Linguistic Development Research Paper (Page 26 of 37) in pdf

11 DEVELOPMENTAL THEORIES

a way which was previously impossible. This is the so called “linguistic intuitive” period.

There is later syntactic development after age 5, personal pronouns are still not used properly and

they are reﬁned from the years 5 to 8. After age 6 children will tend to produce “tag” questions. tag

questions are placed at the end of declarative sentences, e.g. “he will come, won’t he? ” or “You like

Brighton don’t you?”. Such sentences have a more complex grammatical structure than the other

kinds of question structure described in section 9.

From 7 until 9 the child is beginning to understand passive sentences involving mental state verbs

such as like or know. this occurs at the age at which a child’s speech for the self becomes internalized.

Perhaps the the internalization of speech for the self is also associated with a heightened ability for

introspection.

The period from 5 to 12 is evidently on of linguistic reﬁnement. The language that a child employs

is perfectly capable of enabling communication with others. It lacks the subtlety, ambiguity and

expressive power of adult speech.

The understanding of semantics grows throughout the period, by 6 the child is likely to understand

between 8000 and 14,000 words, their “productive capacities continue to grow at the rate of 15 words

per day for many years to come”!! Children are also becoming more proﬁcient at drawing inferences

about the meaning of what they hear. they are able to contemplate propositions as hypotheses.

Surprisingly those that are able to draw inferences from statements often do not realize in retrospect

that what they inferred from the sentence was not actually included in the sentence itself.

By 10 it is likely that the child will have managed to recognize the fact of their making inferences,

and they are more aﬀective at make=ing these inferences. the reasons that children are able to

go beyond the information that is contained in the sentences is that they are developing a “Meta-

linguistic Awareness.”

A meta-linguistic awareness is a knowledge of language and its properties, an understanding that

it can be used for purposes other than communication. This reﬂective ability has been present to

some degree since around the age of 6. We are able to display more phonemic awareness during this

stage as well.

There appears to be a distinct correlation between early meta-linguistic awareness, especially around

5 or 6, and reading proﬁciency at a later age. Why? Various opinions are held on all sides but

the results show that reading instruction and other literary experiences promote meta-linguistic

awareness, whereas a certain amount of meta-linguistic awareness make reading easier.

Developmental Theories

In 1957 Skinner argued that children acquire language due to reinforcing of correct usage. By the

process of conditioning the baby’s babbles and coos are progressively shaped into words. The adults

reward those which are most word-like. Later word combinations are enforced so that syntactic

expressions are produced.

He put forward the idea that a process of successive approximations, being rewarded until the

child’s language became similar to the adult’s, takes place during development. He also thought

that imitation played a large part in the process.

Initially the behaviorist theory held much sway, till the early 1960’s when it became increasingly

implausible. It was thought that the environment must be responsible for diﬀerences in learning

one language or another. How else could we explain why one person speaks Russian and another

Japanese? If they were born with language innate then we might ﬁnd natural born Japanese grammar

in English speakers.

Linguistic Development Research Paper Page 26

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