Language Learning in

early childhood
What are developmental sequences?
The order in which certain features of a language
(e.g. negation) are acquired in language learning.
Also called developmental stages.
 Phonology involves the rules about the structure and
sequence of speech sounds.
Semantics consists of vocabulary and how concepts are

Four main
expressed through words.
Grammar involves two parts. The first, syntax, is the rules

components in which words are arranged into sentences. The second,

morphology, is the use of grammatical markers (indicating

of
tense, active or passive voice, etc.).
Pragmatics involves the rules for appropriate and effective

language… communication. Pragmatics involves three skills:

using language for greeting, demanding, etc.
changing language for talking differently depending on
who it is you’re talking to following rules such as turn-
taking and staying on topic
 Characteristics of the language of
children:
•Their language development shows a high degree of
similarity among children all over the world. There
are predicable patterns in the L1 development and
their L1 developmental patterns are related to their
cognitive development (predictability).
•Their language reflects the word order of the
language that they are hearing. The combination of
the words has a meaning relationship (learning
through imitation).
•Their language also shows they are able to apply the
rules of the language to make sentences which they
have never heard before (creativity).
Before First Words
The earliest vocalizations
• Involuntary crying (when they feel hungry or uncomfortable)
•Cooing and gurgling – showing satisfaction or happiness
“Babbling”
Babies use sounds to reflect the characteristics of the different language they are
learning.
 • Involuntary crying
• Cooing and gurgling
• Have little control over the sounds they make.
0 to 6
months

• Vocalization with intonation

• Responds to his name
• Responds to human voices without visual cues by turning his
head and eyes Responds appropriately to friendly and angry
tones
6 months

• Uses one or more words with meaning (this may be a fragment

of a word)
• Understands simple instructions, especially if vocal or physical
cues are given
6 to 12 • Practices inflection
• Is aware of the social value of speech
months
First words
Around 12 months (“one-word” stage):
Babies begin to produce one or two recognizable words (esp. content word); producing single-
word sentences.
By the age of 2 (“two-word” stage): 
1) at least 50 different words
2) telegraphic” sentences (no function words and grammatical morphemes) e.g., “Mommy
juice”, “baby fall down”
3) reflecting the order of the language e.g., “kiss baby”, “baby kiss”
4) creatively combining words e.g., “more outside”, “all gone cookie”
 • Has a vocabulary of approximately 5-20 words
Renjkm,nm •
•
Vocabulary made up chiefly of nouns
Some echolalia (repeating a word or phrase over and over)
• Much jargon with emotional content
12 to 18 • Is able to follow simple commands
months
.

• Responds to his name

• Responds to human voices without visual cues by turning his head and eyes
Responds appropriately to friendly and angry tones
Vocalization with
intonation

• Uses one or more words with meaning (this may be a fragment of a word)
• Understands simple instructions, especially if vocal or physical cues are given
• Practices inflection
• Is aware of the social value of speech
6 to 12
months
 Acquisition of Grammatical morphemes
Roger Brown’s study (1973):
Approximate order of acquiring grammatical morphemes
• Present progressive –ing (running)
• Plural –s (books)
•Irregular past forms (went)
•Possessive -’s (daddy’s hat)
• Copula (am/is/are)
• Articles (a/an/the)
• Regular past –ed (walked)
• Third person singular simple present –s (he runs)
• Auxiliary ‘be’ (He is coming)
Stages in Grammar Morphemes:
Negation
Stages Features of LA (negation) Examples

1 Negation is usually expressed by the word ‘no’, either all No. No cookie. No comb hair
alone or as the first word in the utterance.

2 Utterances grow longer and the sentence subject may be Daddy no comb hair. Don’t touch
included. The –ve word appears just before the verb. that!

3 The negative element is inserted into a more complex I can’t do it. He don’t want it
sentences. (Adding forms of the –ve other than ‘no’.

4 Children begin to attach the –ve elements to the correct You didn’t have supper. She
form of auxiliary verbs such as ‘do’ and ‘be’. doesn’t want it.
 Stages in Questions
 
Stages Features of LA (Questions)
1 Children’s earliest questions are single words or simple two or three word Cookie? Mommy book?
sentences with rising intonation.
2 Children use the word order of the declaratIve sentence, with rising You like this? I have some?
intonation
3 Children notice that the structure of questions is different and begin to Can I go?
produce questions Are you happy?
4 Some questions are formed by subject-auxiliary inversion. They also add Are you going to play with me? Do dogs
‘do’ in questions in which there would be no auxiliary in the declarative like ice cream?
version of the sentence.09
5 Both wh- and yes/no questions are formed correctly. Are these your boots? Why did you do
that?
6 Children are able to correctly form all question types, including –ve and
complex embedded questions.
The-pre school years
 At the age of four, most children are able to ask questions, give commands,
report real events, and create stories about imaginary ones with correct word
order and grammatical markers most of the time.
 Children (3-4 year olds) begin to learn vocabulary at the rate of several words a day.
 They begin to acquire less frequent and more complex linguistic structures
such as passives and relative clauses.
 They develop their ability in using the language in a widening social environment
and variety of situations.
 Children also begin to develop metalinguistic awareness. E.g, the ability to treat
language as an object separate from the meaning it conveys.
 The school years
1.Children develop their language as they grow up.
2. Reading gives a major boost to metalinguistic awareness (language are form as well as meaning).
3. Metalinguistic awareness refers to the ability to treat language as an object, separate from the
meaning it conveys. A dramatic development in metalinguistic awareness occurs when children begin to
learn to read. They see words represented by letters on a page and start to discover that words and
sentences have multiple meaning. e.g., “drink the chair” (5 year-olds’ reaction: silly) “cake the eat” (5
year-olds’ reaction: wrong) “Why is caterpillar longer than train?” (a riddle)
4.In the school years, children also develop vocabularies. (Reading assignments, for pleasure whether
narrrative or non-fiction). However, the amount depends on how widely they read (Nagy, Herman and
Anderson 1985).
 The school years Language registers.
Children learn how written language differs from spoken language, how the language used to speak to the
principal is different from the language of a narative.
Explaining First
Language Acquisition
Behaviorism: Say what I say

Innatism: It’s all in your mind

Interactionist/Developmental perspectives: Learning from

inside and out
 Behaviourism “Say what I say”
Skinner: language behavior is the production of correct responses to stimuli through
reinforcement.
Language learning is the result of
1) imitation (word-for- word repetition),
2) practice (repetitive manipulation of form),
3) feedback on success (positive reinforcement), and
4) habit formation.
The quality and quantity of the language that the child hears, as well as the consistency of the
reinforcement offered by others in the environment, would shape the child’s language behavior.
(*Do the activity on p. 10 – imitation and practice)
 Behaviorism
Offer a reasonable way of understanding how children learn some of the regular and routine
aspects of language, especially at the earliest stages
However…
 Imitation and practice alone cannot explain some of the forms created by children.
Children’s imitations are not random: Their imitation is selective and based on what they are
currently learning. They choose to imitate something they have already begun to understand,
rather than simply imitating what is available in the environment.
Children’s practice of new language forms: is very similar to the way foreign language students
do substitution drills.
Their practice of language forms is also selective and reflects what they would like to learn.
Children appear to pick out patterns and generalize them to new contexts.
 Their new sentences are usually comprehensible and often correct.
Children do use language creatively, not just repeat what they have heard.
Patterns in language
Mother: Maybe we need to take you to the doctor.
Randall (36 months): Why? So he can doc my little bump?”
(showing the understanding of the suffix ‘er/or’)
• Son: I putted the plates on the table!
Mother: You mean, I put the plates on the table.
Son: No, I putted them on all by myself.
(showing the understanding of using ‘ed’ to make the past tense for a verb” and the focus on the
meaning, not form)
Unfamiliar formulas
Father: I’d like to propose a toast.
Child: I’d like to propose a piece of bread.
Innatism: It’s all in your mind
Chomsky argues that behaviorism cannot provide sufficient explanations for children’s
language acquisition for the following reasons:
1. Children come to know more about the structure of their language than they could
be expected to learn on the basis of the samples of language they hear.
2. The language children are exposed to includes false starts, incomplete sentences and
slips of the tongue, and yet they learn to distinguish between grammatical and
ungrammatical sentences.
3. Children are by no means systematically corrected or instructed on language by
parents.
  Innatism: It’s all in your mind
Noam Chomky (1965)
Children are biologically programmed for language and language
develops in the child in just the same way that other biological
functions develop.
The environment makes only a basic contribution, that is, the
availability of people who speak to the child. Therefore, the child’s
biological endowment (LAD) will do the rest.
Children are born with a specific innate ability to discover for
themselves the underlying rules of a language system on the basis of
the samples of a natural language they are exposed to.
Innatism: It’s all in your mind
Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
 An imaginary “black box” existing somewhere in the brain:
 LAD contains the principles which are universal to all human languages (i.e..
Universal Grammar – UG).
 For the LAD to work, children need access only to samples of a natural
language, which serve as a trigger to activate the device.
 Once the LAD is activated, children are able to discover the structure of the
language to be learned by matching the innate knowledge of basic grammatical
principles (UG) to the structures of the particular language in the environment.
 Innatism: It’s all in your mind
Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)
CPH – suggests that children who are not
given access to language in infancy and
early childhood will never acquire language
if these deprivations go on for too long
Language acquisition begins at birth and
possibly even before, as the child’s brain is
shaped by exposure to the language(s) in
the environment.
Innatism: It’s all in your mind

Grammar or
Linguistic data LAD/UG Output
linguistic
(input) (performance)
competence
Evidence used to support Chomsky’s innatist position: 1. Virtually all children successfully learn
their native language at a time in life when they would not be expected to learn anything else so
complicated (i.e. biologically programmed). 2. Language is separate from other aspects of
cognitive developments (e.g., creativity and social grace) and may be located in a different
“module" of the brain. 3. The language children are exposed to does not contain examples of all
the linguistic rules and patterns. 4. Animals cannot learn to manipulate a symbol system as
complicated as the natural language of a 3- or 4-year-old child. 5. Children acquire grammatical
rules without getting explicit instruction. Therefore, children’s acquisition of grammatical rules is
probably guided by principle of an innate UG which could apply to all languages.
Problems of Innatism
 too much emphasis on the “final state” (i.e. the linguistic
competence of adult native speakers), but not enough on the
developmental aspects of language acquisition.
 Language acquisition is an example of children’s ability to learn
from experience. What children need to know is essentially
available in the language they are exposed to.
Interactionist/developmental
Perspectives: Learning from inside and out
Language develops as a result of the interplay between the innate learning
ability of children and the environment in which they develop. 
Developmental psychologists attribute more importance to the environment
than the innatists, though they also recognize a powerful learning mechanism in
the human brain.
They see language acquisition as similar to and influenced by the acquisition of
other kinds of skill and knowledge, rather than as something that is largely
independent of the child’s experience and cognitive development.
Interactionist/developmental
Perspectives: Learning from inside and out
Piaget
Language is dependent upon and springs from cognitive development. That is,
children’s cognitive development determines their language development. (e.g., the
use of words as “bigger” or “more” depends on children’s understanding of the
concepts they represent.)
The developing cognitive understanding is built on the interaction between the child
and the things which can be observed, touched, and manipulated.
Language was one of a number of symbol systems developed in childhood, rather
than a separate module of the mind. Language can be used to represent knowledge
that children have acquired through physical interaction with the environment.
Interactionist/developmental
Perspectives: Learning from inside and out
Vygotsky: sociocultural theory of human mental processing.
Language develops primarily from social interaction.
Zone of proximal development (ZPD): a level that a child is able to do when
there is support from interaction with a more advanced interlocutor. That is, a
supportive interactive environment enables children to advance to a higher level
of knowledge and performance than s/he would be able to do independently.
He observed the importance of conversations which children have with adults
and with other children and saw in these conversations the origins of both
language and thought.
Interactionist/developmental
Perspectives: Learning from inside and out
Piaget Vigostky
language developed thought was
as a symbol essentially
system to express internalized
knowledge speech, and
acquired through speech emerged in
interaction with social interaction.
the physical world
Language socialization framework:

observed from childrearing patterns (parent-child interaction)

 Child-directed Speech (modified language interaction):
 Phonological modification: a slower rate of delivery, higher pitch, more varied intonation
 Syntactical modification: shorter, simpler sentence patterns, frequent repetition, and
paraphrase.
 Limited conversation topics: e.g., the ‘here and now’ and topics related to the child’s
experiences.
 More important than modification is the conversational give-and-take.