Language Acquisition

1. Language Acquisition • DEVELOPING LANGUAGE: • Language Acquisition

2. Language Acquisition • The average child speaks his or her first words at about a year old. • Between the ages of a year and 18 months, the child speaks in single-word utterances: • Teddy • Mummy • Gone

3. Language Acquisition • Occasionally, more than one word may seem to be involved. • This happens when a group of words has been learned as a single unit: • Allgone • Wassat

4. Language Acquisition • Much of what is first learned serves a naming function: • Juice • Biccy • Daddy • Sometimes, however, single words may convey a multitude of meanings.

5. Language Acquisition • Holophrases • This is the term given to single words which may convey a multitude of messages. • The utterance Juice, for instance, may have many meanings. Can you suggest some?

6. Language Acquisition • A child’s understanding of words and syntax is more advanced than his or her spoken language suggests. • Children between 12 and 18 months old respond to two-word instructions such as: • Kiss teddy • Tickle daddy

7. Language Acquisition • Two-word utterances • Two-word sentences usually begin to appear when the child is about 18 months old. • This is known as the two-word stage.

8. Language Acquisition • The two words are usually in a standard grammatical sequence: • Subject/verb – Stephen sleep • Verb/object – Draw mummy • Subject/object – Louis juice • Subject/complement – Daddy busy

9. Language Acquisition • When a child repeats adult utterances, some of the words may be missed out. • The grammatical structure, however, usually mimics that of the parent/care-giver. • The words uttered will also carry the meaning (content words). • Adult: Danielle’s playing in the garden • Child: Play garden

10. Language Acquisition • Try to assign different meanings to the following two-word phrases: • Mummy sock • Paul eat • Teddy bed • Notice the reliance on intonation for meaning

11. Language Acquisition • During this stage, the child often has trouble separating possessive pronouns from personal pronouns: • This is hims car. My finished now. • I can see shes bed. Mys want to come in.

12. Language Acquisition Children also often use the object case instead of the subject: • Me want it • Him did it • Her gave me one • Thems all gone now

13. Language Acquisition • … and the subject case instead of the object: • Let she do it • I gonna push they over • … and inconsistent use: • She like that, her do

14. Language Acquisition • From the age of about two children begin producing three- and four-word utterances. • Children become capable of distinguishing between the subject and the object. • Adverbs are acquired to indicate time, manner and place.

15. Language Acquisition • As well as declaratives, other sentence moods will be used, such as interrogatives. • Children begin to ask questions using the ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘who’ formation, rather than a reliance on intonation.

16. Language Acquisition • By the age of three, children can use: • Determiners – a, the • Inflexions on the ends of adjectives – bigger, biggest • Past tense formations – kicked • Co-ordinating conjunction – and • Auxiliary verbs - do, have, can and will

17. Language Acquisition • By the end of the third year, children can use most parts of speech more or less correctly, with appropriate intonation and stress.