CLA Revision

CLA Revision

Noam Chomsky 

- Nativist - the capacity to acquire language is innate within humans.

- Human brain is programmed to acquire grammatical structures.

- LAD (language acquisition device)

Overextension

- Children overextend physical qualities of others and features such as shape, sound, taste, movement, size, textures.

Piaget

- Cognitive - Children develop their linguistic competence alongside their ability to understand the world around them.

-Will only acquire more complex forms if their intellectual development can cope.

- It will be unsuccessful to try and teach them things before they are ready.

Michael Halliday 

Functions of Speech: 

- Instrumental - to fulfil a need.

- Regulatory - to influence the behaviour of others. (influential power)

- Interactional - to build social relationships.

-Personal - conveying opinions, ideas and personal identity.

-Representational - facts and information.

- Imaginative - creating an imaginary world 

- Heuristic - to learn about their environment 

Jerome Bruner

- LASS (language acquisition support system) 

- The childs interaction with the adults around them helps them develop their language.

- Scaffolding - that adults gradually withdraw the support as their children's language skills develop.

Child Directed Speech 

-imperatives and interrogatives 

- higher pitch 

- repetition 

- present tense

- fewer verbs/modifiers

- concrete nouns

- yes/no questioning 

- one-word utterances 

- expansions or recasts 

Standardisation of the English Language

Standardisation of the English Language

• Dr. Samuel Jonhson published the most famous first extensive English dictionary published in 1755 and was the standardisation for spellings, definitions and meanings. The dictionary enlisted 40,000 words and took 8 years to compile.
• This dictionary made the Midlands accents the preferred way of writing and spelling and the dictionary was based on this accent.
• Now words and spellings were written and recorded so standardisation began.
• After the English dictionary was published, Lowth published grammar books in 1762 to meet the demand for 'politeness' and 'correct' English in a newly standardised society. This included standardised past participles.
• These grammar books were re-issued all the way up to 1800 so all became more aware of grammar rules and spellings.

Reasons Why Language Changes

Reasons Why Language Changes

• Neosemy is the process where we begin to use words in different ways and therefore develop new meanings.
• Meanings can also shift completely e.g. fond. - meaning now is to like something or to be affectionate but it used to mean foolish or silly. It has ameliorated.

Processes of Neosemy

• Generalisation/Broadening
• Specialising/Narrowing
• Amelioration
• Pejoration
• Weakening/Bleaching
• Metaphor
• Euphemism
• Polysemy - words that acquire many possible meanings that coexist with the original.

What Affects Language Change

External factors:

• Cultural Changes
• Technological Innovation e.g. virus, bug, crash, windows
• Social Convention e.g. LGBT
• 
  

Language Change - Periods of English

Language Change

Periods of English

• Old English - 5th Century

English developed from the Angles, Jutes and Saxons (Anglo-Saxons). Vocabulary was drawn from Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse. Latin was very influential and was highly regarded as 'upper-class'. Dialects developed from different areas of settlement. Little consistency with written language as this was before standardisation.

• Middle English - 11th Century

Norman Invasion was a significant event and French became the language of the court and administration. Latin remained in written documentation and in the church. Writers such as 'Chaucer' chose to write in English rather than French and this was where English came to prominence.

• Early Modern English - 15th Century

Caxton introduced printing press, which helped to standardise the English language. The South-East dialect was the basis for the standard form. There became a growing interest in using English. Shakespeare produced his work in English and James I commissioned the first Authorised version of the Bible in English.


In this period, Samuel Johnson's dictionary was published. It took just over 8 years to compile and
listed 40,000 words. This is what led to the standardisation of the English Language.

• Modern English - 18th Century

English language grew at an incredible rate and it had borrowed words from lots of other languages like Latin and Greek. The grammar and structure of the language began to develop in the patterns that people used language. There then became standard ways of writing and speaking.

• Present-Day English - 20th Century

English has developed through influences like technology, media and travel and English has become the international language.

CLA - Research Task

CLA Research Task

1) CLA developmental phases in correct order: Cooing, Babbling, Holophrastic, Two-word, Telegraphic, Post-Telegraphic.

2) A - Nativist -> N. Chomsky

    B - Cognitive -> J. Piaget

    C - Behaviourist -> B.F. Skinner

    D - Interactional -> J. Bruner

    E - Critical Period -> E. Lenneberg 

3) This process is 'overextension' by analogy. The child sees similar shapes to the orange and uses the term by overextension to include the orange in the term.

4) This is called 'underextension'. This is because the child does not know the word 'shoes' is a hypernym and can be applied to other shoes. Cannot relate the term to a similar item. 

5) This process is called 'overgeneralisation', when the child applies the general rule to an irregular verb. This term supports Chomsky's LAD theory.

6) Telegraphic stage - child has used subject verb but has missed out the copular verb 'is' and the preposition 'to'.

7) The child is using the first person object pronoun 'me' instead of the first person subject pronoun 'I'.

8) Substitution - child is replacing the 'ch' for a simpler sound 't'. But could also be seen as consonant cluster reduction as the child might have found it difficult to pronounce the 'ch' sound therefore it is reduced to a smaller unit.

9) Deletion - leaving out last consonant, child cannot recognise that they are not pronouncing.

10) Deletion of unstressed syllables - removal of 'ba', difficult to pronounce polysyllabic lexis.

11) Instrumental - expresses needs and wants e.g. 'want juice'.

Regulatory - to give commands 'lift me up'.

Interactional - to create interactions 'bye bye'.

Personal - to express thoughts, likes, dislikes and opinions e.g. 'I don't like fruit'

Imaginative - to create imaginary words or thoughts 

Heuristic - to seek information 'what are you doing?'

Informative - to relay information - 'we had beef for dinner'

12) Jean Berko - using a made up animal tested application of the children of the '-s' plural rule and found nearly all applied it to a noun they've never heard before.

13) nouns - most common items around a child and easily understood as they can see them

14) equal so as if the child is a full participant, and teaching a child a Q&A style conversation.

15) CDS- stress of pronunciation on particular morphemes, interrogatives, imperatives, simplified grammar, tag q's & turn taking, paralinguistic.

16) A girl named the 'wild child'. She could not speak or communicate as she was locked in a room for 12 years and wasn't interacted with. Her case proves Lenneberg's 'critical period' and Bruner's 'interaction' theory.

17) Jim was born to deaf parents and placed in front of a tv in hope that he would pick up language from there but he didn't. Supports interaction theory (Bruner).

18) David Crystal, Jean Aitchison, Noam Chomsky.

19) Language Acquisition Device. 

20) Determiners, Auxiliary Verbs.

Michael Halliday's Functions of Speech - CLA

Michael Halliday's Functions of Speech - CLA

Instrumental:

The child begins to use language to express their needs. Directly concerned with obtaining food, drink and comfort, e.g. 'want juice'.

Regulatory:

Child begins to use language to influence the behaviour of others. Persuading/commanding/requesting others to do things. E.g. 'go away'.

Interactional:

Child uses language to develop social relationships and ease the process of interaction.
Concerned with the phatic dimension of talk e.g. 'I love you.'

Personal:

Child uses language to express personal preferences and individual identity e.g. 'I am good'. Sometimes referred to as the 'Here I am!' function - announcing oneself to the world.

Representational:

Child uses language to exchange information. Concerned with relaying or requesting facts and information.

Heuristic:

Child uses language to learn of and explore the environment to learn. This may be questions and answers, or the kind of running commentary that frequently accompanies children play e.g. 'What is the tractor doing?'

Imaginative:

Child uses language to tell stories and jokes, and to create an imaginary environment. May also accompany play as children create an imaginary environment.
May also accompany play as children create imaginary words, or may arise from storytelling.

Evie 'All the Things' Mini Investigation

Evie 'All The Things' Mini Investigation 

Introduction

• Title: What characteristics of language are the two participants, Evie and her grandmother, displaying in the "All the Things' transcript? 
• Hypothesis: According to theory, I would assume that Evie should display several linguistic features of the telegraphic stage of language development and her Grandmother should display several features of Child Directed Speech.
• I would assume that Evie's grandmother is likely to use several interrogatives; imperatives and cloaked imperatives as these are features of Child Directed Speech. Because Evie is 2 years and 7 months at the time of this video, I would suggest she would display some non-standard pronunciations and using beginning to use negatives in a more standard way placing 'not' or 'no' in the standard place in the sentence. I chose these features as theory suggests that these are features of the telegraphic stage which is the stage Evie will be in according to her age.

Methodology

• I picked one transcript called 'All the Things' and quantified features that would display Evie in the telegraphic stage and to show her grandmother using Child Directed speech. Every feature tested above was applied to the transcript. 
• Picked random participants so I did not know the participants personally and so would not make biased judgements on the data. 
• It is ethical because Evie's parents had given full consent for this recording to be used for teaching purposes.
• As this is only a mini investigation, I only have one sample of data therefore it is not fully representative of Evie and her grandmother's language. Only a small sample might not show how Evie and her grandmother tailor their language to other audiences. 

Analysis

• In the transcript, Evie's grandmother asked 45 questions while Evie only asked 3, this shows that Evie's grandmother is leading the conversation and is using features of Child Directed Speech to communicate with Evie.
• Evie's grandmother also uses 3 imperatives while Evie uses 1. This shows more of a similarity between their language but still shows grandma uses a higher frequency of imperatives as she is displaying Child Directed Speech. Evie may have used an imperative as she is beginning to transition into the telegraphic stage and so is beginning to be able to ask and order adults in order to get what she wants.
• Grandma uses 4 cloaked imperatives while Evie uses one. Similar to previously, this could be because Grandma is using Child Directed Speech to Evie to lead the conversation.
• Evie makes 10 non-standard pronunciations, which shows she is still in the telegraphic stage. She says a couple of things that are inaudible so I didn't count them as non-standard pronunciations as they could have been pronounced correctly just not clearly.
• Evie also pronounces things with an 'f' sound at one point in the transcript. This is a typical pronunciation mistake during child language acquisition. This is interesting because when a child wants to make a 'th' sound like in the word 'things' or 'three', the 'th' sound gets substituted for the 'f' sound. This is an example of substitution which is classed as a mistake in sounding words, as it is assumed that the 'f' sound is easier to pronounce than the 'th' combined consonant sound.
• Evie also is beginning to recognise where the negative i.e. 'no' or 'not' should be placed in the sentence and is using it standardly. She only did this once but as I only have one sample of data it is not really representative of her ability to use it properly. This would suggest she is transitioned into the telegraphic stage as she is using these standardly.

Conclusion

• In conclusion, I would say that there was massive limitations due to the very limited data pull, only one transcript can not really conclude anything about language patterns. 
• My data supports my hypothesis as Grandma used much more interrogatives, imperatives and cloaked imperatives to display features of Child Directed Speech.
• My data also supports my hypothesis as Evie used many more non-standard pronunciations and  showed a limited ability to use negatives in the right place in a sentence grammatically.