1

Child language

acquisition

To what extent do children

acquire language by actively

working out its rules?

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?

3

Language rules

Morphology

Rules

Pragmatics

Semantics Syntax

…

4

-ed past tense

Morphology

-s plural-’s possessive

-ing progressiveaspect

Some grammar rules

…

-er/-estcomparative/

superlative

5

‘I falled over’‘Mummy sawed me’

…

Morphology rules: examples

‘I drawing’‘Me walking’

‘Wugs’‘Mans’

‘Mouses’

‘Mummy’s shoes’‘Dolly’s pushchair’

‘He’s bigger than me’‘I’m the oldest’

Morphology

6

Syntax rules

Each stage hasits own set of

rules

Post-telegraphic

Two word Telegraphic

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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.

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?’.

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).

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.

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.

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).

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.

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 (not correction, as such) to master the exceptions. Roger Brown’s U-shape helps demonstrate this.