘a’ as omitting auxiliary verb ‘am’
and indefinite article ‘a’
- content words: sun juice happy mummy
- grammatical words: is we on in the
5. Post-telegraphic
● Around age 3, speech increasingly resemble adult speech
● Grammatical words that were prev omitted now appear in sentences alongside content words
● Subtle nuances of lang such as contracted forms, verb inflections and formations of pronouns will
be increasingly accurate
● Accepting that by age 4, child will speak largely grammatically accurate and complete sentences.
Theories
Skinner and behaviourism
- Through experiments with rats and pigeons, he proposed the theory that all behaviour is a result of
the conditioning we have experienced rather than any freedom of choice. (1957)
Proposed that children learn through imitation
Operant conditioning: the idea that either a positive or negative response given by a caregiver can
influence the way in which a child talks on future occasions.
Paper 1, Section B
CLD Speaking
Terminology
Contingent talk - style of communication where the parent talks about objects in the infant's current focus
of attention.
Recasting - repeating and building sentences. (Word order and syntax)
Decontextualising - talking about the past and future
Phonological awareness - reading and writing
Proto words - made up words that a child will use to represent a word they might not yet be able to
pronounce, for example ‘blankie’ for blanket.
Communicative competence - ability to form accurate and understandable utterance, using the grammar
system and to understand social context for using them.
Stages of spoken language development
1. Preverbal stage
● crying can signal hunger, wind or tiredness
● the baby begins to exercise vocal cords to gain others attention and understand discourse structure.
cooing - ab 2 months
- Experiments with noises distinct from crying
babbling - ab 6 months
- Reduplicated babbling - appears first and involves child repeatedly creating same sounds,
eg.bababa
- Variegated babbling - involves variation in consonant and vowel but doesn’t resemble
recognisable words, eg.daba
2. Holophrastic
● Between 12-18 months (first word around 12 months)
● Child conveys whole sentence worth of meaning in single word or labels things around them
- Deliberately conveys meaning (unlike babbling)
- First word is often ‘mummy’ or ‘daddy’
- Large proportion of words are concrete nouns
● Child relies heavily on non-verbal communication in order to clarify intended meaning
● Caregiver often expands on a child’s utterance to model accurate form/clarify the child’s need
Groups of sounds ordered development
● Early 8: m, b, j (y), n, w, d, p, h - by age 3
● Middle 8: t, (ng), k, g, f, v, (ch), (j), - by age 4 5
● Late 8: (sh), (th), s, z, l, r, (dg)
The main explanation for why children acquire some sounds before others is down to ‘articulatory ease’ and
‘perceptual discriminability’ - how easy it is for a child to create sounds and how easily they can distinctly
hear specific sounds.
Parentese
- Parentese is a simplified and repetitive type of speech, with exaggerated intonation and rhythm,
often used by adults when speaking to babies. This might include diminutives.
, - Diminutives ‘reduce’ the scale of an object by adding a suffix e.g. doggie and dolly. This is
supposedly more accessible, phonologically easier and more appealing to children.
● Substitution - The process of swapping one sound for another (that is easier to
pronounce) eg fink (instead of think)
● Assimilation - Assimilation is the process that illustrates how some sounds change
because of other words around them.
● Take "gog" and "babbit" for example. So, in both cases, the first consonant sound has
been influenced by the second.
("doggie" becomes "goggie" and "rabbit" becomes "babbit")
● Deletion - Omitting a particular sound within a word, eg flyin(g) or tephone
(telephone)
● Consonant cluster reduction - Reducing phonologically more complex units into
simpler ones - from two (or more) consonants down to one, eg dis (not dish)
3. Two words
● Around 18 months, child starts putting two words together to convey meaning, eg mummy sit
● Utterance more refined than holophrases as potential meaning has narrowed, the further acquisition
progress the clearer language becomes
● Begin understanding grammar
● Cognitive change occurs, ‘naming insight’ realising everything around them has names so they
acquire 2 or 3 new words daily and by age of 2, will,squire 300 words.
4. Telegraphic
● Around 2 years , longer complex utterances
● Includes key content words within sentence to convey meaning
1. Omits grammatical words required for structural accuracy but not convey meaning. Eg. Me
going on trip. Syntax is largely accurate but the child uses object pronoun ‘me’ instead of ‘I’
as well as omitting auxiliary verb ‘am’ and indefinite article ‘a’ as omitting auxiliary verb ‘am’
and indefinite article ‘a’
- content words: sun juice happy mummy
- grammatical words: is we on in the
5. Post-telegraphic
● Around age 3, speech increasingly resemble adult speech
● Grammatical words that were prev omitted now appear in sentences alongside content words
● Subtle nuances of lang such as contracted forms, verb inflections and formations of pronouns will
be increasingly accurate
● Accepting that by age 4, child will speak largely grammatically accurate and complete sentences.
Theories
Skinner and behaviourism
- Through experiments with rats and pigeons, he proposed the theory that all behaviour is a result of
the conditioning we have experienced rather than any freedom of choice. (1957)
Proposed that children learn through imitation
Operant conditioning: the idea that either a positive or negative response given by a caregiver can
influence the way in which a child talks on future occasions.
