Explain The Stages Of Development In Child Language

Stages of development in child language acquisition

This report will look at the stages of development in child language acquisition, what language is and how children acquire it. Language is used widely to express thoughts and emotions as well as conversing meaning with others. To understand child development, language and acquisition needs to be addressed. The main question that linguist constantly ask is ‘what is language? ‘Lust (2006) describes language as’ infinity of statements, questions, commands or exclamations’.

Additionally, Lust (2006) describes language as ‘symbolic’

As children acquire language they are able to make rules which they follow and use in new situations. They also produce new words by use of conversion, derivation

If a child does then there is some evidence that child has acquired some understanding of tenses. This being due to the fact a child will make up a rule which hasn’t been taught to them by their parents or those around them. Brown (1973) backs up Gleitman and Liberman (1995) claims that children have rules by stating that children follow ‘agent + action’ + object + location’ as a basis for sentences. With regards to this stage Browne gives examples of this rule. (see appendix

Over extension according to Louw et al (1998) is whereby a ‘words meaning is broadened’. For example using ‘dog’ to label or categorise all four legged animals. On the other hand children sometimes have the tendency to under extend. This having the opposite effect to the meaning of a word. An example would be using’ dog’ only for the dog a child knows and not for every dog a child sees. All children regardless of their native language over and under extend and this can be backed up by Wray and Bloomer (2012) who state that any child will go through ‘periods of apparent over