CLD - Child Language Development

How do we learn to speak?

• Parents and carers have a huge influence
• Imitation and reinforcement - copy and reproduce - nurture
• Interactions-using language with others/different contexts/playing
• Born with it/nature/innate/Fox-p-2
• A window for language development closes around early puberty

Stephen Fry-Planet Word-Origins of language

• Fox-p-2 = DNA code, enabling us to develop language from birth
• Deb Roy-Speech home project-tracked pronunciation of noun water over 7 months
• From the age of 2, children pick up 10 new words a day
• the child's semantic awareness outstrips their phonological ability(highlighted by Deb Roy)

Lexis

• HFL/LFL (High frequency lexis/low frequency lexis)
• Form-purpose-audience
• techniques of style model(quotes)

Grammar

• Punctuation-sentence structure-register
• spelling
• syntax(sentence)

Syntax functions

• interrogative
• exclamative
• declarative
• imperative

Horizon-Why do we talk?

• Children learn o speak with minimal effort
• despite decades of research, how we learn to talk remains a mystery
• parents simplify language to match child (convergence)
• As child's language develops, parents converge
• Doctor Cathy Price-work in progress-studies parts of brain
• Baby recognises mums voice first
• Innate ability for language
• Noam Chomsky-Language is innate-We all have L.A.D
• Jean Burko Gleason-we need to be exposed to language

Language acquisition

• Morphology is happening at a unconscious level
• sight, touch, smell, taste, hearing
• Babies see more than hear at first
• Non verbal is the main source of communication for kids
• Intonation- Sound of words
• Rhythm, stress certain words
• Lip reading
• At 18 months, learn 10 new words a day
• Deaf children acquire sign language the same way hearing children acquire spoken language
• if child develops language after puberty, they will never be able to fully acquire language
• child understands more words than they can speak
• at 18 months you have a productive vocabulary of about 50 words
• if you expose a baby to 2 languages they will learn both
• phatic talk with babies to help develop their language
• care givers initiate conversation with adjacency pairs
• pronouns can be determiners (you, me, it, here, there)