GRAMMATHICAL MORPHEMES: Roger Brown studied the language development of three children.

List of the gramma cal morphemes in the approximate order of their acquisi on.
1.present progressive Ing; 2.plural s; 3.irregular past forms; 4.possessive s; 5.copula; 6.ar cles
the ans a; 7.regular past ed; 8.third person singular simple present s; 9.auxiliary be
NEGATION:
Stage1: The childs rst nega ves are usually Expressem by the word no, either all alone or as the
rst word in the u erance. No go No cookies
Some children even adept the word any as a negator, perhaps with an accompanying shake of the
head. Any bath!
Stage2: As u erances grow longer, and the sentencje subject is included, the nega ve usually
appears just before thr verb. Daddy no comb hair
Stage3: At this stage, the nega ve element is insertem into a more complex sentence. Children may
add forms of the nega ve other than no, including words like cant dont. These sentences
appear to follow the correct English pat tern of a aching the nega ve to the auxiliary of modal verb.
I cant do it
Stage4: Later, children begin to a ach the nega ve element to the correct form of auxiliary verbs
such as do and be, and modal verbs such as can. You didnt have supper
They may s ll have diculty with some other features related to nega ves. I dont have no more
candies.
QUESTIONS:
Stage1: Childrens earliest ques ons are single words or simple two- or three-word sentences with
rising intona on. Cookie? Mommy book?
At the same me, of course, they may produce some correct ques ons- correct because they have
been learned as formulaic chunks. Wheres Daddy? Whats that?
Stage2: When their sentences grow longer, and they begin to ask more new ques ons, children use
the word order of the declara ve sentence. With yes/no ques ons, they simply add rising
intona on. With wh- ques ons, they put a ques on word at the beginning. You like this? I have
some? Why you catch it?
At this stage, they may con nue to produce the correct chunk-learned forms such as Whats that?
alongside their own created ques ons.
Stage3: Gradually, they no ce that the structure of ques ons is dirent and begin to produce
ques ons such as Can I go? Is that mine?
But at this stage they may generalize that all ques ons formed by pu ng a verb at the beginning of
a sentence. Thus: Is the teddy is red? Do I can have a cookie?. Furthermore, at this stage, wh-
ques ons usually retain the declara ve word order Why you dont have one?
Stage4: Later, children begin to use subject auxiliary inversion and can even add do in sentences
in which there would be no auxiliary in the declara ve version of the sentence Do you like ice
cream?
Even in this stage, however, it some mes seems that they can either use inversion or use a wh-
word, but not both. Therefore, we may nd inversion in yes/no ques ons but not in wh- ques ons,
except formulas such as Whats that? which may s ll be used: Can he eat the cookies? Where I can
draw them?
Stage5: Eventually, children combine both opera ons: Why can he go out?
However, it may s ll be beyond their ability to carry out a third or fourth opera ons, for example to
negate the ques ons as well as invert it: Why he cant go out?
Stage6: Finally, when we performance on ques ons is correct and well established, there is s ll one
more hurdle. When wh- words appear in subordinare Clausem or embedded ques ons, children
overgeneralize the inverted form and produce setnences such as: I dont know why cant he go out.
Summary: Descrip ons of early milestone and acquisi on sequences for gramma cal morphemes,
nega ves and ques ons show that we have considerable knowledge of what children learn in their
early language development.
ANALYZING CHILDRENS SPEECH
1.(Peter, Louis, Patsy). It is easy to see that Peter imitates a great deal. However, it should be stressed
that not all children imitate to the extent that Peter does. Some 30-40 percent od Peters speech
consists of imita ons, while, for some children, the rate of imita on may be less than 10 percent. It i
salso important that childrens imita ona are not random; they dont imitate everything they hear.
This analysis shows that Peter imitated new words and sentence structures un l they became solidly
grounded in his language system, and then he stopped imita ng these and went on to imitate other
new words and structures. Childrens imita on is selec ve and based on what they are currently
learning.
(Cindy, Patsy). Cindy appears to be working hard on her language acquisi on. She prac ses new
words and structures in a way that sounds like a student in some foreign language classes. Perhaps
most interes ng is that she remembers the language lesson a week later and turns straight the
page in the book she had not seen since Patsys last visit. Like Peter, her imita on and prac ce
appear to be focused on what she is working on. The samples of speech from Peter and Cindy
seem to lend some support to the behaviourist explana on of language acquisi on.
2.(Kathryn, Lois). Like CIndy, Kathryn some mes repeats herself or products a series of related
prac ce sentences, but she rarely imitates the other speaker. She asks and answers ques ons and
elaborates on the other speakers ques ons or statements.
Case Study: Jim the hea ng child of deaf parents, had li le contact with learning/ speaking adults
up to the age of 3,9. His only contact with oral language was through television. Jim didnt begin his
linguis c development in a normal environment in which a parent communicated with him. He was
very much below age level in all aspects of language. He used unusual, ungramma cal word order.
When he began conversa onal session with an adult, his expressive abili sies began to improve. By
the age of 4,2 most of the unusual speech pa erns had disappeared, replaced by structures more
typical for Jims age. His younger brother Glenn didnt display the same type of lag and performed
normally on language tests. Jim showed very rapid acquisi on of the structures of English once he
began to interact with an adult on a one-to-one basis.
APPROACH theore cal posi ons and beliefs about the nature of language, the nature of language
learning, and the applicability of both to pedagogical se ngs. It is a set of assump ons, beliefs and
theories about the nature of language and language learning.
BEHAVIOURISM tradi onal behaviourists believed that language learning is the result of imita on,
prac ce, feedback on success, and habit forma on. Children imitate the sounds and pa erns which
they hear around them and receive posi ve reinforcement for doing so.
CAH - Contras ve Analysis Hypotheses - is a way of comparing learners L1 and L2 to analyze possible
difficulties that the learners might encounter in L2 learning situation. CAH assumes that when learners try
to learn L2, the patterns and rules of L1 cause main difficulties to their L2 learning. The main difficulties are
found based on the linguistic structure comparison of two languages. Therefore, L2 teachers can have
better understanding of students different types of learning difficulties caused by their different linguistic
backgrounds.
CHP- the cri cal period hypothesis- Lennberg observed that this ability to develop normal
behaviours and knowledge is a variety of environments does not con nue indenitely and that
children who have never learned language cannot do so if these depriva ons go on for too long. He
argued that the language acquisi on device, like other biological func ons, works successfully only
when it is s mulated at the right me a me called cri cal period. This no on that there is a
specic and limited me period for language acquisi on is referred to as the CPH.
INNATISM Noam Chomsky claims that children are biologically programmed for language and that
language develops in the child in just the same way that other biological func ons develop.
INTERACTIONIST language develops as a result of the complex interplay between the uniquely
human characteris c of the child and the environment in which the child develops. They emphasize
the importance of child-direct speech the language which is not only adressed to children but
adjusted in ways that make it easier for them to understand.
INTERLANGUAGE this term draws a en on to the fact that the learners language system is neither
that of the mother tongue, nor that of the secondo language, but contains elements from both. If
we imagine a con nuum between the rst language system and the secondo language system, we
can say that at any given me, the learner speaks an interlanguage at some point along the
con nuum.
LAD language acquisi on device this device was o en described as an imaginary black box
which exist somewhere in the brain. This black box thought to contain all and only the principles
which are universal to all human languages, prevents the child from going o on lots of wrong trails
in trying to discover the rulet of the language.
METHOD a generalized set of classroom specica ons for accomplishing linguis c objec ves.
Methods tend to be primarily concerned with teacher and student roles and behaviours and
secondarily with such features as linguis c and subject-ma er objec ves, sequencing and materials.
OVERGENERALISATION- the process of extending the applica on of a rule to items that are excluded
form it in the language norm , as when a child uses the regular past tense verb ending ed of forms
like I walked to produce forms like I goed or I rided.
REDUNDANCY refers to information that is expressed more than once
RESTRUCTURING - is the process by which learners change their interlanguage systems
TRANSFER in the case of transfer, the learner uses his previous mother-tongue experience as a
means of organising the secondo language data. It is economical and produc ve for second
language learners to transfer their previous knowledge of language to the new task.
UG universal grammar is considered to consist of a set of principles which are common to all
languages. If children are pre-equipped with UG, then what they have to learn is the ways in which
their own language makes use of these principles and the varia ons of those principles which may
exist in the par cular language which they hear spoken around them; permits all children to acquire
the language of their environment, during a cri cal period in their development.