Child Language Acquisition ReportJustin Hough

The study of how children acquire language covers all five of the basic language subsystems, these include; phonetics and phonology – the fundamental sounds that make up the language, morphology and lexicology – the use of these sounds in the formation of a wide range words, syntax – the use of these words in the formation of proper sentences, semantics – the meaning behind words and the different ways a message can be conveyed using different words, and discourse – the non-verbal methods of communication used in language (facial expressions, body language, etc.).

There are four stages that children go through when learning their first language. Each of these stages will be discussed in the following section.

The Four Stages of Language AcquisitionBabbling ~ birth to 11 months.Babbling refers to the very first stage of child language acquisition, where the child first begins to become accustomed to the language that their parents speak or that they are exposed to the most often, then slowly start experimenting with sounds until they can learn to convey meaning. The first part of the babbling stage begins at the very start of the child’s life, well before they even speak their first word. This involves the baby listening to the sounds that they hear around them and familiarising themselves with the sounds common to their language. After this, the baby begins to experiment with different sounds. This experimentation includes “goo-ing” and “cooing” sounds (sounds with elongated vowel sounds like “oooo” and “aaaa”). These sounds are often strung together but are not recognizable as words, nor are they associated with any meaning.

Usually around the six-month mark, babies begin to babble using reduplicated sounds. These are sounds where a consonant and vowel pair syllable is continually repeated (“da da da da” or “ma ma ma ma”). This is because it’s around the same age that children gain the ability to open and close their vocal tracts, allowing them to distinguish the difference between vowel and consonant sounds1. Through constant experimentation and exposure to their parent’s language, along with physiological development, the child begins to string together longer more complex sounds that are paired with prosodic features like stress, intonation, and inflections. This type of speech is known as “jargon”, when the baby appears to be using its own language with adult-like speech patterns.

1 Mugitani, R., Hiroya, S.: “Development of vocal tract and acoustic features in children.” Acoustical Science and Technology 33(4), 215–220 (2012)

June 02, 2017 | Child Language Acquisition Report | Justin Hough D3

6-month old baby babbling (click for video).

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One-word stage ~ 12-18 months.As the name implies, the one-word stage is when the child is speaking in manly one-word utterances. It is also sometimes referred to as the holophrastic stage. It is also the stage when the child has their first word. The main and most important part of the one-word stage is the realisation that words carry meaning and can be used in an expressive manner. The infant’s speech techniques are still in early development, so it is common for them to have trouble with certain sounds, but they can start to successfully make themselves clear. Their first word is usually one that they hear on a regular basis, most likely something concrete from the environment in which they spend the majority of their time2. Simple words like no, dog, cat, mama, and dada are all common first words. The words spoken in this stage are almost all content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.), rather than function words (conjunctions, determiners, prepositions, etc.). They are also almost always monosyllabic (one syllable, usually consonant + vowel).

It is common during this stage for the child to use a single word to refer to a wide range of things. For example, “food” could refer to “there is some food”, or “can I have food?”, or “that is the cat’s food”. The child knows that food refers to something edible, but hasn’t yet learnt how to express exactly what they want to say about the food. This is due in part to the use of mainly content words and not function words, whose job is to provide extra information about the content words. It is also common for the child to overgeneralise when using nouns in the one-word stage. The word “puppy” might be incorrectly used to describe all dogs or even other animals, or “dad” could be used to describe any older male person.

Two-word stage ~ 18-24 months.The two-word stage is very similar to the one-word stage in a variety of ways. Both stages see a dramatic increase in the vocabulary of the children, with new words being learnt nearly every day. Children in both stages make use of mostly content words rather than function words, which also means that the child’s phrases can be interpretted multiple ways (see examples given for one-word stage). Their phrases are usually not grammatically correct, with the incorrect tense used or the wrong prefixes and/or suffixes used. It is very common for the child’s sentences to be structured correctly though, with the subject preceding the object3.

The inclusion of two words in the child’s phrases allow them to provide more evidence about objects. “Car” can now become “daddy car”, distinguishing that the car being refered to belongs to the child’s father rather than it being any car. They can now express more complex thoughts and ideas as their vocabulary expands to include more advanced words and their physiological advancements allow them to recreate more of the sounds in their language.

2 A. K. Barry.: “Linguistic Perspectives on Language and Education.” 165-169 (2008)3 Berk, Stephanie, and Diane Lillo-Martin.: “The Two-Word Stage: Motivated by Linguistic or Cognitive Constraints?” Cognitive Psychology 65.1 118–140 (2012)

June 02, 2017 | Child Language Acquisition Report | Justin Hough D3

Non-English speaking baby in the one-word stage. (click for video).

Child in the two-word stage of language acquisition (click for video).

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Telegraphic stage ~ 24 + monthsThe telegraphic stage follows straight after the two-word stage. It earnt its name due to the similarity between the child’s speech during this stage and the nature of old telegram messages, in that certain parts of speech are left out to make conversation quicker, easier, and more efficient. The parts of speech that are omitted are usually things like the function words and certain morphemes attached to words, as these things can be left out and the remainder of the sentence will usually still make sense. This style of communication has come back in the form of e-communication through text messaging and online instant messaging. This is no different to the previous stages though, function words don’t really play a role in a child’s language until after 2-3 years. The difference with the telegraphic stage is the increase in the amount of words strung together in a sentence versus the previous stage, the two-word stage.

As the child continues to experiment with language and their exposure to their parents language continues, they begin to incorporate some of the more subtle parts of speech into their own speech patterns. The use of proper verb endings (ing, ed, etc.), the correct tense, and even some basic prepositions can be expected in this stage. It is expected for the child to be able to produce the full range of sounds by this stage. By the age of 2, most children are learnng an average of about 10 words per day, and by the age of 6 they are expected to have a vocabulary of about 14 thousand words4.

The Three Major Theories of Language AcquisitionBehaviourismBehaviourism is one of the earliest theories of language acquisition, created by American psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner (B.F. Skinner). Skinner’s theory stated that language development was a direct result of the environment that a child was raised in. The child first imitates the sounds that people around them make, then that word is reinforced with an action or object. If the child uses an incorrect word, they are corrected and the proper word is reinforced with its associated meaning5. There are some pitfalls to the theory of behaviourism however.

As behaviourism states that children only learn new words from their environment, they should not be capable of simply making up their own words. This is not the case though. Most people have heard children say things that an adult would never be heard saying, things like “I runned” or “yes pick up”. If behaviourism was a correct theory, children should only be heard saying phrases they have heard before.

Innatism4 W. O’Grady.: “How Children Learn Language —What Every Parent Should Know.” 165-169 (2008)5 H. Lemetyine.: “Language Acquisition.” <https://www.simplypsychology.org/language.html> (2012)

June 02, 2017 | Child Language Acquisition Report | Justin Hough D3

Two-year old boy in the telegraphic stage of speech (click for video).

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Innatism (also known as the nature theory) is the theory that everyone is born with the ability to acquire language. This theory came quickly after Skinner’s theory of behaviourism, with its creator – Naom Chomsky – criticising Skinner and his theory. His main argument against Skinner was if children learn by imitation, how is it that they can say words that they’ve never heard before6?

Chomsky believed that all babies must be born with a special “built-in” biological ability that allows them to learn language. He called this ability the Language Acquisition Device (LAD). The LAD is supposed to contain a set of all of the main rules for all possible human languages, include the common rules for universal grammar. The LAD does not contain all of the exceptions of language however, so children are supposed to learn by testing the rules they know on all words and dismissing the words that are in correct (via correction from their parents). For example, you can create the past tense of some verbs by adding the suffix –ed, so a child would say “goed”. After being corrected by a parent they would learn that this is an exception to the grammar rule that was contained in their LAD. Although children may have the innate ability to acquire language, they still need to be exposed to it for them to develop proper language skills.

InteractionismInteractionism can be seen as somewhat of a combination of the two aforementioned theories and currently seems to be the most correct of the three. It draws aspects from both the theory of behaviourism and the theory of innatism. Interactionism is the creation of Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky was responsible for the creation of the sociocultural model, a modal of human development. It states that all cultural development in children is visible in two stages. First, the child observes the interaction between other people and then the behavior develops inside the child7. Interactionism follows the idea that language is acquired through both social interactions and biological means. Children are born with an innate ability to acquire and develop language, but they will not do this if they aren’t exposed to language during their upbringing8. Humans are naturally social beings, and interactionists argue that the development of language in children is due to their innate desire to communicate9.

*the following videos were consulted during research.- Khan Academy – Theories of Language Development(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRGwdfQV8kU)

- Language: Crash Course Psychology #16(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9shPouRWCs)

Child ObservationsArcher 11 months old

6 E. Elturki.: “The Innatist Theory: A Brief Overview.” (2010)7 K. Henschel.: “Interactionist Theory of Language Acquisition and ESL.” (2012)8 Rudd, L. & Lambert, M.: “Interaction theory of language development.”Encyclopedia of Child Behavior and Development, pp. 830-831. (2011)9 Chapman, R. S.: “Children's Language Learning: An Interactionist Perspective.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 41: 33–54. (2000)

June 02, 2017 | Child Language Acquisition Report | Justin Hough D3

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According to the common ages for each of the four stages of child language acquisition, Archer should be transitioning from the babbling stage to beginning to speak in one-word utterances.

Sounds IPA translation Notes“Ahh” ɑː Typical babbling sound, grunt.

“Ta” tɑː “Thanks”.

“Mamama” mɑːmɑːmɑː “Mum”.

“Dadada” dɑːdɑːdɑː “Dad”.

“Eh” eɪ He grunted a lot.

“Nan” næn “Grandmother”

“Ga goo ga” gɑː guː gɑː Typical babbling sound.

“Wo wo wo wo” wəʊ wəʊ wəʊ wəʊ Typical babbling sound.

“Wooh Wooh Wooh” wuː wuː wuː Typical babbling sound.

“Uh-oh” ʌ əʊ “That’s not good”

Archer was also able to understand the semantic meaning behind a wide range of words, even if he was yet to be able to produce those words himself. At one point, he reached down and placed something in the bucket, then grabbed the bucket by its handle and walked around with it. This shows that although he was unable to say the word bucket, he was well aware of its purpose and function.

Porsche and Jada 3 years 9 monthsAccording to the common ages for each of the four stages of child language acquisition, the twins should be well into the telegraphic stage. They should be learning upwards of ten words a day and beginning to pick up some of the more intricate details involved with speech patterns, such as; the inclusion of more function words, the proper use of tense, and an increased awareness of the exceptions to certain grammar rules.

Sounds IPA translation Notes“Mum” mʌm Use of mum instead of “mama”.

“Dad” dæd Dad instead of “dada”.

“Sue” sjuː Struggled to pronounce the “ʃ” in shoe.

“Yhaas” jɑːs Would tend to mispronounce yes.

“Mmm” mː When pausing to answer question.

Sounds IPA translation Notes“Yoyd” jɔɪd Mispronouncing names.

“No toys” nəʊ tɔɪz Didn’t want to play with toys.

June 02, 2017 | Child Language Acquisition Report | Justin Hough D3

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“Yes pwease” jɛs pwiːz When offered to talk with student.

“Ta” tɑː Thank you.

“Thank you” θæŋk juː Prompted to use proper form by mother.

*The twins did not speak in sentences during their time with us, just small fragments.

The twins were capable of producing the majority of the sounds in the English language, but like most children they struggled with certain nuances of speaking. For example, when pronouncing their uncle’s name “Lloyd” they would struggle to produce the “l’ sound. Instead, they would substitute it for a “j” sound so it would become “Yoyd”.

Their mother also said that their understanding of the semantics behind words seemed to develop dramatically ‘overnight’. This supports the theory of a vocabulary spurt, where children go from a slow rate of addition to their vocabulary to a very rapid rate, seemingly overnight. Researchers have concluded that not every child experiences a vocabulary spurt, so it isn’t a typical part of child language development10.

ConclusionIn conclusion, the rough age outlines provided by linguistic experts for at which ages children should enter certain language development stages proved to be accurate and reliable. Archer showed signs of the babbling stage – which going by his age he should still be in – and parts of the one-word stage that he is transitioning into. The twins were shy during our time with them so a conclusive report of their language development could not be made in terms of the sentence structure, grammar knowledge, etc. The way that they were producing sounds could be analysed using the small sentence fragments heard when answering their parent’s questions.

10 Ganger, J. Brent, M. R.: "Reexamining the vocabulary spurt". Developmental Psychology. 40 (4): 621–632. (2004)

June 02, 2017 | Child Language Acquisition Report | Justin Hough D3

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