Language Change

Here are some examples of terminology that will be useful for language change:

Amelioration: A process by which the meaning of a word changes to something more favourable. 
Pejoration: Sematic change whereby a word acquires unfavourable connotations.
Broadening: The process by which the meaning of a word becomes broader or more inclusive than its earlier meaning (also known as generalization or extension)
Narrowing:  The process by which a word's meaning becomes less general or inclusive than its earlier meaning. This kind of semantic change is also known as specialization.
Back-formation: The process of forming a new word by extracting actual or supposed affixes from another word- shortened words created from longer words.

Article for language change:

Here is an article which I found interesting about language change.


http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/01/icymi-english-language-is-changing-faster-than-ever-says-expert

This article explains how fast the English language is changing due to development in social media which is causing language to spread and change.
Over the past couple decades language has changed a lot, first came about the changes between people texting one another- text language and now is the language of social media which involves typing how we speak compared to language a few years ago which was different when written and spoken.
At the end of the article they came to the conclusion that there is a "seismic gap" between the younger and older generations when talking about the modern use of our informal language. They found that this had been caused by children's constant use of their phones which creates limitations of speaking with people and creates a barrier. Older mobile phones which had three or four letter son each key, caused children to invent language using as little letters as possible, this made acronyms like "M8" and "GR8". However, the article did mention that these terms are now "extinct" from language use as it is considered an old use of language as now we have more advanced phones which don't require us to press the same key three times. Later, he then went on to explain how emojis are becoming the new form of language as they can show someone how were feeling and require minimum effort in doing so.

Child Language Acquisition Questions

Answers to questions:
1) Cooing, Babbling, Holophrastic, Two-word, Telegraphic, Post-Telegraphic
2) Interactional theory - J.Bruner, Nativist theory- N.Chomsky, Cognitive theory- J.Piaget, Behaviorists theory- B.F.Skinner, Critical period- E.Lenneberg
3) Over extension, as the reason for this is because they are the same shape children assume that they are the same thing.
4) Under extension
5) If a child were to say 'I falled' or 'I runned away' then this process is called overgeneralisation, this is because the child has learnt to use 'run' and 'fall' and has a knowledge that if they add the suffix of 'ed' on the end it immediately becomes past tense, but this child uses it in a non-standard way.
6) As the child has said 'Daddy go work', I would say that the child is at the telegraphic stage as they have the basic forms of the sentence but they are missing 'is' and needs to change 'go' to 'going' and 'to', to make the sentence 'Daddy is going to work'.
7) If a child says 'me like ice-cream' she is understanding that she has to identify that she is the one liking the ice cream but she needs to say I and not 'me'.
8) A child says 'timney' and not chimney, the child may not be able to pronounce the 'ch' sound and therefore replaces it with an easier 't' sound. This process would be in the babbling/two-word stage.
9) A child says 'ca' instead of 'cat', she is using the simplification process for deletion where she simplifies the word to make it easier for her to say.
10) 'nana' an not 'banana', again this shows a similar process of simplification but its at the beginning of the word, this would be simplification.
11) Halliday's functions: (1) Instrumental - to fulfill a need on behalf of the speaker, directly concerned with food, drink and comfort (2) Regulatory - Influence behavior of others, persuading (3) Interactional - Develop social relationships and ease the process of interactions (4) Personal - language used to express the personal preferences and identify that of the speaker (5) Representational - used to change information (6) Heuristic - to learn and explore he environment (7) Imaginative - to explore the imagination
12) 'Wugs' was found by researcher Jean Berko Gleason she created the 'wug test' which involves teaching children linguistic rules. She found that children aged 4 and below couldn't apply the linguistic rules, but children aged 4/5 could apply the plural 'wugs' without hearing this word before. This proved that language isn't memorised.
13) Most common word class for child's first 50 words will be nouns
14) Turn taking might be established by a carer and a child if one is asking a question and one is answering
15) A carer might make it easier for a child to understand their language by talking in a higher pitch and using smaller words and simplifying some vocabulary like saying 'orange' instead of 'satsuma'.
16) Genie was a 13 year old girl when she was found and was limited to a 20 word vocabulary. She was described as 'feral'. Her vocabulary was limited due to her having limited contact with people, she if often used by researchers to prove Bruner's Interaction Theory.
17) Jim was a hearing boy born to deaf parents. His parents put him in front of the TV hoping that he would pick up language and pronunciation. However, this didn't work and similar to Genie he is used to prove Bruner's Interaction Theory.
18) Another language theorist is Jean Aitchison, she has the idea that "language has a biologically organized schedule".
19) L.A.D. stands for Language Acquisition Device
20) Two word classes that children omit in the telegraphic stage are preposition and a determiner
21) The formation of negatives are if children don’t pick up some of the grammatical structures immediately as some children show an incorrect use of grammar. For example if a child said ‘wented’ instead of went, which shows that they have not imitated of others.