Child Language Development: Phonological and Lexical Acquisition

Phonological Development

Phoneme: Sounds can constitute and change the meaning of a word. Phonological: System of significant sounds of a language.

Developmental Stages

• Pre-linguistic Phase:
  • 16 weeks: Cooing, inconsequential sounds, laughter, crying.
  • 16–30 weeks: Vocal play.
  • 6 months: Pre-reduplicated babbling.
  • 10–14 months: Babbling without reduplication or echolalia.
  • Over 14 months: Transmission of single words. Slow progression.
• Linguistic Phase: Progressive accommodation of the articulatory system of language.

Articulatory Strategies

Children select strategies based on what they already know:

• A. Avoidance: Avoiding pronouncing difficult syllables in certain words.
• B. Exploitation: Children rely on articulatory sounds they already control, repeatedly using selected modifiers.

Phonological Tendencies

Children at risk tend to alter the organization of their language from an early point:

• A. Replacement: Systematically replacing one sound with another.
• B. Simplification of the syllable: Tendency to reduce syllables to a basic pattern.
• C. Assimilation of sounds: Tendency to articulate sounds of the first words closer to the point of articulation.

Lexical Development

There is a stable boundary between the phase of understanding (comprehending words before children can articulate them) and expression (the first word).

Characteristics of First Words

First utterances are of a constant character, linked to a specific social life in relation to the adult language sequence, without the deformations noted by Johnson.

Qualitative Currents

From a qualitative perspective, there are two major currents:

• 1. Sociolinguistics: Investigates what types of words children use and lists the stable basic vocabulary of children.
• 2. Cognitive Tendency: Concerns the semantic scope and understanding of word concepts in children.

This is supported by Vygotsky's important work, considering that adult and infant words are functionally equivalent from a conceptual standpoint. Children use single words to communicate their own experience in the world, causing concepts to be constructed progressively.

As Vygotsky noted, experience is important for constructing the mental model of a concept:

• Scientific concepts: Constructed through a specific process in teaching and learning.
• Spontaneous concepts: Constructed through individual social experience (e.g., water).

Lexical Development Strategies

• Overgeneralization (or overextension): Using a single word to refer to multiple concepts beyond its actual reference.
• Undergeneralization (or overrestriction): Establishing a restriction of reference where the child uses a word for fewer concepts than it actually contains.
• Absence of correspondence: Discrepancy between the object and the lexical creation.
• Lexical creation: Creating new words (e.g., bolota for ball).
• Metaphorical uses: Using words based on metaphors.