Language Development of Children
First Words and their Intentions
First words can express a wide range of intentions Gradually become flexible and multifunctional By 15 months, most are naming/labeling, exclaiming, and calling to attract attention By 18 months, child adds wanting demands (e.g., "I want...") ("Uh-oh"); and expressions of states/attitudes, mostly "I tired" Initially, words accompany action (e.g., requests) May accompany pointing Display a wish or express displeasure (sometimes, that's advanced emotional skills)
Initial Lexicons (Categories)
First words have predictable sound (/p, b, d, t, g, k, h, m, w, n/) and syllable (VC, CV, CVCV-reduplicated, CVCV) patterns
Initial Lexicons: For most First Words
Front consonants (/p, b, d, t, m, w/) and back consonants (/g, k, h/) predominate; no clusters 1. Nouns predominate in the first 50 words
Comprehension, production, and cognitive growth
Language seems closely related to specific cognitive skills; Children have been observed to us different cognitive levels of play depending on the words they use; Knowledge structure of two types are assumed to guide word acquisition: 1. Event knowledge 2. Taxonomic or "word" knowledge
Concept Formation: Associative and Prototypic Complexes
Two related hypotheses
Word Combination (Definition)
Two-word utterance consisting of roughly equivalent words that divide an experience into multiple units
Event Knowledge
Consists of sequences of events or routines that are temporal or casual in nature and organized toward a goal; scripts are included in this type of knowledge
Object-naming games found in American English
"What's what" - are culture based and not found in all cultures
Individual children exist along a continuum:
1. "Noun lovers" - use many nouns 2. "Noun leavers" - use an expressive style in which they use few nouns; prefer interactional and functional words, such as "hi", "bye-bye", and "no"
Toddler Rules for Presupposition
1. An object not in the child's possession should be labeled 2. An object in the child's possession, but undergoing change, as in being eaten, should be encoded by the action or change (e.g., "apple", "eat")
Preschool Conversation: Ages 3-4
1. Better awareness of social aspects of conversation 2. Utterances addressed are clear, well formed and well adapted for the listener
Semantic Development
1. Between ages 1 1/2 to 6, children learn 4 to 5 new words each day by first fast mapping the meaning, then slowly refining it over time 2. Fast mapping enables child to infer a connection between a word and its referent after only one exposure 3. Children may use two operating principles to establish meaning
Possible Explanations for the Early Predominance of Nouns:
1. Child may have a concept of objects within world knowledge 2. Nouns are perceptually/conceptually distinct (therefore a child can determine the referent more easily) 3. Linguistic predictability of nouns make them easier 4. Frequency of adult use, adult word order, and adult teaching patterns (nouns may be placed in the final or salient position in maternal sentences)
Establishing Meaning of Semantic Development
1. Contrast - the assumption that every form-morpheme, word, syntactic structure-contrasts to every other in meaning 2. Conventionality -the expectation that certain forms convey certain meanings (e.g., -ing = actions)
Deictic Terms
1. Direct attention 2. Make spatial contrasts 3. Denote times or participants in a conversation from the speaker's point of view Child use this later in life but make little locational differentiation
What information is typically included in a narrative? What is the typically development from ages 2 - 5 of a narrative? What are two strategies preschoolers use to organize narratives?
1. Heap • Organizational strategies of 2-year-olds represent; these are sets of unrelated statements about a central stimulus; later, children begin to tell narratives characterized as sequences 2. Semantic development • Between ages 1 1/2 to 6, children learn 4 to 5 new words each day by first fast mapping the meaning, then slowly refining it over time • Fast mapping enables child to infer a connection between a word and its referent after only one exposure • Children may use two operating principles to establish meaning
Gaps in preschoolers' vocabularies
1. I'm spooning my cocoa (Stirring) 2. You sugared your coffee (Sweetened)
Preschool Conversational Advances Include:
1. Increasing use of Registers or styles of talking after age 4 2. Limited need for conversational repair 3. Rapid topic shifts with 2 to 3 turns on a topic 4. Increased consideration of the listener and use of presupposition 5. Some forms of indirect request 6. Deictic Terms 7. Child also engages in monologues that gradually become more social 8. 20%-30% of the utterances of 4-year-olds most likely "private speech," especially in focused, goal-directed activites
New Words Include Relational Terms Such As:
1. Interrogative words 2. Temporal terms 3. Physical descriptors 4. Locational prepositions 5. Kinship terms
Kinship Terms
1. Limited knowledge at first; child treats term as part of person's name 2. By age 4, child may understand what a brother/sister is but doesn't realize that he can also be a brother to someone else, so not used reciprocal terms Most of the major kinship terms are understood by age 10
Adult Conversations with Preschoolers
1. Mothers continue to expand on information by talking about the same object or event in different ways and by adding new ideas and elaborating on them (Semantically) 2. Maternal modifications appear to be correlated with advances in the child's language abilities
A True Word
1. Must have a phonetic relationship to an adult word 2. Must be used consistently 3. Must occur in the presence of a referent, implying an underlying concept or meaning
Explain what is needed for a toddler's first "word" to be considered a true word.
1. Must have a phonetic relationship to an adult word 2. Must be used consistently 3. Must occur in the presence of a referent, implying an underlying concept or meaning
Support and defend one of the three explanations of concept development discussed in the text
1. People use words to refer to entities. 2. Words are extendable. 3. A given word refers to the whole entity, not its parts.
Conversational Abilities
1. Presupposition 2. Toddler Rules for Presupposition 3. Not able to adopt the listener's perspective
Preschool Conversation: Formats/Routines
1. Provide scaffold for child 2. Frees cognitive processing for more linguistic exploration and experimentation
Nouns occur more frequently adult-to-child speech:
1. Receive more stress 2. Are more often in the final position in utterances 3. Few morphological markers
Theory of Mind
1. Requires socio-cognitive abilities 2. ToM parallels self awareness 3. Most 4-year-olds can relate the emotions of others to desires or intentions and can understand that others may have a different perspective on the world from their own
Explain what the term "register" means. Why might children have a difficult time using different registers? Explain what is needed in terms of form, content, and use.
1. Styles of speaking 2. Age 4, children assume various roles in their play 3. Gender, pitch, loudness, etc. 4. Politeness varies with the partner and the age of a child
Speech Registers
1. Styles of speaking 2. Age 4, children assume various roles in their play 3. Gender, pitch, loudness, etc. 4. Politeness varies with the partner and the age of a child
Topic (Definition)
Content about which we speak
Conversational Repair: Types of Clarification
1. appear nearly equally divided between: general or nonspecific; or metalinguistic misunderstanding 2. Not until mid-elementary school that child is able to make specific requests 3. Most common clarification strategy is a simple repetition
Prompting
Any parental behavior that requires a child response: Three common types... 1. Fill-ins: "this is a _____" 2. Elicited Imitations: "Say doggie" 3. Questions: Yes/No ("is that a doggie?"; easier than 'wh-' questions) Wh- Questions ("where is the doggie?"; we then ask binary questions to give the child an idea of where the 'doggie' is)
Questions and Imperatives
80% of utterances are full adult utterances Most of the utterances they hear are highly repetitive E.g., "stop don't do that", "put it down", "don't touch that"
Toddler (12-24 Months) Learning Strategies: Expressive and Receptive
A child must sort out relevant and irrelevant information in adult and sibling conversations There are identified language-learning strategies that are frequently associated with toddlers
Toddler Learning Strategies: Whole-Object Principle
A given word refers to the whole entity, not its parts; 1. Parents start adding in these words later 2. E.g., table before drawer, leg, top
Centering
A linking of entities in a narrative to form a story nucleus; Links may be based on similarity of features, sequence, or causality
Turn-Abouts
A response to or a statement about what the child has said plus a request of some kind of information: 1. Adult-adult conversations 2. Adult-child conversations
Intention-Reading
A social cognitive skill of understanding language behavior of others (in human linguistic communication, the fundamental unit of intent is the utterances)
First Words: 18 Months
A toddler may produce 50 words; (nouns account for 60% to 65% of the words the child produces, although percentages change with development) Second half of the second year is one of tremendous vocabulary expansion (between 18 to 24 months, most children experience a "vocabulary spurt" especially in receptive vocabulary)
Longer Utterances: Recombinations
Action relations, such as agent + action and action + object, recombine and the redundant term is deleted
Recombinations Hypothesis (Definition)
Action relations, such as agent + action and action + object, recombine and the redundant term is deleted; With increasing memory and processing skills, a child is able to produce longer utterances by recombining some of these early patterns; the child still produces a great many single-word utterances and continues to babble and use jargon
Conventionality Assumption
Adults refer to entities in consistent conventional ways
Emerging Narrative Skills: Development
Although 2-year-olds possess basic patterns for familiar events and sequences, called "scripts", they are not able to describe sequences of events accurately until about age 4 2-3.5 year olds talk about things that have happened to them Between 2-2.5 years old, the number of these proto-narratives doubles
Conversational Repair: Contingent Queries
Approximately one-quarter of the contingent queries (e.g., requests for clarification) of 2 year olds are nonverbal, but these decrease with maturity
Concept Formation: Semantic-Feature Hypothesis
Assumes all referents can be defined by a universal set of semantic features 1. Establishes meaning by combining features present and perceivable in environment 2. Major DISADVANTAGE: fails to explain holistic nature of meaning or discriminate between features to determine the most relevant ones
Concept Formation: Function-Core Hypothesis
Assumes motion features than static perceptual features 1. Children's definitions have a strong elements of function of action, (i.e., an apple is something you eat) 2. While has appeal, difficult to find extensive use of shared function in utterances (i.e., use of moon for spherical or crescent shaped object)
Presupposition (Definition)
Assumption that the listener knows or does not know certain information that the child as speaker must include or delete
World Knowledge (Definition)
Autobiographical and experiential understanding and memory of events reflecting personal and cultural interpretations
6th Universal Language Learning Principle
Avoid Exceptions: 1. Words that follow the system 2. Avoid words that don't follow the system (they generalize, have over-extensions, and often use "-ed" not properly)
4th Universal Language Learning Principle
Avoid interruption and rearrangement of linguistic units: 1. Very defined order 2. Trying to figure out syntax (don't use passive voice very often; very straight forward with their wording)
Ellipsis (Definition)
Conversational device of omitting redundant information; e.g., when asked, "who say the movie?" we reply, "I did", not "I saw the movie."
New Word Meanings
Come From: 1. Linguistic Contexts 2. Nonlinguistic Contexts 3. Surrounding Syntactic Structure
Directives and Requests: age 3
Begins to use: 1. Some modal auxiliary verbs in indirect requests (Could you give me a...?) 2. Permissive directives (Can/may I have a...?) 3. Question Directives (Do you have a...?)
Topic (Characteristics)
By age 1, the child is highly skilled at initiating a topic by a combination of glances, gestures, vocalizations, and verbalizations (limited to topics about items that are physically present) Maintained for only one or two turns Extended topic maintenance possible only within established routines By 2 years old - capable of maintaining a topic in adjacent pairs of utterances (e.g., questions, commands, requests)
Taxonomic or "Word" Knowledge
Consists of categories and classes of words; event-based or word knowledge influences word knowledge
Narrative (Definition)
Consists of self-generated story; familiar tale; retelling of a movie, television show, or previously heard to seen story; and personal experience recounting
Modeling: 20-27 Months:
Caregivers length and complexity of utterances changes the most, because child's language changes most rapidly during this time; Dialog occurring at this time Caregivers fine-tune their language input based primarily on the comprehension level: 1. Dialog not symmetrical- Caregivers keep it going (we are teaching them the use of language) 2. Dependent on cues from the child
Emerging Narrative Skills: Age 5-7
Casual Chains
Preschool Conversation: Age 4
Child demonstrates a form of motherese
Evocative Utterances
Child makes a statement and caregiver provides feedback about the accuracy of the statement
Modeling: 18 Months
Child may learn a new word from one 1 exposure
Hypothesis Testing
Child says baby cry with rising intonation; caregiver provides feedback about accuracy of statement
Inerrogative Utterances
Child using "wh" questions; These requests for information are even found in the pointing and vocalizing behaviors of infants prior to first words
Emerging Narrative Skills: Age 3
Children are able to describe chains of events within familiar activities, such as birthday parties
Self-Generated Narratives of 2-3 year olds
Children begin to tell self-generated, fictional narratives between 2 and 3 years, most organized by centering 1. Usually concern highlights in the child's life and may have vague plot 2. Events they find disruptive or extraordinary 3. Often lack easily identifiable beginnings, middles, and ends
Stress Patterns and Meanings
Children use stress, or emphasis, to indicate meaning
Emerging Narrative Skills: Organization
Children use two strategies for organization of narratives: 1. Centering 2. Chaining
- What information is typically included in a narrative? What is the typically development from ages 2 - 5 of a narrative? What are two strategies preschoolers use to organize narratives?
Children use two strategies for organization of narratives: 1. Centering 2. Chaining Although 2-year-olds possess basic patterns for familiar events and sequences, called "scripts", they are not able to describe sequences of events accurately until about age 4 2-3.5 year olds talk about things that have happened to them Between 2-2.5 years old, the number of these proto-narratives doubles
Nouns Predominate
Children's early vocabularies contain relatively greater proportions of nouns than other word classes Frequency of nouns in adult-to-adult speech is low
Presupposition Linguistic Forms
Definite article, pronouns, demonstratives (this, that, these, those), and proper names Verbs such as "know", "think", "forget", and "remember" are used correctly as by age 4 By 5 or 6, they understands use of these verbs and others, such as "wish", "guess", and "pretend"
Cultural and Social Differences
Different expectations on child More direct teaching in some cultures Differences don't appear to have any impact on language development (differences are not to be confused with disorders) 3 Factors: 1. Role or status of child 2. Social organization of caregiving 3. Folk beliefs
Locational Prepositions
Exact nature of comprehension unknown; even at 42 months child may rely on gestures First English prepositions appear at around 2 years of age By age 3, most children have figures out the meanings of all, in, on, and under Prepositions of movement - to, into, and onto, interpreted as "toward" by 3 years of age Terms such as next to or in front of offer special problems because of overlapping definitions
Concept Formation: Associative Complex Hypothesis
Each successive use of the word shares some feature with a central instance or core concept
Interrogatives
Early question forms include "what", "where" and "who" followed by "whose", and "which", and finally by "when", "how", and "why" Recognition of the general type of information requested may precede the ability to give acceptable and accurate answers Casual questions may be especially difficult for the child below age 3
Emerging Narrative Skills: Age 4
Elements of event knowledge
Pattern-Finding
Enables us to find common threads in differing information
What Children Hear: Utterances
English speaking children (2-3 years) hear 5,000-7,000 utterances a day Questions and Imperatives They hear a lot of shared knowledge, routines, information in order to scaffold (children need a foundation to get going, and scaffolding is that bridge to get there)
Longer Utterances: Expansions
Expand from within to express attribution, possession, or recurrence
Toddler Learning Strategies: Words are Extenable
Extendability principle - Cup refers to a child's cup as well as lots of other cups; 1. Learning that words are symbols that represent concepts 2. Shared attributes
First Words
Fulfill intentions within well-established communication system of child and caregiver: 1. Putting meaning into what the child gives them (e.g., gestures, babbling, words, etc,...) Many early words can be only interpreted with gestures 1. This is because of the low intelligibility (e.g., pointing to, reaching for, etc,...)
Adult-adult Conversations
Goal is for each participant to obtain a turn
Adult-Child Conversations
Goal of adult is to get the child to take his/her turn
Role or Status of child
High regard or not
"Goodness of fit"
How well does information match up with the actual word (e.g., colors) A child's meaning encompasses a small portion of the fuller adult definition
Lexicon (Definition)
Individual dictionary of each person containing words and the underlying concepts of each; the lexicon is dynamic, changing with experience
Folk Beliefs
Informal theory: Learn by participating or observing
Two-Word Combinations
Initially, the child may experiment with a variety of rules Individual differences are great Consistent word order reflecting patterns heard in adult speech By 24 months, average child is using two-word utterances frequently in her speech Simple word-order rules relative to the child's semantic categories provide an adequate system for elaborating and interpreting
Processes of Language Acquisition
Intention-reading Pattern-Finding Language production consists of constructing utterances out of various learned pieces of language For preschoolers, 1/3 of utterances are novel
Social Organization of Caregiving
Older siblings caring for younger siblings, etc,...
Preschool Conversation: Verbal Responding
Large increase in amount of this between 24-30 months 30-month-old children are successful at engaging listener's attention and responding to feedback Increase in overall talkativeness at around 36 months of age Two-year-old considers conversational partner minimally (uses pronouns without identifying the entity to which they refer)
Not able to Adopt the Listener's Perspective
Learning "Theory of Mind"
Modeling: 8-18 Months:
Little to no change in IDS because little change in complexity of child's language Possibly only one or two utterances
Early Word Combinations: Utterances
Longer utterances of 3-4 words tend to be recombination's or expansions of these rules
Kinship Terms: Names of Family Members
Mama, dada, sister, and brother
Verbs from Toddlers
Modifiers and verb-like words appear soon after the child's first word (e.g., "down") Verbs appear much later As much as 60% of the verbs in maternal speech refer to future action (e.g., "mommy is going to throw the ball")
Grammatically Correct Utterances
More likely to be followed by: imitation, topic changes, acknowledgements or no response
Ungrammatical Utterances
More likely to be followed by: reformulation (recasts), expansions, extensions, requests for clarification
Directives and Requests: 4-5 year olds
More skilled with indirect forms and offer more explanations and justifications for their requests
Longer Utterances
Most common three-word utterances are agent + action + object and agent + action + location Two types: 1. Recombinations 2. Expansions Four-word or four-term utterances are expanded in the same way
Responding Behaviors: Reformulations (Recasts)
Most common with preschoolers. The adult is usually seeking clarification from the child: 1. The child usually responds with a repetition or acknowledgement of the correction or rejects the reformulation because the adult misunderstood their intent 2. Looking for understanding and shared meaning 3. With preschoolers, adults reformulate more frequently than imitating error-free utterances
Predictable Sound, Syllable, Patterns
Most first words contain one or two syllables: 1. Very few CVC words, and many of these are modified in production 2. Final consonant may be omitted or followed by a vowel-like sound
Turnabouts: Children aged 2-3 year olds
Mothers employ yes/no questions in turnabouts most frequently
Categorical Assumptions
Names refer to categories of things; overextends category beyond a limited set
Chaining (Definition)
Narrative form consisting of a sequence of events that share attributes and lead directly from one to another
Importance of Play
Not goal oriented so no frustration Attention and what is being attended to is shared, so child learns through joint attention and joint reference Games have rules and children learn that pattern of rules which is important for success in school Games are like conversation to learn turn-taking
Novel Name-Nameless Assumption
Novel names refer to previously nameless entities; allows for quick linking of symbols and referents
Temporal Relations
Order of acquisition is related to their use and to the concept each represents First, words of order, such as after, before Then, words of duration, such as since and until Finally, terms of simultaneity, such as while Acquisition reflects a sequence of cognitive development When all else fails, the child relies on his knowledge of real-life sequences
Heaps
Organizational strategies of 2-year-olds represent; these are sets of unrelated statements about a central stimulus; later, children begin to tell narratives characterized as sequences
Narrative Level (Definition)
Overall organization of a narrative
Responding Behaviors
Parents rarely reinforce the syntactic correctness of a toddler's utterances; "good talking", "great job"; Up to half (50%) of the mothers utterances to infants are questions; Reinforcement is usually given for politeness or truthfulness: 1. Grammatically correct utterances 2. Ungrammatical utterances
Universal Language Learning Principles: 7 Principles
Patterns of development that suggest underlying syntax learning strategies and operational principles
1st Universal Language Learning Principle
Pay attention to ends of words
3rd Universal Language Learning Principle
Pay attention to the order of words and morphemes: 1. In English, our word order drives the meaning 2. Inflection and intonation can mean a whole different phrase (start paying attention to words like "after" and "before")
Toddler Learning Strategies: Reference Principle
People use words to refer to entities; words "stand for" entities to which they refer; 1. Use linguistic patterns to infer this information 2. Mutual exclusivity assumption
2nd Universal Language Learning Principle
Phonological forms can be systematically modified: 1. Learning differences between sounds and coarticulation 2. Children understand allophones and know how to categorize
Mutual Exclusively Assumption
Presupposing that each referent has a unique symbol; guides initial word learning
Underextension (Definition)
Process in which a child applies a word meaning to fewer exemplars than an adult would; the child's definition is too restrictive and more limited than in adult usage
Overextension (Definition)
Process in which a child applies a word's meaning to more exemplars than an adult would; the child's definition is too broad and is thus beyond acceptable adult usage
Deixis (Definition)
Process of using the speaker's perspective as a reference; e.g., this can be seen in words such as "this", "that", "here", "there", "me", and "you"
Turnabouts: Children aged 3- 5.5 Years
Produce and respond effectively to contingent queries from both adults and peers, although younger children are more effective in their use with adults
Fast / Initial Mapping (Definition)
Quick, sketchy, and tentative formation of a link between a particular referent and a new name that enables a child to have access to and use the word in an immediate although somewhat limited way; gradually, the meaning of the referent widens as the word is freed from aspects of the initial context
Physical Relations
Relational terms such as 'thick/thin', 'fat/skinny/, 'more/less', and 'same/different' are frequently difficult for preschool children to learn First learns that the terms are opposites Then learns the dimensions to which each term refers Terms for general size on any dimension acquired before more specific terms
Event Structure (Definition)
Set of event sequences including the events, relationships relative significance
Scripts
Sets of expectations that aid memory, enhance comprehension, and give the child a knowledge base for interpreting events
Early Word Combinations: Transitional Forms
Several Transitional Forms Exist: 1. May combine a word with a gesture 2. Reduplications of a single utterance (e.g., "doggie doggie") 3. Two words learned as a single unit (e.g., daddybob, allgone) 4. Successive single-word utterances
Register (Definition)
Situationally influenced language variations, such as "motherese"
Lexicon: Individual Differences
Some children pay attention to: 1. words 2. phrases Individual children exist along a continuum Children with a high proportion of nouns (70% or more) exhibit a rapid increase in their lexicons between 14 and 18 months of age Children whose lexicons have more balance tend to have a more gradual increase in word acquisition
Ellipsis
Speaker omits redundant information that has been previously stated, assuming that the listener known this information Presuppositions that accompany 'wh-' questions
Emerging Narrative Skills: Age 3-5
Temporal event sequences
Associative Complex Hypothesis (Definition)
Theory that each example of a meaning category shares something with a core concept; in other words, there are common elements in the meanings of "pants", "shirt", "shoes", and "hat" that classify each as clothing; Vygotskyan concept
Prototypic Complex Hypothesis (Definition)
Theory that word meanings represent an underlying concept exemplified by a central referent, or prototype, that is a best exemplar or a composite of the concept
Functional-Core Hypothesis (Definition)
Theory that word meanings represent dynamic relationships, such as actions or functional uses, rather than static perceptual traits; Concept usually associated with Nelson
Semantic-Feature Hypothesis (Definition)
Theory that word meanings represent universal semantic features or attributes, such as animate/inanimate and male/female; for young children, meanings represent perceptual attributes; hypothesis usually associated with Clark
Early Word Combination
These combinations follow semantic category word-order rules (e.g., agent + action, action + object)
Parental Teaching Strategies Matching Children's Preferences
Three additional assumptions may be needed for the toddler to form hypothetical definitions quickly and to use syntactic information 1. Categorical assumption 2. Novel name-nameless assumption 3. Conventionality assumption
Receptive Strategies
Three assumptions of toddlers seem fundamental: 1. People use words to refer to entities 2. Words are extendable 3. A given word refers to the whole entity, not its parts
Expressive Language Learning Strategies
Toddlers use four expressive strategies to learn language: 1. Evocative Utterances 2. Hypothesis Testing 3. Interrogative Utterances 4. Selective Imitation
Concept Formation: Prototypic Complex Hypothesis
Underlying concept includes a central reference or prototype, usually the referent most frequently used with the adult speech model and the first referent for which the word was used
5th Universal Language Learning Principle
Underlying semantic relations should be marked overtly and clearly: 1. Passive Voice (In English, they have a harder time with passive voice; what is observed through calculated methods can be very dry) 2. Preschoolers are very clear and don't have passive voice, usually
Preschool Language Learning Strategies (2+)
Universal Language Learning Principles Bootstrapping
Dad's Role in Toddlerhood
Use more simplified adult speech, but fewer common words Less successful in communicating with toddlers Use more requests for clarification, and requests are more nonspecific Acknowledge their children's utterances less often, resulting in children persisting less in conversation
7th Universal Language Learning Principle
Use of grammatical markers should make semantic sense: 1. Over-Generalizations 2. Only adding like "-ed" to words that actually make sense (they wouldn't call a dog a "dogged")
Semantic Bootstrapping
Use semantics to decode syntax
Syntactic Bootstrapping
Use syntax to figure out word meanings
Responding Behaviors: Expansions
Used more with younger kids; maintain the word order but provide a more mature syntactic form (expanding on the syntax/expanding on the meaning) 1. E.g., child might say "Mommy eat" and Mommy expands the statement by saying, "Yes, mommy is eating" 2. 30% of mothers responses to children (18-24 month olds are expansions) 3. Nearly 1/3 of adult expansions are in turn imitated by the child, and are likely to be more linguistically correct than their initial statement 4. E.g., "Child: Block fall." Adult: "Um-Hmm, the blocks fall down." Child: "Block fall down."
Word Knowledge (Definition)
Verbal word and symbol definitions
Adult Teaching Strategies
Very little direct teaching, but caregivers do facilitate their children's language acquisition: 1. Modeling/IDS (Infant Directed Speech) 2. Prompting 3. Responding Behaviors
Concept Formation
We do not have a definitive answer on how children form concepts Several hypothesis have been proposed to explain concept formation and word learning
Responding Behaviors: Extensions
When a mother adds semantic information to the child's utterance; semantically related comment on topic established by child (adding to the child's vocabulary) Ex., child says, "Mommy eat" and Mommy says, "Yes, Mommy is hungry."
Modeling
When parents model, they are adapting speech and language to child language level- Infant Directed Speech (parents are adapting their speech/language to speak to their child) Caregiver adjusts verbal behaviors as child's verbal development progresses More time spent in joint attention, the greater a child's vocabulary in toddlerhood
Selective Imitation
Whole or partial repetition of an utterance produced by another speaker within no more than 3 consecutive child utterances
Locational Prepositions: Differ in Locations to which they Refer
With object location, sometimes child must refer to the speaker's perspective, so listener must be able to adopt the perspective of the speaker
Extension
Words are initially fast mapped, formed in a fast, sketchy, tentative way and may under-extend or over-extend the adult meaning