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CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITIUON

The acquisition schedule

All normal children develop language at roughly the same time, along much the same
schedule. Since we could say the same thing for sitting up, crawling, standing, walking,
using the hands and many other physical activities, it would seem that the language
acquisition schedule has the same basis as the biologically determined development of
motor skills. This biological schedule is tied very much to the maturation of the infant’s
brain.
We could think of the child as having the biological capacity to cope with distinguishing
certain aspects of linguistic input at different stages during the early years of life. Long
before children begin to talk, they have been actively processing what they hear.We can
identify what very young children are paying attention to by the way they increase ordecrease “sucking
behavior” in response to speech sounds or turn their heads in the
direction of those sounds. At onemonth, for example, an infant is capable of distinguishing
between sounds such as [ba] and [pa]. During the first three months, the child
develops a range of crying styles, with different patterns for different needs, produces
big smiles in response to a speaking face, and starts to create distinct vocalizations.
Cooing and babbling
The earliest use of speech-like sounds has been described as cooing. During the first
few months of life, the child gradually becomes capable of producing sequences of
vowel-like sounds, particularly high vowels similar to [i] and [u]. By four months of
age, the developing ability to bring the back of the tongue into regular contact with the
back of the palate allows the infant to create sounds similar to the velar consonants [k]
and [ɡ], hence the common description as “cooing” or “gooing” for this type of
production. Speech perception studies have shown that by the time they are five
months old, babies can already hear the difference between the vowels [i] and [a]
and discriminate between syllables like [ba] and [ɡa].
Between six and eight months, the child is sitting up and producing a number of
different vowels and consonants, as well as combinations such as ba-ba-ba and ga-gaga.
This type of sound production is described as babbling In the later babbling stage,
around nine to ten months, there are recognizable intonation patterns to the consonant
and vowel combinations being produced, as well as variation in the combinations such
as ba-ba-da-da. Nasal sounds also become more common and certain syllable sequences
such as ma-ma-ma and da-da-da are inevitably interpreted by parents as versions
of “mama” and “dada” and repeated back to the child.
As children begin to pull themselves into a standing position during the tenth and
eleventh months, they become capable of using their vocalizations to express emotions
and emphasis. This late babbling stage is characterized by more complex syllable
combinations (ma-da-ga-ba), a lot of sound-play and attempted imitations. This “prelanguage”
use of sound provides the child with some experience of the social role of
speech because adults tend to react to the babbling, however incoherent, as if it is
actually the child’s contribution to social interaction.
One note of caution should be sounded at this point. Child language researchers
certainly report very carefully on the age of any child whose language they study.
However, they are also very careful to point out that there is substantial variation
among children in terms of the age at which particular features of linguistic development
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occur. So, we should always treat statements concerning development stages

such as “by six months” or “by the age of two” as approximate and subject to variation in individual children.

The one-word stage

Between twelve and eighteen months, children begin to produce a variety of recognizable
single-unit utterances. This period, traditionally called the one-word stage, is
characterized by speech in which single terms are uttered for everyday objects such as
“milk,” “cookie,” “cat,” “cup” and “spoon” (usually pronounced [pun]). Other forms
such as [ʌsæ] may occur in circumstances that suggest the child is producing a version
of What’s that, so the label “one-word” for this stage may be misleading and a term
such as “single-unit” would be more accurate. We sometimes use the term holophrastic
(meaning a single form functioning as a phrase or sentence) to describe an utterance
that could be analyzed as a word, a phrase, or a sentence.
While many of these holophrastic utterances seem to be used to name objects, they
may also be produced in circumstances that suggest the child is already extending their
use. An empty bed may elicit the name of a sister who normally sleeps in the bed, even
in the absence of the person named. During this stage, then, the child may be capable of
referring to Karen and bed, but is not yet ready to put the forms together to produce a
more complex phrase. Well, it is a lot to expect from someone who can only walk with
a stagger and has to come down stairs backwards.
The two-word stage
Depending on what we count as an occurrence of two distinct words used together,
the two-word stage can begin around eighteen to twenty months, as the child’s
vocabulary moves beyond fifty words. By the time the child is two years old, a variety
of combinations, similar to baby chair, mommy eat, cat bad, will usually have
appeared. The adult interpretation of such combinations is, of course, very much
tied to the context of their utterance. The phrase baby chair may be taken as an
expression of possession (= this is baby’s chair), or as a request (= put baby in
chair), or as a statement (= baby is in the chair), depending on different
circumstances.
Whatever it is that the child actually intends to communicate through such expressions,
the significant functional consequences are that the adult behaves as if communication
is taking place. That is, the child not only produces speech, but also receives
feedback confirming that the utterance worked as a contribution to the interaction.
Moreover, by the age of two, whether the child is producing 200 or 300 distinct
“words,” he or she will be capable of understanding five times as many, and will
typically be treated as an entertaining conversational partner by the principal caregiver.

Telegraphic speech
Between two and two-and-a-half years old, the child begins producing a large number
of utterances that could be classified as “multiple-word” speech. The salient feature
of these utterances ceases to be the number of words, but the variation in word forms
that begins to appear. Before we investigate this development, we should note a
stage that is described as telegraphic speech. This is characterized by strings of
words (lexical morphemes) in phrases or sentences such as this shoe all wet, cat
drink milk and daddy go bye-bye. The child has clearly developed some sentencebuilding
capacity by this stage and can get the word order correct. While this type
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of telegram-format speech is being produced, a number of grammatical inflections

begin to appear in some of the word forms and simple prepositions (in, on) are also
used.
By the age of two-and-a-half, the child’s vocabulary is expanding rapidly and
the child is initiating more talk while increased physical activity includes running
and jumping. By three, the vocabulary has grown to hundreds of words and pronunciation
has become closer to the form of adult language. At this point, it is worth
considering what kind of influence the adults have in the development of the child’s
speech.

Tongue tips and slips

We have all experienced difficulty, on some occasion(s), in getting brain and speech
production to work together smoothly. (Some days are worse than others, of course.)
Minor production difficulties of this sort may provide possible clues to how our
linguistic knowledge is organized within the brain.
The tip of the tongue phenomenon
There is, for example, the tip of the tongue phenomenon in which we feel that some
word is just eluding us, that we know the word, but it just won’t come to the surface.
Studies of this phenomenon have shown that speakers generally have an accurate
phonological outline of the word, can get the initial sound correct and mostly know the
number of syllables in the word. This experience also mainly occurs with uncommon
words and names. It suggests that our “word-storage” system may be partially organized
on the basis of some phonological information and that some words in the store
are more easily retrieved than others.
When we make mistakes in this retrieval process, there are often strong phonological
similarities between the target word we’re trying to say and the mistake we
actually produce. For example, speakers produced secant, sextet and sexton when
asked to name a particular type of navigational instrument (sextant). Other examples
are fire distinguisher (for “extinguisher”) and transcendental medication (instead of
“meditation”). Mistakes of this type are sometimes referred to as malapropisms after a
character called Mrs. Malaprop (in a play by Sheridan) who consistently produced
“near-misses” for words, with great comic effect. Another comic character in a TV
program who was known for his malapropisms was Archie Bunker, who once suggested
that We need a few laughs to break up the monogamy.

Slips of the tongue

Another type of speech error is commonly described as a slip of the tongue. This
produces expressions such as make a long shory stort (instead of “make a long story
short”), use the door to open the key, and a fifty-pound dog of bag food. Slips of this type
are sometimes called spoonerisms after William Spooner, an Anglican clergyman at
Oxford University, who was renowned for his tongue-slips. Most of the slips attributed
to him involve the interchange of two initial sounds, as when he addressed a rural
group as noble tons of soil, or described God as a shoving leopard to his flock, or in this
complaint to a student who had been absent from classes: You have hissed all my
mystery lectures.
Most everyday slips of the tongue, however, are not as entertaining. They are often
simply the result of a sound being carried over from one word to the next, as in black
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bloxes (for “black boxes”), or a sound used in one word in anticipation of its occurrence
in the next word, as in noman numeral (for “roman numeral”), or a tup of tea
(“cup”), or the most highly played player (“paid”). The last example is close to the
reversal type of slip, illustrated by shu flots, which may not make you beel fetter if
you’re suffering from a stick neff, and it’s always better to loop before you leak. The last
two examples involve the interchange of word-final sounds and are much less common
than word-initial slips.
It has been argued that slips of this type are never random, that they never produce a
phonologically unacceptable sequence, and that they indicate the existence of different
stages in the articulation of linguistic expressions. Although the slips are mostly treated
as errors of articulation, it has been suggested that they may result from “slips of the
brain” as it tries to organize linguistic messages.
Slips of the ear
One other type of slip may provide some clues to how the brain tries tomake sense of the
auditory signal it receives. These have been called slips of the ear and can result, for
example, in our hearing great ape andwondering why someone should be looking for one
in his office. (The speaker actually said “gray tape.”) A similar type of misunderstanding
seems to be behind the child’s report that in Sunday school, everyonewas singing about a
bear called “Gladly” who was cross-eyed. The source of this slip turned out to be a line
froma religious song that went Gladly the cross I’d bear. Itmay also be the case that some
malapropisms (e.g. transcendental medication) originate as slips of the ear.

Some of these humorous examples of slips may give us a clue to the normal workings
of the human brain as it copes with language. However, some problems with language production and
comprehension are the result of much more serious disorders
in brain function.
Aphasia
If you have experienced any of those “slips” on occasion, then you will have some hint
of the types of experience that some people live with constantly. Those people suffer
from different types of language disorders, generally described as “aphasia.” Aphasia
is defined as an impairment of language function due to localized brain damage that
leads to difficulty in understanding and/or producing linguistic forms.
The most common cause of aphasia is a stroke (when a blood vessel in the brain is
blocked or bursts), though traumatic head injuries from violence or an accident may
have similar effects. Those effects can range from mild to severe reduction in the ability
to use language. Someone who is aphasic often has interrelated language disorders, in
that difficulties in understanding can lead to difficulties in production, for example.
Consequently, the classification of different types of aphasia is usually based on the
primary symptoms of someone having difficulties with language.
Broca’s aphasia
The serious language disorder known as Broca’s aphasia (also called “motor aphasia”)
is characterized by a substantially reduced amount of speech, distorted articulation
and slow, often effortful speech. What is said often consists almost entirely of
lexical morphemes (e.g. nouns, verbs). The frequent omission of functional morphemes
(e.g. articles, prepositions) and inflections (e.g. plural -s, past tense -ed) has
led to the characterization of this type of aphasic speech as “agrammatic.” In agrammatic
speech, the grammatical markers are missing.
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An example of speech produced by someone whose aphasia was not severe is the
following answer to a question regarding what the speaker had for breakfast:
I eggs and eat and drink coffee breakfast
However, this type of disorder can be quite severe and result in speech with lots of
hesitations and really long pauses (marked by …): my cheek … very annoyance …
main is my shoulder … achin’ all round here. Some patients can also have lots of
difficulty in articulating single words, as in this attempt to say “steamship”: a stail …
you know what I mean … tal … stail. In Broca’s aphasia, comprehension is typically
much better than production.

Wernicke’s aphasia
The type of language disorder that results in difficulties in auditory comprehension is
sometimes called “sensory aphasia,” but is more commonly known as Wernicke’s
aphasia. Someone suffering from this disorder can actually produce very fluent speech
which is, however, often difficult to make sense of. Very general terms are used, even
in response to specific requests for information, as in this sample: I can’t talk all of the
things I do, and part of the part I can go alright, but I can’t tell from the other people.
Difficulty in finding the correct word, sometimes referred to as anomia, also happens
in Wernicke’s aphasia. To overcome their word-finding difficulties, speakers use
different strategies such as trying to describe objects or talking about their purpose, as
in the thing to put cigarettes in (for “ashtray”). In the following example (from Lesser &
Milroy, 1993), the speaker tries a range of strategies when he can’t come up with the
word (“kite”) for an object in a picture.
it’s blowing, on the right, and er there’s four letters in it, and I think it begins with a
C – goes – when you start it then goes right up in the air – I would I would have to keep
racking my brain how I would spell that word – that flies, that that doesn’t fly, you
pull it round, it goes up in the air
Conduction aphasia
One other, much less common, type of aphasia has been associated with damage to the
arcuate fasciculus and is called conduction aphasia. Individuals suffering from this
disorder sometimes mispronounce words, but typically do not have articulation problems.
They are fluent, but may have disrupted rhythm because of pauses and hesitations.
Comprehension of spoken words is normally good. However, the task of
repeating a word or phrase (spoken by someone else) creates major difficulty, with
forms such as vaysse and fosh being reported as attempted repetitions of the words
“base” and “wash.” What the speaker hears and understands can’t be transferred very
successfully to the speech production area.
It should be emphasized that many of these symptoms (e.g. word-finding difficulty)
can occur in all types of aphasia. They can also occur in more general
disorders resulting from brain disease, as in dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Difficulties in speaking can also be accompanied by difficulties in writing.
Impairment of auditory comprehension tends to be accompanied by reading difficulties.
Language disorders of the type we have described are almost always the result of injury to the left
hemisphere. This left hemisphere dominance for language has also been demonstrated by another approach
to the investigation of language and the brain.