CLA quick summary

Summary

The first three stages children tend to go through in acquiring language are:

·         Crying, (a child’s only form of communications in the early weeks of life.)

·         Cooing (through which a child gains control of their vocal chords.)

·         Babbling (where reduplicated monosyllables (mama dada) often sounds like a child is calling a parent.

Further Stages that children tend to go through are:

• One word stages: first words usually reflect a child’s environment and they are often holophrastic in meaning.
•     Two-word stage: demonstrates a child’s first sentences and contains a primitive grammar.
•  Telegraphic stage: sees utterances made up of words that tell us the main message but leave small unimportant bits out.

Theories:

• Theories of child language acquisition (Skinner):  Imitations and reinforcement theory- Skinner though that children learn by imitations language. When this is successful they are rewarded by praise and are motivated to do it again. Largely discredited now.
• Theories of child language acquisition (Chomsky): Innateness theory- all children are born with the capacity to learn underlying grammatical rules which govern their language. This is called the LAD device.
• Theories of child language acquisition (Piaget): This theory emphasizes the importance of a child’s intellectual development regarding its learning of language.
• Critical period (Lenneberg): Critical period hypothesis- This theory suggests that there is a critical time in a child’s life, during which time they are capable of acquiring language. However, this time is limited- evidence suggests that the cut off age is around 13 years old.