CLA speech theorists - English Language

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  • Child Language Acquisition Speech - main theorists
    • Chomsky (Innate theory)
      • Accent and imitation is another element
      • Tomasello - 2016 - usage-based learning - building blocks - taking away and adding phrases to construct sentences
      • Chomsky didn't work with real babies
      • Genie never developed language when isolated from human contact
      • Chomsky overstated the poverty of children's input. Research shows that 90% of what children hear is standard grammar rather than fragmented utterances
      • Too much emphasis on what is inbuilt, not enough on interaction.
      • Berko and the Wug - 1960 - showed that children know words that they could not have heard and therefore not memorised, so they do know rules, like plural 's'
      • LAD - Language Acquisition Device - Children have an hypothetical tool within the human brain that lets them learn and understand language quickly
    • Bruner (Interactional theory)
      • LASS - Language Acquisition Support System - Encourages speech
        • 1. Gain child's attention 2. Query 3. Label image 4. Feedback  to baby's utterances
      • CDS/Motherese/Parentese
        • Exaggerated high pitched voice. Intonation. Simple grammar. Fewer corrections.
        • Crystal, 1986: child doesn't respond, save crying, but mother continues speaking, responding to proto-words
        • Bancroft, 1996: Games such as 'peek-a-boo' parallel turn-taking and rules of conversations
        • Clarke-Stewart, 1973: CDS provides child with more vocabulary
        • Hart and Risley, 1977: more vocabulary spoken to child before age of 3, the more vocab child will know. 86% to 98% of the words used by each child by the age of three were derived from their parents’ vocabularies. 
        • Nelson, 1973: Corrections slow the child's learning down
        • Kuhl, 1992: Children turn towards exaggerated vowel sounds and sing-song voices
      • Genie: No social interaction from 20 months to 13 years old. Only basic language was learnt as a consequence of this
      • Papua New Gineau and Samoa don't use this and their children develop at a similar rate.
    • Skinner (Behaviourism)
      • Accent and dialect
      • Hart and Risley, 1977: more vocabulary spoken to child before age of 3, the more vocab child will know. 86% to 98% of the words used by each child by the age of three were derived from their parents’ vocabularies. 
      • General theory of learning - they start as a blank slate
      • Operant conditioning, 1957 - negative reinforcment until child learns language correctly (rejected by Nelson, 1973)
        • Nelson, 1973: Corrections slow the child's learning down
      • My first word (taboo lexis) was imitation of caregiver's lexis
      • Tested theory on rats and pigeons, not children
      • Chomsky said that children won't hear overgeneralisations from adults as adults wouldn't use them
      • Virtious errors made by children
      • Fis Phenomom: child unable to use correct form, despite understanding
      • Chomsky said Skinner's theory was 'gross and superficial'
    • Piaget and Vygotsky (Cognitive theory) - children's enviroment supports understanding
      • Bereiter and Scardemelia, 1987: Developmental model theory
        • 1. knowledge and telling strategy or content knowledge, e.g. child told to write down everything from memory about a holiday.
        • 2. knowledge transforming strategy: writer uses knowledge they have as well as their understanding of genre to write a piece of writing.
      • Garvey: children adopt roles during play
      • John McWhorter, 2020: When in quarantine, his 5 year old daughter had a sudden vocabulary boom due to playing with her older sister
      • Gunther Kress, 1970: multimodal play - construct world's in which to play in and act out roles
      • Vygotsky: Two separate roles; communication and thought. Language and thought become closely related
        • Piaget: Children need to understand a concept before using the language.
          • E.g: The Naming Explosion, linked to object permenance and pronouns.
            • Object permeance: e.g. Mummy didn't disappear when she left the room
      • 'Fuzzy areas' in child's language don't relate to concept first then language, for example; 'ed' past tense
      • Medical conditions like autistic spectrum disorder often have advanced language, but lack of conceptual understanding
      • Navitists (innate theory), often argue that language is unique and shouldn't be linked to other processes of child's development
      • Fis Phenonom, 1958/60

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