Language Form DevelopmentRiko Arfiyantama

Introduction

• You will learn about the language development of children from an early age to the ages of four and five, their preschool years. This period is being specially highlighted because it is in these early years that children experience tremendous cognitive and language development. By the end of their fourth or fifth year, most children will have acquired the basic grammatical structures of adult language.

Components of Language Development

LanguageDevelopment

Morphology. Syntax and phonology

FORM

Language functions and

use PRAGMATIC

Word meaning and

relationships SEMANTIC

This chapter focuses on:

• How do we gauge increasing language complexity in young children’s speech production?

• What are the main characteristics of morphological development of English monolingual children by age 5?

Language Complexity of Young Children• To estimate language complexity of young

English-speaking children, researchers examine the increase in the length of their utterances. You may recall from chapter 2, that the syntax of children’s utterances is very different from adult syntax. Typically, children’s utterances develop from single words to two-word utterances to three and more words. Most of these words such content words such as nouns and verbs while grammar words, such as prepositions and ‘be’ verbs, emerge much later.

Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)

• A method of calculation called the Mean Length of Utterance or MLU (brown, 1973) can be used for charting the growing complexity in a child’s language. The mean length of utterance is defined as average utterance length of English speaking preschoolers, measured in morphemes.

Exercise

To know the MLU, we have to consider the number of morphemes in each utterance.1. I want his balloons2. Father workingHow many utterances?How many morphemes in each utterance?

The answer is five and three morphemes respectively.

To calculate the MLU, a sample size of at least 50 utterances is needed. The following formula is used:

• Total numbers of morphemes• Total number of utterances

Let’s use a hypothetical example of Child X. in a sample of 100 utterances that X produced, 228 morphemes are counted. X’s MLU is calculated as 228 divided by 100, giving us the mean length of 2.28.

The purpose of calculating MLU is to compare children at their various levels of language development. Chronological age isn’t always a good indicator or predicator of young child’s language complexity because children do not develop linguistically at the same rate.

It is important to bear in mind that MLU in itself does not say anything about a child’s syntactic development. Nevertheless, an increase in the morphemes per utterance generally corresponds with the development of some early language forms. Up to the age of four, an increase in MLU is often an indication of language complexity.

Phases in the Development of Mean Length of Utterances (based on Brown, 1973)

Phase MLU Approximate age12345

1.0 – 2.02.0 – 2.52.5 – 3.0

3.0 – 3.753.75 – 4.5

1 – 2.5 years2 – 2.5 years2.5 – 3 years3 – 3.5 years3.5 – 4 years

Morphological Development

Morphological development begins at the time children have an MLU of 2. Early bound morphemes are such suffixes as ‘ing’ and ‘s’. There appears to be an acquisition order for some bound morphemes. Like many other aspects of language, the use of some morphemes is closely related to a child’s growing understanding of concepts such as ownership, and simple temporal and spatial relationships.

Brown’s 14 Morphemes• Table 2 presents the acquisition order of 14

morphemes according to Brown. The examples in the table are taken from the language data collected from a child acquiring Standard English in Singapore. The data are representative of the child’s language between the ages of 1.8 to 3.4.

Morphemes in Order of Acquisition by the age of 4 (based on Brown, 1973, p.274)

No Morphemes Examples1

234567891011121314

Present Progressive ‘ing’ without an auxiliary verbInOnRegular plural ‘s’Irregular pastPossessive ‘s’Uncontracted copula verbArticlesRegular past ‘ed’Regular third personIrregular third personUncontracted auxiliaryContracted copulaContracted auxiliary

Tellytubbies eating Tubby-toast!

Ball in the box.Cat on the chair.Two ducks.Maisy fell down.Mummy’s dress.I did not.I’m a big girl.I watched Donald Duck at school.She draws like thisWendy does.He has got one.I’m a batDaddy’s shaving

Key Features of Early Morphological Development

• Conceptually simple before conceptually complexChildren use such irregular past ‘forms as ‘came’, ‘went’, and ‘fell’ much earlier than past tense ‘ed’• Concrete action orientation before abstract relationshipThe child is able to observe a concrete action unfolding while listening to adult commenting on the action (e.g. I’m putting your dress on now’, ‘look, the doggie’s running’)

Cont…• Overgeneralization and overuse of certain morphemesForms that children overgeneralise include the use of the regular plural ‘s’ (e.g., ‘mouses’, ‘peoples’, ‘feets’. The other examples are shown below: The juice comed out. (3.4) I caught the ball. (3.5)Children may also overuse a particular morpheme they are in the process of learning. In the example below, the child (3.2) in a spontaneous out-burst during paly used ‘broken’ in ways she had never done before. Uh! No! My arm’s broken! It’s brokening! It wants to

broken!Simple phonemic additions and phonological rule learning• For example, a child at age two normally pronounces the

plural for ‘leaf’ (leaves) simply as /li:fs/ rather than /li:vs/.

Syntactic DevelopmentSyntactic development is a gradual process and involves learning at different levels. We will examine this aspect od form development by looking at the development of phrases, sentence types and overall sentence complexity.PhrasesPhrases are important elements of a sentence. Our discussion will focus on the development of:• Noun Phrase• Verb Phrase• Prepositional and infinitive Phrases

Noun Phrase

Children initial utterances consist of mainly single nouns (e.g. ‘bird’, ‘book’, ‘moon’, ‘nose’). Before their second birthday, most children’s utterances will expand to include articles (e.g. ‘a bird’, ‘a book’) and demonstratives (e.g. ‘that house’, ‘this book’) (Wells, 1985). This is followed by expansion that includes adjectives (e.g. ‘a big bird’, ‘a big book’). See examples on page 87-88 for further information.

Verb PhraseVerb Phrase development is closely related to the acquisition of simple morphemes. Initially, only single verbs are uttered, often without direct objects (e.g. ‘Mummy driving’). Auxiliary verbs do not occur even with the acquisition of the progressive ‘ing’ morphemes. By the time a child shows an MLU of 3 morphemes or more, modal auxiliary verbs such as ‘can’, ‘cannot’ and ‘must’ also begin to appear (Example 8). The copula verb (‘be’) is also used at about the same time. It is initially in an uncontracted form (Example 9) but contractions are soon added to the child’s developing repertoire (Example 10)

Prepositional and Infinitive PhrasesYoung children often produce short and accurate prepositional phrases with in and on (e.g., ‘in his mouth’, ‘in the water’, ‘on the mat’, ‘on its nose’). The preposition inside is also used frequently to form phrases (e.g., ‘inside my tummy’, ‘inside Mike’s mouth’), while others such as ‘at’ and ‘under’ appear not long afterwards (e.g., ‘at the table’, ‘under there’). Prepositional phrases with to indicating direction may also be used (e.g., ‘to the shops’, ‘to the office’, ‘to school’). On the whole, the two commonest types of prepositional phrases begin with ‘in’ and ‘on’, two morphemes acquired soon after the second birthday. Infinitive phrases also begin to appear in children’s speech at around the same time. They contain the infinitive to and a verb, typically preceded by the words ‘want’ (example 13) or ‘going’ (example 14).

Sentence TypesThere are four main types of sentences inn English language:• Declarative• Imperative• Interrogative• ExclamativeBy the time children achieve an MLU of 3, they begin to use the first three types of adult sentence forms regularly (Owens, 2001).

DeclarativeA declarative sentence consists of a subject followed by a verb, and often includes an object or a complement. Early two-word utterances are often declarative in form even though an auxiliary verb, which is obligatory in some situations, is missing (e.g., ‘Doggie sleeping’, “Tubbies running’). Example 16 illustrates the declarative form of subject-verb-object/complement that emerges soon after the child turns two. In some of her utterances, indirect objects have also been included (17). In spite of the absence of the grammar words such as ‘for’ and ‘to’ respectively, the declarative form a two-year old child show, declarative sentences are produced before morphemes for verb inflections or irregular past tense forms are acquired.

InterrogativeThe development of interrogative forms in English also follows a predictable sequence. It is first signaled by intonation and subsequently progresses to more sophisticated constructions that involve the inversions of sentence elements. The development of ‘wh’ questions is particularly fascinating. It not only demonstrates children’s growing skill at manipulating the syntax of English but also their gradual development of abstract knowledge about time and events. The examples here are once again based on the language data of the child as she progressed through the different stages.

Children first ask questions by adopting a rising tone. This occurs as early as the emergence of single-word utterances (Example 23). When children progress to two-word utterances, intonation is still used for signaling a question. The word ‘what’ is generally the first ‘wh’ word to appear, although at this stage, children are most likely using it as a part of a set or formulaic expressions (Example 24). This is probably due to the types of conversation that adults engage young children in. For example, when looking at picture books, the questions “What’s this?” and “What’s that?” are frequently used to ‘test’ a child’s ability to name things. They have yet to learn the way in which the word what can be used in combination with content words. Soon what is used in ‘real’ questions (example 25)

Imperative• Imperative sentences typically include a verb phrase at

the beginning of an utterance. Its functions range from polite request to demands and commands. Sometimes the name of the listener is also included either before the verb phrase or after it. Imperative forms appear very early. It is, however, difficult to ascertain whether some two-word utterances are imperatives because declarative forms are emerging at the same time. Sometimes this may be possible only through rich interpretations based on clear communicative contexts.

• This form, imperative, continues to dominate much of young children’s language use. Further development is in the use of politeness markers such as ‘please’

Sentence Complexity

• Researchers often discuss children’s syntactic development by examining the way they construct longer utterances with more complex structures. Let us now look at three grammatical features: coordination, subordination and clausal embedding.

Co-ordinating

• Co-ordinating links items of equal grammatical status, such as noun phrases (for example, ‘Julian and Mark are brothers’). It also links clauses to create compound sentences. The three main conjunctions are ‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘or’. ‘And’ is by far the most commonly used conjunction even until the first two years in primary school.

Subordinating • A subordinate clause is a part of a larger

sentence structure and cannot stand alone. It is also called a dependent clause. There are several subordinating conjunctions, the more common ones are ‘because’, ‘if’, ‘when’, ‘after’ and ‘before’. When children begin to develop abstract knowledge about cause and effect, clauses with ‘because’ in them also begin to feature in their speech (example 39).

Embedding• Embedding refers to the insertion of one clause.

Relative clauses, which post-modify noun phrases in the main clause, are an example of an embedded clause. Relative pronouns include ‘that’, ‘who’, ‘whom’ and ‘which’ (e.g. “the girl who lives in that house is very kind.”) Relative clauses begin to emerge in some children’s speech by age three (example 41).

Phonological Development• Children begin to acquire an inventory of English

speech sounds from an early age. Nevertheless, it isn’t until they reach early primary school (at about the age of eight) when they can produce most of the adult sounds and blends of the English language (Owens, 2001). In general, preschool children cannot maintain all the adult phonetic contrasts, but they have systematic ways of reducing adult pronunciation of words to forms which are within their capabilities (Menn & Stoel-Gammon, 1995)

Phonological Rules• Young children’s phonological development is a long and

gradual process. Initial production of many words and sounds differs quite substantially from adult form. Very often the sounds may be so different that the meaning of the sound is only understood through rich interpretation. As table 6.3 shows, many of the more difficult sounds are modified systematically – that is, there are some phonological rules or processes that determine most of these modifications (Menn & Stoel-Gammon, 1995; Owens, 2001). The examples are from the data of one child, recorded between the ages of two to three-and-a-half years.

Interdependence with Morpheme AcquisitionAn important feature of phonological development is the influence it has on morphological development and vice versa. The ability to perceive sounds, especially those that are that are unstressed or in weak forms, is the first step to producing new morphemes. Many morphemes, especially the bound ones such as ‘ing’, ‘s’, ‘ed’ are not stressed in speech. That is why most of the first words of children do not contain these morphemes. Nevertheless, children soon begin to attend to these sounds and notice the role they play in concepts such as ownership, on-going action, plurality etc. Before long these sounds are produced in their speech to express the new concepts they acquire. There is therefore a great deal of interdependence between phonological development and morpheme acquisition.

ConclusionThis chapter explains three important areas of the development of language form: morphemes, syntax and phonology. All three areas are interdependence. Development in phonology, for example, will influence morpheme acquisition, which will in turn have an effect on the development of syntax.

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