Cambridge International A Level · English Language (9093)
5 multiple-choice questions marked as you go, and 3 written questions with worked solutions. All on The main stages of early development in child language acquisition.
A four-year-old child produces sentences that include complex syntactic structures, coordinating conjunctions, and correct inflections, such as "I went to the park because it was sunny and we played on the swings." Which stage of child language development is demonstrated here?
A child aged 18 months begins to use single words like "milk," "daddy," and "more" to express complete thoughts or desires. Which stage of child language acquisition is this child most likely in?
Consider the following utterance from a child aged 4 years: "We went to the zoo and we sawed the lions, but they didn't roared very loud." This utterance is best described as belonging to which stage, and what specific linguistic phenomenon is demonstrated by "sawed"?
At around 18 to 24 months, a young child begins pairing words to produce simple utterances such as "mummy sock", "big dog", and "more juice". Which developmental stage is characterized by these two-word combinations?
A 3-year-old child says "two feets" and "he runned away". Which morphological process in child language acquisition is illustrated by these utterances?
Briefly describe two key characteristics of the holophrastic stage in child language acquisition, providing an example of how a child might communicate during this stage.
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A transcript reveals a conversation between a father and his three-year-old daughter, Chloe.
Chloe: Look! Duckie swim!
Father: Yes, the duck is swimming in the pond.
Chloe: Duckie go splash!
(a) Identify the developmental stage Chloe is most likely in based on the linguistic evidence in the transcript.
(b) Explain two grammatical features of this stage present in Chloe's speech.
(c) Discuss the role of the father's response in relation to Bruner’s Language Acquisition Support System (LASS).
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The Telegraphic stage is a crucial phase in child language acquisition.
(a) Describe the typical age range and the structural characteristics of utterances during this stage.
(b) Explain the concept of 'content words' versus 'function words,' and analyze why a child in the telegraphic stage predominantly uses one over the other.
(c) Provide two examples of original telegraphic utterances and explain how they demonstrate the child's developing understanding of syntax despite the omission of certain grammatical elements.
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