Welcome to Children's Language Development (AQA 7702)
Hello! Welcome to your comprehensive revision guide for Theories and Research about Language Development. This unit forms the core of Paper 1, Section B: Children's Language Development (worth 30 marks, evaluating children aged 0–11 years).
In the exam, you will be given transcripts of children speaking, pieces of children's writing, or reading interactions. Your task is not just to describe what the child is doing, but to explain why and how using linguistic frameworks and academic theories. Don't worry if this seems like a lot to take in at first—we will break down every theorist, milestone, and linguistic term step by step!
---Section 1: The Core Theoretical Frameworks (Spoken Language)
Think of language acquisition theories as different pairs of glasses. Each theorist looks at a child learning to talk and sees a different driving force: imitation, biology, thinking skills, social bonding, or pattern recognition. In your essays, you should evaluate how these theories work together rather than treating one as completely right or wrong.
1. Behaviourism: Imitation and Reinforcement
Key Theorist: B. F. Skinner (1957 – Verbal Behavior)
The Core Idea: Skinner argued that language is a learned behaviour, just like riding a bike or learning table manners. Children learn to talk through operant conditioning:
• Imitation: The child copies the sounds and words spoken by their caregivers.
• Positive Reinforcement: When a child says something correct (e.g., "milk"), the parent smiles, praises them, or hands them a cup. This rewards the child and reinforces the behaviour.
• Negative Reinforcement / Correction: When a child makes a mistake or is unclear, the parent corrects them or withholds the reward until understanding is reached.
Analogy: Imagine training a puppy with treats. When it sits on command, it gets a biscuit; when a toddler says "cookie", they get a snack!
Limitations and Criticisms:
• Virtuous Errors: Children regularly say things like "I runned" or "two mouses". Adults never model these incorrect forms, so children cannot be purely imitating adult speech!
• Poverty of the Stimulus: Children hear messy, incomplete, and fragmented everyday speech, yet they still manage to master complex grammar rapidly.
• Infinite Generativity: Children constantly produce brand-new sentences they have never heard before.
2. Nativism / Innateness
Key Theorists: Noam Chomsky (1959, 1965) and Eric Lenneberg (1967)
The Core Idea: Chomsky strongly rejected Skinner's behaviourism. He argued that the human brain is hard-wired for language. We are born with a biological blueprint called the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) and an inbuilt understanding of Universal Grammar (UG)—the basic structural rules shared by all human languages.
Key Evidence for Nativism:
• Virtuous Errors (Overgeneralisation): When a child adds the regular past-tense bound morpheme -ed to irregular verbs (e.g., "I falled over", "She holded it"), they prove they are applying internal grammatical rules, not just copying.
• The Critical Period Hypothesis (Eric Lenneberg, 1967): Lenneberg proposed that the LAD must be activated during a biological window between infancy and puberty. If a child is isolated from language during this time (such as feral child cases like Genie), they can rarely achieve full grammatical competence later in life.
Key Takeaway: While Skinner focuses on nurture (external environment), Chomsky focuses on nature (internal biology).
3. Cognitive Theory
Key Theorist: Jean Piaget (1923, 1954)
The Core Idea: Piaget argued that language development is secondary to general cognitive (intellectual) development. A child cannot use language to talk about concepts they do not yet mentally understand.
Classic Example: Object Permanence (~8–12 months). Before this milestone, if a toy is hidden under a blanket, the baby thinks it has stopped existing. Once they realise objects continue to exist even when out of sight, they suddenly start using disappearance words like "gone" or "bye-bye", followed by naming objects.
Key Takeaway: Thinking comes first; language follows to label those thoughts.
4. Social Interactionism and Scaffolding
Key Theorists: Lev Vygotsky (1978) and Jerome Bruner (1983)
The Core Idea: Language is not just an innate module or a solo mental task; it grows out of social interaction with caregivers.
• Lev Vygotsky: Proposed the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)—the sweet spot between what a child can do alone and what they can achieve with help from a More Knowledgeable Other (MKO). Language begins as social speech with others and gradually becomes internalised as inner speech (thought).
• Jerome Bruner: Created the concept of the Language Acquisition Support System (LASS) to work alongside Chomsky's LAD. The LASS consists of the social rituals, everyday routines (e.g., peek-a-boo, mealtime routines, bedtime stories), and interactive support provided by adults.
• Scaffolding: Temporary support given by an adult (asking questions, filling in missing words) that is gradually removed as the child becomes more competent.
5. Usage-Based / Cognitive-Functional Linguistics
Key Theorist: Michael Tomasello (2003)
The Core Idea: Tomasello challenges Chomsky by arguing that language is not an innate, distinct biological organ. Instead, children learn language bottom-up using general cognitive tools:
• Intention Reading: Understanding what adults intend to communicate through joint attention (looking at the same object together).
• Pattern Finding: Noticing patterns in heard speech to build slot-and-frame schemas (e.g., learning the frame "Where's the [X]?" and swapping in "ball", "teddy", or "mummy"). Over time, these specific patterns abstract into broader syntactic categories (like nouns and verbs).
Section 2: Child-Directed Speech (CDS)
Child-Directed Speech (CDS) refers to the distinctive way caregivers talk to infants and young children. It is a central feature of Bruner's LASS.
Key Linguistic Features of CDS:
• Phonological: Higher overall pitch, exaggerated intonational contours (sing-song voice), slower rate of speech, elongated vowel sounds.
• Lexical & Semantic: High proportion of concrete nouns, diminutives (e.g., "doggy", "horsey"), special nursery lexis (e.g., "tummy", "din-din"), frequent repetition of key words.
• Grammatical: Short, simple sentences (low Mean Length of Utterance); frequent interrogatives and tag questions (e.g., "That's a big dog, isn't it?"); imperatives.
• Recasting: Reformulating a child's grammatically incomplete or incorrect utterance into standard adult form without explicit criticism.
Child: "Daddy goed shop."
Parent (Recast): "Yes, Daddy went to the shop."
• Expansion: Expanding the child's utterance by adding missing syntactic or semantic details.
Child: "Doggy bark."
Parent (Expansion): "Yes, the brown doggy is barking loudly."
Cross-Cultural Counter-Evidence:
Researchers: Shirley Brice Heath; Elinor Ochs & Bambi Schieffelin.
The Finding: In non-Western cultures such as the Kaluli of Papua New Guinea, adults do not use CDS or treat babies as active conversational partners. Yet, Kaluli children develop full linguistic competence at normal rates. This shows that while CDS is supportive in Western contexts, it is not strictly essential for language acquisition.
Section 3: Spoken Acquisition Stages and Benchmarks
1. Pre-Verbal Stages (0–12 Months)
• Crying / Vegetative (0–2 months): Reflexive, biological sounds (crying, burping, coughing).
• Cooing (approx. 2–4 months): Production of open vowel-like sounds and back-of-the-mouth velar consonants (e.g., "coo", "ga", "goo").
• Babbling (approx. 6–12 months):
– Canonical / Reduplicated babbling: Repeated consonant-vowel combinations (e.g., "bababa", "mamama").
– Variegated babbling: Mixed consonant and vowel patterns (e.g., "badagu", "madata").
2. Grammatical Development Stages
• Holophrastic Stage (approx. 12–18 months): Single-word utterances where one word represents an entire complex sentence or communicative intent. For example, saying "Juice" might mean "Give me some juice", "I spilled my juice", or "Is that juice?" depending on intonation and context.
• Two-Word Stage (approx. 18–24 months): Utterances combining two words, marking the true beginning of syntax and word order. Common combinations include agent + action ("Daddy kick"), action + object ("kick ball"), or agent + location ("Teddy chair").
• Telegraphic Stage (approx. 24–36 months): Utterances of three or more words that resemble an old-fashioned telegram. They contain essential content/lexical words (nouns, verbs, adjectives) but omit grammatical function words (determiners/articles like "the", prepositions like "in", auxiliary verbs like "is"). Example: "Mummy put toy floor".
• Post-Telegraphic Stage (approx. 36+ months): Utterances become syntactically complex. Children master function words, coordinate clauses (using "and", "but"), subordinate clauses (using "because", "when"), pronouns, and complex tense morphology.
3. Phonological Development and Simplifications
When young children cannot physically articulate difficult speech sounds, they apply systematic phonological simplification processes:
• Deletion: Dropping sounds entirely, particularly final consonants (e.g., cat \(\rightarrow\) /kæ/).
• Substitution: Replacing harder sounds (such as fricatives like /θ/ or /s/) with easier stop/plosive sounds (e.g., this \(\rightarrow\) /dɪs/; sea \(\rightarrow\) /tiː/).
• Consonant Harmony / Reduplication: Repeating an easier syllable or making consonants match (e.g., bottle \(\rightarrow\) /bɒbɒ/).
• Consonant Cluster Reduction: Simplifying difficult consonant blends down to a single consonant (e.g., spider \(\rightarrow\) /paɪdə/; frog \(\rightarrow\) /fɒg/).
• The "Fis" Phenomenon (Berko & Brown, 1960): A famous study where a child referred to his toy plastic fish as a "fis". When the adult asked, "Is this your fis?", the child said "No". When the adult asked, "Is this your fish?", the child said "Yes, my fis." Key Finding: A child's phonological comprehension precedes physical production—they can perceive the correct sound before their vocal tract can produce it.
4. Key Morphological & Syntactic Research
• The Wug Test (Jean Berko Gleason, 1958): Gleason showed children a drawing of an imaginary creature and said: "This is a wug. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two..." Even young children consistently produced the plural "wugs" (adding the allomorph /z/). Because wug is a pseudo-word never heard before, this provided definitive proof that children apply generative morphological rules, completely refuting pure imitation.
• Order of Morpheme Acquisition (Roger Brown, 1973): Brown showed that children acquire 14 grammatical morphemes in a remarkably predictable sequence regardless of adult input (e.g., present progressive -ing and regular plural -s are acquired before irregular past tense, which comes before regular past tense -ed).
• Mean Length of Utterance (MLU): A standard metric calculated by dividing the total number of morphemes by the total number of utterances in a transcript sample:
\(\text{MLU} = \frac{\text{Total Number of Morphemes}}{\text{Total Number of Utterances}}\)
• Ursula Bellugi's Developmental Stages:
– Negative Formation: Stage 1 = External negative at the start/end ("No sit chair"); Stage 2 = Internal negative within the clause ("I no sit chair"); Stage 3 = Auxiliary verb + negative combined correctly ("I won't sit on the chair").
– Pronoun Acquisition: Moving systematically from personal names/subject pronouns ("Me want ball") to object pronouns and correct possessives ("Give it to me, it is mine").
5. Halliday's Functions of Language (M. A. K. Halliday, 1975)
Halliday identified seven early pragmatic functions that motivate children to use speech:
1. Instrumental: Satisfying physical needs/desires (e.g., "Want juice").
2. Regulatory: Controlling the behaviour of others (e.g., "Pick me up", "Go away").
3. Interactional: Establishing and maintaining social relationships (e.g., "Hello", "Love you").
4. Personal: Expressing personal feelings, opinions, or identity (e.g., "Me good boy").
5. Heuristic: Exploring and learning about the surrounding environment (e.g., "What that?", "Why?").
6. Imaginative: Creating pretend worlds, dramatic play, and storytelling (e.g., "I am a dragon").
7. Informative / Representational: Relaying facts, descriptions, or information (e.g., "The car is red").
Section 4: Literacy and Written Language Development (0–11 Years)
1. Reading Development
Approaches to Teaching Reading:
• Synthetic Phonics: Teaching children to decode written graphemes (letters) into their corresponding phonemes (sounds) and blending them together (e.g., /c/ + /æ/ + /t/ = cat).
• Analytic Phonics / Whole Word: A "look-and-say" approach where children learn whole words by sight, using contextual cues, memory, and illustrations.
Jeanne Chall's Stages of Reading Development (1983):
• Stage 0: Pre-reading / Pseudo-reading (up to age 6): Pretending to read, turning pages left-to-right, recognising environmental print (e.g., the McDonald's logo) and repeating familiar stories from memory.
• Stage 1: Initial Reading and Decoding (ages 6–7): Direct grapheme-phoneme decoding, sounding out simple words, reading basic decodable texts.
• Stage 2: Confirmation and Fluency (ages 7–8): Consolidating decoding skills, reading familiar stories with greater speed, accuracy, and expressive prosody.
• Stage 3: Reading for Learning the New (ages 9–14): Transitioning from "learning to read" to "reading to learn"—accessing non-fiction, textbooks, and novel concepts.
2. Writing and Spelling Development
Marie Clay's Emergent Literacy Principles:
Clay identified core principles young children discover before formal writing, including directionality (understanding writing moves left-to-right and top-to-bottom), the sign concept (understanding marks on a page carry meaning), the recurring principle (repeating the few letters/shapes they know), and the inventory principle (listing all known letters and words).
Richard Gentry's Spelling Stages (1982):
1. Pre-communicative / Non-alphabetic: Random scribbles, symbols, and letter-like forms without phoneme-grapheme connection.
2. Semi-phonetic: Partial sound representation; often abbreviating words to initial/final consonants (e.g., MTR for monster; U for you).
3. Phonetic: Every sound in the word is represented based on acoustic pronunciation, even if orthographically incorrect (e.g., wun for one; sed for said).
4. Transitional: Incorporates visual English conventions (silent letters, common digraphs) but may misapply them (e.g., egle for eagle; highe for high).
5. Conventional / Correct: Full mastery of standard orthography, irregular spellings, and morphological rules.
Barry Kroll's Stages of Writing Development (1981):
1. Preparatory Stage (up to ~6 years): Acquiring basic fine-motor pen control and grasping fundamental spelling rules.
2. Consolidation Stage (~7–8 years): Writing heavily mirrors spoken language. Sentences are short, declarative, and strung together using coordinating conjunctions like "and", "then".
3. Differentiation Stage (~9–10 years): Writing clearly diverges from spoken patterns. Children adopt specific genre styles, sophisticated punctuation, passive constructions, and complex subordinate clauses.
4. Integration Stage (mid-teens): Mastery of a personal, stylistic voice; seamlessly adapting register, tone, and structure to any audience or purpose.
James Britton's Functional Model of Writing (1975):
• Expressive: First-person, personal, and conversational writing closely linked to the child's spoken voice and identity.
• Poetic: Creative, imaginative, and literary writing crafted for aesthetic pleasure (stories, poetry).
• Transactional: Objective, functional, academic, and structured writing used to inform, instruct, or persuade (e.g., reports, recipes, persuasive letters).
Section 5: Exam Strategy and Common Pitfalls
How Section B is Examined
• You write one discursive essay (chosen from Question 4 or 5) worth 30 marks.
• AO1 (15 marks): Apply precise linguistic methods and metalanguage across the language levels (Phonetics/Phonology, Morphology, Lexis/Semantics, Syntax, Pragmatics, Orthography, Graphology).
• AO2 (15 marks): Demonstrate critical understanding of concepts, issues, and theories relevant to language development.
Key Pitfalls to Avoid:
1. The "Name-Dropping" Trap: Never write a paragraph purely explaining Chomsky or Skinner without immediately tying it to specific quotes or evidence in the provided transcript or written text.
2. The "Theory War" Fallacy: Avoid declaring that one theorist is "wrong" and another is "right". High-scoring essays explain how biological predisposition (Chomsky), cognitive readiness (Piaget), and supportive social scaffolding (Bruner/Vygotsky) complement one another.
3. Treating Age as a Rigid Rule: Developmental stages are indicative guidelines, not rigid laws. Always evaluate the child's actual linguistic data rather than assuming their age dictates their ability.
4. Mixing up Spoken and Written Frameworks: Do not analyse written school texts using spoken conversational turn-taking or Halliday's early speech functions. Use Kroll, Gentry, Britton, and Clay for literacy and written data!
Quick Summary Checklist
• Skinner: Imitation, operant conditioning, positive/negative reinforcement.
• Chomsky & Lenneberg: LAD, Universal Grammar, virtuous errors, Critical Period.
• Piaget: Cognitive development precedes language (Object Permanence).
• Vygotsky & Bruner: ZPD, MKO, LASS, scaffolding, CDS features (recasting/expansion).
• Tomasello: Usage-based, intention reading, pattern finding (slot-and-frame).
• Berko Gleason & Brown: Wug Test (generative morphology), acquisition order of 14 morphemes.
• Literacy Models: Chall (Reading), Gentry (Spelling), Kroll & Britton (Writing).