ENB6 - Language Change and Lang Acquisition

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Cognitive - Jean Piaget - can only understand lang when you understand concept (e.g. can talk in past tense when you know about time)

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Behaviourist - Skinner learn through imitation - doesn't explain where new sentences come from

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Nativist - Chomsky - Language Acquisition Device (LAD) - works out what is/isn't acceptable lang use using innate programmed patterns (which are general). exact rules learnt through trial and error. His theory supports the fact that children around the world seem to develop at a similar pace, irrespective of race/culture/mother tongue. (This also 'defies' Skinner's model) Also, the fact that there is a universal grammar amongst all languages of the world. & the fact that children consistently create new forms of language that they would not have heard before.
* Conversely, John Macnamara - said that rather than having an in-built language device, children have an innate capacity to read meaning into social situations. It is this capacity that makes them capable of understanding and learning language, not the LAD.

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Interactive - caretaker, motherese etc - slower pace than adult convo, simplified, repetition, short sentences, often caretaker asking 'where is___?', 'that's a___', tag questions to involve child ('isn't it?')

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Example for importance of social interaction: Bard and Sachs. Studied a boy called 'Jim', who was son of two deaf parents. Although he was exposed to TV and radio, his speech development was severely retarded until he attended sessions with a speech therapist --> hence implying that human interaction is necessary, as Jim was obviously ready to talk, but without the social interaction with his therapist, he was unable to do so.

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Katherine Nelson - found that 60% of childrens early word phrases contained nouns, then verbs, pre-mods and phatic and she also said that the nouns were more commonly things that surrounded the children i.e ball, mum, cat. Nelson also said that in Re-casts (e.g. Ben - "me ball" mum - "pass me the ball") children whose sentances were re-cast performed better at imitating sentances

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Halliday is just the functions of child language, I remember them like RRIIIPH, like rest in peace:
* Representational - "I've got something to show you" - language showing how they feel, declarative
* Regulatory - "Do as I tell you" - requesting/asking for things
* Instrumental - "I want"- expressing needs/wants
* Interactional - "Me and you" - speaking to other, establishing personal contact
* Imaginative - "Let's pretend" - imaginative language, used with play, to create imaginary world. Crystal talks of 'phonological' function as playing with sound.
* Personal - "Here I come"- child expresses their feelings/expressing personal preferences
* Heuristic - "Tell me why"- uses language to explore environment/ seeking infomation

* Most commonly used in childrens language is instrumental and regulatory, which are learnt, along with interactional and personal, at a young age. Representational is used by 6-8+ year olds.

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Holophrases - one word (12-18mths), then two-word stage (after 18mths), then telegraphic speech (after 2yrs) - sometimes grammatically correct but omit determiners like 'a' and 'the'

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Underextension - 'car' only for family car, but not other cars

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Overextension - 'car' for tractor, van, etc

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Fis phenomenon - Berko and Brown - child pronounces fish as fis but when a parent asks if it is a fis, the child says no - when asked if it's a fish, child says yes. can understand a word without being able to pronounce it - comprehension before speech

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Simplification - deletion, substitution

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Intonation - Cruttenden - found children find it harder to recognise intonation

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Questions - inflection often used at first to show it's a question, then question words learnt during 2nd yr, firstly what and where, then why, how and who. results in 'where daddy gone?' as they've not learnt auxiliary verb, 'has'. auxiliary verbs learnt 3rd yr, and how to form qus is learnt too (reverse subject and verb order). 'joe is here' --> 'is joe here?' but wh- words not always inverted correctly - 'why joe isn't here?' (hehe plagiarised my revision book for the examples, sorry!)

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Critical period for learning - Cases about twins who were kept locked up by their family, but they were rescued young so developed normally. Feral children like Genie, who was forced not to talk, and hence only made limited lang progress as she is thought to have missed the critical period for learning lang. Two girls were found wolves in a wolves' den and had trouble learning to speak etc http://www.feralchildren.com/en/showchild.php?ch=kamala "After three years, Kamala had mastered a small vocabulary of about a dozen words. After several more years, her vocabulary had increased to about 40.To compare, a normal two-year-old child, at the peak of its language learning, would find it easy to pick up 40 new words in a single week. Also, Kamala's words were only partly-formed and her grammar stilted"

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Stages of negatives:
* Aged 0-15months - Gestures are used to indicate a negative
* 15-18months - single words "no" "not" are used
* 2-2 1/2 yrs - "no" and "not" are used either at the beginning or end of a sentance e.g. "no eat" "going not"
* 3yrs - negatives are used with the correct syntax i.e. intergrated into the sentance
* 4/5/6yrs - more subtle negatives i.e hardly, are used, more "n't"'s as well, "can't" "won't" etc. Implied negatives are understood, i.e. "we'll go later"

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Look at how much is said by each person, who controls what is being said, who takes the lead, pragmatics, social context, as well as the actual things that are being said

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Check this website for developmental milestones in child lang: http://www.aboutourkids.org/aboutour/articles/looktalking.html

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Need fine motor skills in order to hold the pen and write evenly

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Knowledge of letter shapes/patterns

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Rules: top-bottom/left-right/'finger space'

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Capitalisation and punctuation

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Format of specific genres eg. for a letter there should be an address, date etc

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Tense

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Phonic spelling/look and say method

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Stages in actually writing:
* 1. Palmer grip - used to make marks on the page (just like up and down lines)
* which leads to more conventional grip, where you can make more circular lines
* 2. Motor control - more circular again, leave gaps as though imitation text
* 3. Proto-letter formation - Begin to write name and letters, but the letter might be too big, or back-to-front

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BM Kroll - He suggested that there are a number of stages that children go through:
* Stage 1- Prepatory Stage - Up to the age of 6
Child masters physical skills needed to write. Learns basic principles of spelling system.
* Stage 2 - Consolidation - Ages 6-8
Child writes like they speak. Short, declarative sentences common. Grammatically incomplete sentences. Long strings of sentences joined with simple conjunctions.
* Stage 3 - Differentiation Stage (8 - mid teens)
Child becomes more aware of differences between writing and speech. Increasing confidence. More complicated sentences and constructions.

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Children's books also relate to prominent aspects of a child's life, eg. school, family etc.

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The higher up the reading scheme, the fewer pictures there are to aid pragmatics.

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Reading skills

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Reading schemes like 'Roger Red Hat'

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The teaching of reading in schools

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Phonics (analytic and synthetic)
* Synthetic - break the sounds into syllables - there is a representation/action for each sound, too. For eg, S = weave hand in an s shape, like a snake, and say ssssss
* Analytic - used in conjunction with other strategies, was the original method and doesn't break down words into such small units like synthetic.

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Try thinking about how you learnt to read, perhaps you read 'Roger Red Hat' too!

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The primacy of speech and the learning of the sound system

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The links between the child’s desire to communicate needs and the
acquisition of phonology, lexis and grammar in order to achieve
purposes (pragmatics)

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The significance of social interaction in language acquisition and
the development of innate structures to achieve, continue and
extend interpersonal communication (turn-taking, politeness rules,
implied meanings, specific contexts, social awareness and other
discourse patterns)

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The connections between developments in children’s language and
their general conceptual development

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The beginnings of reading and writing.

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Stick to frameworks

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Get as much context as you can in - eg look at the date and try to think what would have been happening at the time.

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A key period is following the introduction of the printing press (1476) and the introduction of the first dictionary (1755 - Samuel Johnson). Also remember the grammar books that appeared at the time - the writers that tried to "fix" the language (Robert Lowth's Short Introduction to English Grammar was written 1762). All these had an influence on the language, and helped it to become standardised (slowly - remember it didn't all happen at once).

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English is a Germanic language

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Some words can be Latinate - tend to be the more fancy, scientific words, or ones to do with legal stuff...introduced mainly during the Renaissance to make the words sound more impressive

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Norse words - tend to be things like "window" and "sky" - everyday outdoor objects

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Saxon/Celtic words - words to do with family relationships?

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French influence - along with Latinate, return to "correct" spelling which led to the "b" in "subtle" and "debt" as a reminder of the latin origin (debt comes from debitum which has a "b"). Also, some words have entered English twice. "Chief" and "Chef" both have the same french root, which is thought in turn to come from the latin for "head".

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Samuel Johnson's dictionary (1755) wasn't the very first, but was the first substantial one that people refer to

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Contemporary lang change- estuary english, slang etc

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Terms - like amelioration (meaning of word becomes better),perjoration (meaning of word becoming worse), broadening (word means more than one thing), narrowing (word means fewer things now), coinings/neologisms (new words, like 'kodak'), loan words (words from other langs etc) etc. These are all examples of semantic change.

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Reasons for language change
* Blurring of the class structure - fewer extremes
* Proliferation of TV and film
* Education - compulsory education etc
* New technology
* Rise of youth culture
* Media & public broadcasting
* Impact of foreign invasion (Norse, Norman French)
* Printing press - introducd by William Caxton in 1476 - used East Midlands dialect - dialect of education (Oxbridge) etc, became Standard Eng. Printing press worked by ordering letter blocks, so the actual font needed to be standardised. As well as that, spelling and language was standardised to a certain extent as well. Perhaps most importantly is that it was the portal into the world of written texts, which allowed them to be passed around and transported all across the country, which may have contributed to standardising language.
* Rise of merchant classes
* Scientific development/technology
* King James Bible

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Also remember, language is still changing. Through media, travel, politics, etc.
* English has become a significant global language due to expansion of the British Empire, and, more recently, the significance that the USA have across the world.
* English exists as many different varieties due to the influence of the native languages of the countries which adapt English into their culture.
* It is possible that all these varieties of language could lead to language decay, whereby no-one would be able to understand the other varieties of English
* English could become more 'standardised' among nations due to the increase in communications (internet, tv, film, media in general) that a shared culture is created --> A shared culture means a shared language is required.

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Some still think language is decaying... but we can't really say that - we're descriptivists, remember! But their views are expressed in:
* Crumbling castle view - language is a beautiful building which must be preserved as is. But how would we coin new words? (This is the problem in France - the Académie française/French Academy which doesn't allow for English loanwords to prevent the anglicisation of the French language - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_academy)
* Damp spoon theory - language changes because people are lazy - 'I must own to a queasy distaste for the vulgarity of "between you and I", "these sort", "the media is" ... precisely the kind of distaste I feel at seeing a damp spoon dipped in the sugar bowl or butter spread with the breadknife' (Guardian 9-9-1968)
* See http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~maynell/Apr.02.03.pdf for more info.

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These are quite prescriptivist attitudes, of course!

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Prescriptivists include: Defoe, Swift and Johnson, who all attempted to regulate the language.

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They also talked of setting up an academy (as in France) to resurrect/regulate/preserve language?

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Suzanne Romaine '98
* Internal: formation of new words and the influence of dictionaries etc. Looks at what happens inside the language
* External: the changing social contexts, language as an ongoing process

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Donald Mackinnon '96 - categorises the attitudes people have to language use:
* incorrect or corect
* pleasant or ugly
* socially acceptable or socially unacceptable
* morally acceptable or morally unacceptable (political correctness: conscious process, never clear cut and very context dependant, normally a negative thing)
* appropriate in context or inappropriate
* useful or useless

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Labov - 'Martha's Vineyard Research': we subconsciously change our language to identify ourselves with one group rather than another
http://www.putlearningfirst.com/language/research/vinyard.html

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Rod Steiger - "communication without purpose is artistic masturbation"

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Change as an inherent feature of living language

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A brief overview of the historical development of English to
identify different ways in which language changes over time and
continues to change in contemporary experience

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The ways in which style has changed in spoken and written English

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The socio-cultural causes and consequences of language change in
English over time

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The relationship between dialectical variation and temporal change.