This e-book considers the most important theories of language development, language development in infants and toddlers, family literacy, stages of children’s language development, language, thought and culture. This e-Book has been organized into several topical areas. Also, it gives citations a...
This e-book considers the most important theories of language development, language
development in infants and toddlers, family literacy, stages of children’s language development,
language, thought and culture. This e-Book has been organized into several topical areas. Also, it
gives citations after a topic.
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CHAPTER ONE
Language Development In Infants And Toddlers
Introduction
Muthoni is 18 months old and is just beginning to talk. She can say a few recognizable words
and can vary her intonations to indicate if she is asking a question or making a statement. At
this time, last year Muthoni’s statements included ma ma ma……….. ba ba ba…………… upon
saying this her mother would respond there is “mama” and there is “baba” as if answering a
“conceived” question from Muthoni. Although Muthoni still makes such sounds, her ability to
say recognizable words is a source of amazement to her Baba and Mama. It is an indication of a
major development in Muthoni’s language. Children make major accomplishments in language
during early childhood. In this lesson, I will describe the language developments that take place
in infants and toddlers.
There are two sides to children’s language behaviour, the productive side (the speech they
produce) and the receptive side (the speech they understand). I will describe each side at a time
as I describe language development in infants and toddlers.
Infants and Toddlers’ Productive Language
Children’s communicative abilities develop in stages. Vocal behaviour during the first year of
life is called pre-linguistic speech. It is so called because it contains no actual words. It
includes crying, cooing, babbling and variations in intonation.
Crying (From Birth)
The first vocalization made by an infant at birth is a cry. Crying, although it’s not a language in
the same sense as words, is considered a language because it aids the infants’ communication. It
is the child’s only way to tell others when he or she is hungry, in pain or wet. There are different
types of cries depending on why the infant is crying. Sensitive mothers are able to interpret their
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babies’ cries according to their needs. That is they can tell whether the baby is crying due to
hunger, pain, discomfort or simply to capture attention. Using cries, infants are able to get their
needs attended to.
Cooing (From 3 months)
This is the first type of non-crying vocalization. Cooing consists of a repetition of vowel sounds
for instance “aaa……eee……ooo……” Infants usually coo when they are happy or excited. The
delight of others encourages the infant and makes it likely that he or she will coo even more.
Babbling (From 6 months)
This sets in at about 6 months of age. It consists of a repetition of a combination of consonants
and vowel sounds such as “mama mama”, “babababa“ dadadada” etcetera. These are the first
vocalizations that resemble human speech. From about 6 months of age, infants produce long
strings of babbling sounds. Then, at about 10 or 12 months, they shorten their babbles to one or
two repetitions of the syllable. For example, the infant says “ba-ba” rather than “babababa”
(Menyuk, 1977). Again like with cooing, when others respond positively to the infants babbling,
they encourage them to babble more.
Patterned Speech (10 Months)
At about the age of 10 months, infants begin to vary the intonation of their vocalizations. For
example, they may babble with a raised or lowered pitch. These intonation patterns correspond
to those used by older children and adults when asking questions or making statements. Infants
also begin to produce the range of sounds that are similar to those in their native language.
First Words (12 Months)
Babies usually say their first real words at about 12 months of age. Often the childs’ first word
approximates adults sound patterns, as when “boo” is used to refer to book and “mik” is used to
refer to milk. Sometimes, however, children use a totally different sound sequence than the one
used by adults to refer to an object or an action (Bee, 1995). For example a child may use “di-
di” consistently to refer to the feeding bottle. In this case the child is using “di-di” as a real
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word. Most of the infants’ first words are names of familiar people and objects in their
immediate environment.
As young children learn words, they often do not use them in the same way as adults do.
Sometimes, they under extend the meaning of a word. This happens when they fail to use the
word as broadly as its meaning applies. For example a child might use the word “bag” only to
refer to the mother’s bag because it was in this context that she first learned the word. On the
other hand, a child might call a “goat” a dog, because it has four legs and hair like a dog. This is
called overextension.
The appearance of words does not mean that infants stop babbling. The use of words and
babbling interact with each other in early language behaviour. Researchers suggest that children
produce two kinds of speech during their first words period; meaningful speech, using “real”
words and non-meaningful sounds, using babbling. Children use meaningful speech to talk to
people and babbling speech to practice speech sounds and words that will soon show up in their
“talking” speech (Elbers and Ton, 1985).
Holophrase (14-18 Months)
With the acquired ability to vary intonation, children begin to express themselves using one
word. For example a baby can use the word “Milk” with different intonations to mean different
things. A baby can say “milk” with a rising intonation to mean, “Is that milk?” or “Can I have
milk?” Saying milk with a falling intonation might mean “This is milk” or “Give me milk”. A
single word, like milk in this case, that expresses a more complex meaning or sentence is called a
holophrase. A fairly common holophrase is “that?” This holophrase means, “What is that?”
Infants usually point to an object when saying “That?” A responsive adult can use this as a
naming game to help a child learn the names of objects in the environment. Another common
holophrase used by young children in Kiswahili and some mother tongues is the word “ai”. It
may mean “no, I don’t want”, don’t touch me” etcetera, depending on the context in which it is
used.
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