User talk:Lh12qv/ChildDevelopmentGroup

Welcome to Wikipedia. You can use this for discussion of your edits.--LynnMcCleary (talk) 21:32, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi guys! I'm Nicole Marshall Nm13su (talk) 18:25, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Hey! Nicole I want to thank you again for helping me out with navigating through Wikipedia! Rl11ge Rl11ge (talk) 18:04, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Initial critiques and ideas for editing

Rl11ge's initial ideas

First and foremost there are “citations needed” throughout this section. It is not well-cited so we are going to have to do research and find articles, journals, and other sources that support these ideas/claims within the article already.

Are we able to increase the font for the title “Language” so that it stands alone as its own idea as opposed to blending in with the article. In my opinion, “What develops” doesn’t seem to be an appropriate title, maybe something more along the lines of “Development of language” would suffice. The article does not start with a clear description. The lead or introduction is not strong enough and it doesn’t clearly define what will be discussed further on in the article, which is crucial. Also, the four main areas of child competence, listed in the introduction under “what develops”, are not clearly defined throughout the rest of the article; it is very disorganized and hidden. We should fix the introduction and have a clear lead into what the language section of this article will be focusing on. When we incorporate these four main areas of child competence into the body of the article, we should have them clearly defined and organized so that we aren’t searching hard for them (as they currently appear to be hidden). They should be discussed into further detail under the “speed and pattern of development” section.

I don’t find this article understandable, nor is it precise and explicit. The wording is hard to follow and, to me, the overall layout of this language section is complete chaos. There is no structure to the way the article is written, and where good information or solid topics should be discussed into more detail, they aren’t. Also, this article is in dire need of rewording, starting with the introduction sentences; this rewording might help the flow of speech, which will make it a little more enjoyable to read and help it reflect an encyclopedia. We can also limit the run-on sentences and tend to the grammatical errors. Here is an example from the article that demonstrates the flaws I stated above:

However, expressive language, the production of words, moves rapidly after its beginning at about a year of age, with a "vocabulary explosion" of rapid word acquisition occurring in the middle of the second year.[citation needed)

I don’t find this article self-contained. I would need to visit other sources to get a better understanding of the concept of language from this article. It does act as a good starting point as it points us in a general direction, but it has no supporting evidence of the context and not enough explanation to consider it a self-contained article.

Lastly, there are no images and we should look into uploading an image.

At least this article contains “wikilinks” which is a component of a perfect article, and it is unbiased.

Also, do we need to incorporate communication considering language is a form of communication? Rl11ge (talk) 22:30, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

If you enter some of the the sentances that need citations (one at a time) into Google, the sources will become evident. You could have some discussion about what to do about this. LynnMcCleary (talk) 01:58, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Lh12qv's initial ideas

Lh12qv (talk) 22:45, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Hey Guys! So Rl11ge I definitely see what you mean in all respects. Especially when you say it's super chaotic. When we're doing this I think we should take an in-depth look at all of the subtopics in the article and eliminate, or at least better organize, some of the ones that are repeated in multiple sections, as well as organizing the sub topics in some form of chronological order, or at least an order in which one idea leads into another. For example, the psych-like ideas are with the psych-like ideas, the scientific ideas are with the scientific ideas, and so on. Right now the article is jumping back and forth between disciplines and getting confusing in certain areas.

Also, the article touches base on the idea of personalities of children/the names of the stages when they're maturing, but only really in the one picture, so maybe we could explore that in a little more in depth?

The terminology in this seems a little extreme in some cases as well. I understand that it has to be professional and scientifically accurate but it would be nice if we could add explanations in simpler terms as well to make the article accessible for people of different ages and intelligences. (Seriously I'm looking at some of the stuff right now like whaaaat.)

Definitely like the idea of getting multiple sources; magazines, articles, reports, etc. It will be good to see the theories from different points of view and see where sometimes bias changes things around.

Excited to get this thing started! Lh12qv (talk) 22:45, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Nm13su's critique and initial thoughts

Hey everyone! I agree with what Rebecca was saying in regards to the “What Develops” section. I think for what is written there right now, there is not enough information for it to be a stand-alone section. Either we should add more information or perhaps rename it so other information could be included with it.

Rebecca also mentioned incorporating more about communication in the language section. I think this is a great idea. There is a lot about language itself but I think there are opportunities here to add in research specific to communicating in a broader sense.

As both of you have mentioned, the text seems very dense and confusingly worded. I think there would be a good opportunity in perhaps the speed and pattern of development section to add in a list to break up the content a bit. This could be done, for example, with the different communication developmental milestones at each age.

A large amount of the content in this section is in need of a citation. I don’t think we should necessarily take out all this information, but I think we should add a lot of our own research from reliable sources to the article. Right the majority of this section is unusable information because it has not been cited. This is one of the main criteria of a good article so we should definitely discuss what we want to do with the information lacking citation.

I think it would also be a good idea if we added information about children’s nonverbal communication. This section greatly focussed on language, but nonverbal communication is huge part of a child’s communication before they are able to speak and express themselves verbally. Nm13su (talk) 01:11, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

What do you guys think of adding in communication developmental milestones in under the section "Developmental milestones" Nm13su (talk) 17:46, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

More ideas

Hey again,

I love the idea of organizing points so that we can have some structure in this article. It’ll make it a lot easier for the readers to follow along in an informative manner that’s for sure.

For renaming this section…it would be best if we did do so, but I’m a little skeptical about renaming the titles as well because notice throughout the article there is a consistency with titles. Example, each section throughout the article includes the title “speed and pattern of development”. When we reorganize this section, we will have better supporting ideas and better information to add into the article that won’t necessarily fit under the title “speed and pattern of development”. The only problem is, will replacing the title “speed and pattern of development” affect the only consistency the article has right now? After making edits to this article we could come to a consensus about this, but it’s just a thought.

What Lyndsey (sorry if I spelt your name wrong) suggested was perfect about the addition of “different communication developmental milestones at each age” in the language section. But, we should not add anything in the “Developmental Milestones”. I don’t think it is appropriate to add language topics under that specific heading in this article. If you read the “Developmental Milestones” section, it is broadly discussing what a milestone is, or what a developmental milestone is. We should incorporate a new subheading under our “Language” section and definitely incorporate your idea of adding information about the different stages of child language development throughout a range of ages under a new subtitle: “Developmental Milestones in Communication”. Also, adding nonverbal communication would be ideal for this article considering that is how young children develop language. ```` Rebecca — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs) 00:50, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

forgot to sign my work...oops Rl11ge (talk) 00:53, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Another thought, Under Language describe language what it is and how it is a form of verbal and nonverbal communication and to achieve language as a form of communication, certain steps (or milestones) need to be developed. They are…then list off the four points the author already stated about what needs to be developed in order to accomplish language (phonology or sounds, semantics or the encoded meanings, syntax or the way in which words are combined and pragmatics-knowledge-of how language is used in different contexts). This could act as our introduction into the topic of language and let it provide structure for this section by addressing what will be discussed subsequently. Change the title: “speed and pattern of development” to the title Lyndsey suggested: “Developmental Milestones of Language”. We can find articles and books that will go through more detail about the four levels of language development listed above (phonology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics), and incorporate age ranges when each stage is developed. Back this up with articles and books of course. Instead of “Mechanisms of Language Development” which talks about other influences on language for a child, we could probably change that title to “Mechanistic Influences on Language Development”…or something along the lines of so. There are lots of resources that talk about substantial influences on language development like culture, environment, how the child was handled as an infant, education, etc. We could incorporate ideas about such under this title? What do you guys think?

Rebecca L 01:14, 23 September 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

Hey guys sorry for taking so long to contribute. I agree with everything you've posted so far so I've decided to simply organize your ideas of improving the article.

• As the three of you have mentioned the article is very poorly written. It is littered with citation errors and is therefore un-credible, this is something we should really focus on. As Lynn mentioned a just because it isn't cited doesn't mean that the source was made up, by googling the phrase or sentence is question we could find the source the original editor used.

• Another issue with the article is its organization. As you have mentioned, one of the big problems with the language development section and the article in general is its frequent use of an "What Develops?" sub-heading. What this does is make important information feel isolated and disconnected with the rest of the article. Although it was probably introduced in order to draw a reader's attention to specific information they might be looking for, it instead looks unclear and pointless. A fix to this like some of you mentioned would be to rename the subheading and expand on it, or I would suggest discarding that section in general and instead putting that information throughout the article or using it as a topic sentence or as sort of a table of contexts. Also, information tends to be chaotic completely disregarding the good article criteria of stability. Information is seemingly distributed randomly throughout the article and ideas are cut off and continued in another part of the article. This will be most likely our greatest challenge. We are going to have to redistribute the information into a more cohesive and organized way that is easy to follow. Stick similar topics together (like Lindsey suggested) while trying to organize the developmental information by age to clearly illustrate the language development in a child.

• The article also feels very inaccessible. This is most like due to the wording used. The main point of the article tends to be lost or hidden by incomprehensible words. Although we need to keep the article informative and scientific to get the proper information across, we shouldn't sacrifice comprehensiveness for confusion. The tricky words make the article inaccessible to all readers and difficult to understand, my clearing up the diction in the article we make it easier to get the point of the article across and easier to understand. Along the lines of inaccessibility, as you mention the lack of pictures also hurts the article. We lock off the article to reading-based learners, without pictures it makes the article a lot more difficult to understand for certain types of people. Pictures will make the article more comprehensive, organized and accessible. This is where we could get into a little bit of danger though, we need to make sure the pictures enhance the learning experience and information presented in the article, we can't distract away from it or confuse readers with unrelated photos.

• A general lack of information. As Rebecca mentioned the article has a lot about the development of verbal behavior and speech patterns but lacks information about non-verbal communication. This is a significant point of improvement for us to work on because as we learned in class most communication is in fact non-verbal. Zk13be (talk) 01:22, 24 September 2014 (UT

Let me know if you need help with anything or if I left out some of your ideas. I think it is important for us to keep our ideas and information organized as well as keeping our priorities and goals straight.

Goals for Our Editting

Since we've all contributed some great ideas, I thought we should organize what we aim to do with this article. Feel free to add your own ideas or change the order. Nm13su (talk) 15:48, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

1. Add more information to the article specific to communication that is properly referenced
2. Find citations for information where citation is needed
3. Add photos that add to the are relevant and helpful to the article — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nm13su (talk • contribs) 16:19, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
4. Organize the article by adding or changing subheadings
5. Reformat some of the sections to be more logical

Some feedback from Lynn

Hi everyone. It's great to read your discussion and see that you're thinking through what's in the article and what could be edited. You now need to bring together your assessments and the points your raised to prioritize what you could do and what your goals will be with your contribution to this page. I added a note above about checking phrases and sentences in Google. Please feel free to contact me about issues this raises - but don't let it distract you from figuring out what you'd like to research to achieve your editing goals. I love your enthusiasm. I just want to offer a slight caution about effusiveness, especially when it comes to criticism. You will need to present your rationale for any suggested changes in ways that won't be potentially offensive to other editors. FYI, I've added some headings. Headings might help you to sort through information here. You will eventually have quite a bit of information! Feel free to change the headings to something that makes sense for your group. LynnMcCleary (talk) 01:58, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Rebecca L Ideas I really hope I do not come off as aggressive or “my way is the highway”. I apparently have a lot to say and I don’t mean any offense when writing (just to make things clear) haha. But I do have more ideas on the structure of this article. Tell me what you guys think, and please add to it or refute it if you oppose to any of my ideas. I am a little OCD so I will underline my “ideas” for organization purposes, not to imply any concreteness or aggressiveness. Here they are:

First Idea

How do you feel about renaming the “What Develops” to “Mechanisms of Verbal Language Development”? I say this because the four main areas the author touched base on (under “what develops”) are actually the components/mechanisms of oral language development. They are:

• Pragmatic
• Phonolgy
• Lexicon
• Morphology and syntax

In this section (under “Mechanisms of Verbal Language Development”) we could go into further details about these four components of language development, defining them and adding our citations of course. Do you think this is a good idea?

We could also define language under this heading, because it would serve as a nice brief introduction or guideline as to what this section of the article will be focusing on. Any thoughts?

Personally I think this is a great improvement to the article. It gives purpose to a section that used to be an answer to a question, like seriously. Great job identifying the points in that section, for me it just seemed super confusing. I believe this can be an easy start of point as we get serious about adding information. This is my preliminary input until I or we get more information about the those 4 components. Thanks Rebecca. And also please sign whenever you right something because now it looks like its a continuation of what you wrote, whereas I could of "replied" to you if you signed. I'll add more/look at things in greater detail when I have the time. Zk13be (talk) 21:07, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Second Idea

The author’s next heading is “speed and pattern of development” though he is directly stating the milestones or steps for language development. How do you feel about renaming the title to something more appropriately fitting to the body under the heading? What do you think about renaming it to “Developmental Milestones of Language”?

Under this heading, we could go into further detail about oral development and the four components of language in chronological order (according to age ranges when children experience their development). For example, maybe start with “birth-1 month: crying and reflexive vocalizations, for example grunts, belches, and coughs”… and expand from there? What do you think?

Great idea! I totally support renaming it. I think some of my sources will have great information on thisNicole 23:08, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Third Idea

I like what the author did with the “Mechanisms of Language Development”. He talked about language acquisition and how it isn’t a concrete theory, where the prominent influences of language on children were experienced, or where they derived, etc. But, I find the title does not match the body paragraph supporting this heading. Do you guys think it matches? How do you feel about renaming it to “Theories of Language Acquisition”? I think this title is a little bit more appropriate, what do you think?

Also, I found great theories that incorporate what the author was saying in this paragraph. Major theories include: generativist, social interactionist, usage-based, connectionist, and behaviorist theories. I feel it would be beneficial to incorporate these theories and define them more clearly under those categories…how do you guys feel about this?

I definitely agree the section needs to be renamed. If you have information on those theories, I think it would be a great idea to incorporate them into this section Nicole 23:10, 29 September 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nm13su (talk • contribs)

Fourth Idea

How do you feel about adding another little section titled: “Relation Between Communication and Language”? In this section we could talk about how children use the language they learn to communicate, and define communication (communication being both verbal and nonverbal). We can branch off from Verbal and Nonverbal communication and add that communication is mainly nonverbal and not just verbal. We could even branch off further into explaining how there are different views of how important communication is to a language and to language acquisition (these different vews being 1. Formalism and 2. Functionalism). What do you guys think about this?

Looking forward to hearing back from you guys and interested in what your have to add 

Thanks Rebecca L 20:41, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

So! I was browsing around the interweb a little bit and started looking for some content to add as opposed to just spitballing ideas. I know we've all mentioned adding in/organizing a section about Language as well as the different stages of development in a child's life. This website http://childdevelopmentinfo.com/ has some awesome information that we can jump off of and further research to keep adding onto them.

The first thing that caught my eye was a section about the different stages of child development. It was a chart, with a column giving ages ranging from birth to 5 years of age, another with Physical characteristics and language, typical emotions, and then one more for the social development at that stage. If we were to use the table itself, it's a super straight-forward way to organize the ideas.

The second page was a Language Development Chart. It once again had an ages column, this time leading from 6 months to 8 years of age, then another for the typical language development. Again, we could get a boat load of more information to elaborate on this topic.

The final interesting tidbit was called "Temperament and Your Child's Personality". It talks about how each child deals with the world in a different way and how important it is for a parent to understand their temperament so they can 'handle them', so to speak. This article itself may not seem entirely relevant right now, but I think if we relate this to the different communication styles and how they develop and shape each person's way of communication it could be super helpful.

As always, all of your ideas are awesome!

Lh12qv (talk) 03:03, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

        oh no, did I not sign my work properly again? Sorry Lh12qv I'll make sure I do that more often then...hope I didn't confuse any of you! --Rebecca L 23:19, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

        The library is honestly stacked with books on child language development and they all address communication since language is used as a form          
        of communication, but there are a couple I mentioned below that are on reserve and you can only (unfortunately) take them out for 3 hours.    
        Here are some of the sources I found that could really help us with this article! Give them a look  
        Lh12qv, love what you found! That would most definitely be helpful for us and this article! --Rebecca L 23:19, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

        Ericka Hoff “Language Development” (call no. P 118 H64 2014) is a great source. There is a simple definition of each of the components of   
        oral language development (pragmatics, phonology, lexicon, and morphology and syntax) on page 5. This book also touches on the relationship  
        between communication and language (page 19). Major theories of language development are mentioned on page 20 and the summary on page 28 m
        makes all the above a bit easier to understand so I highly recommend reading the summary before the actual text because it was a little bit  
        confusing for me at first. Pages 73 to 77 are fantastic for outlining communicative function of speech…so why language is used and for what  
        purpose. --Rebecca L 23:19, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

        Erika Hoff “Language Development” (call no. P118 H64 2009) I think is able to really clearly define why language and communication are in 
        direct correlation with one another. “Communicative function as the gateway to language form” page 99 is perfect for this article! It even 
        talks about pragmatic bootstrapping. Pages 100 to 104 outline linguistic development that aids in communication and how communication in the 
        form of language originates and develops. Highly recommend this book  --Rebecca L 23:19, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

        Erika Hoff-Ginsberg “Language Development” (call no. P118 H64 1997) focuses on speech act development and how it is used as communication.  
        She describes the perlocutionary phase (birth to 10 months), Illocutionary phase (10-12 months) and locutionary phase (12 months+) on page  
        194. On page 197 she begins to address the transition from the different phases I mentioned above into functions of communication. --Rebecca L 23:19, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

       Jean Berko Gleason “The Development of Language” (call no. P118 D483 1989) on pages 48-50 talks about communication and how language  
       development is incorporated or related to functional communication. --Rebecca L 23:19, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

       Other great books also include Fletcher/MacWhinney “The Handbook of Child Language” (call no. P118 H347 1995), Fletcher/Garman “Language  
       Acquisition” (call no. P118 L254 1986), and David Singleton “Language Acquisition: The age factor” (call no. P118 S4618 2004). --Rebecca L 23:19, 28 September 2014 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)  

I obviously have problems with this idea of wikipedia, and I don't know about you guys but I am unable to "tab" or make indents to reply to you! Anyways, Lh12qv that was a really good source! Thank you for that one, we will definitely benefit from that :) Rebecca L 23:23, 28 September 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

Nicole's Sources

Children's Speech

This book is a little bit older, however it is still a great resource. The book is written very simply so it easy to understand and extract relevant information from. It is an introduction to communication development and touches on topics such as: development of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and how children learn to communicate. I think this book will be great for gettig more information on the fundamentals of children's speech/language development.

Hopper, R., & Naremore, R. C. (1973). Children's Speech. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Language Development

This book is centred around language development. It looks at the different areas that develop, such as syntax and morphology, and communicative competence. It too is easy to understand and has great diagrams as well. There is definitely some great information in this book for the Mechanisms of Verbal Language Development Rebecca recommended.

Hoff, E. (1997). Language development. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.

Nicole 23:08, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Milestones: Normal speech and language development across the life span

This book will be good specifically for the section we are hoping to add about milestones. It talks about different milestones from birth onwards and I think the information it contains will be very beneficial to improving this section.

Oller, J. W., Oller, S. D., & Badon, L. C. (2006). Milestones : Normal speech and language development across the life span / John W. Oller, Jr., Stephen D. Oller, Linda C. Badon. San Diego, CA : Plural Pub., c2006. Nicole 23:28, 29 September 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nm13su (talk • contribs)

Lindsay's Sources

First Source

The Book 'The Social World of Children Learning to talk' covers a lot of material about family lives and how it develops the ability of a child to communicate, but I think we're more focused on the actual child, as opposed to the entire family. There are two chapters in particular that I think could be useful to us. The first covers how speech develops in the infant years, for example, first words, how sentences form, etcetera. The second chapter that I took note of walks through how conversations between the children form, so instead of just statement sentences, the children are now trying to read and respond to what another person is saying. This book is based on a scientific study and has all of the data included in the chapters so it will be an awesome resource. Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1999). Developmental Change. The Social World of Children Learning to Talk (pp. 53-72). Baltimore, Md.: P.H. Brookes Pub.. Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1999). Becoming Partners. The Social World of Children Learning to Talk (pp. 73-94). Baltimore, Md.: P.H. Brookes Pub..

Second Source

The second book I found interesting is called 'The Development of Cummunication', edited by Waterson and Snow. The one chapter focuses on a study done on infant boys and girls and compares their levels of communication with their mothers. I think this could be useful if we decide to add a section on, or include information abbout the differences in male and female child communication. The only tricky thing about this paper is that while it is authored by one person, there are at least 15 other sources cited, so it may be a pain to source. Snow, C. E., Cherry, L., Lewis, M., & Waterson, N. (1975). Differential Socialization of Girls and Boys: Implications for Sex Differences in Language Development. The Development of communication (pp. 189-197). London, Eng.: John Wiley and Sons.

Third Source

The third book, 'Child Language: An International Perspective' has a chapter that also focuses on the development of conversational communication for children. This can help us to further prove our information from my first source, as well as see a different perspective on the matter. Dale, P. S., Ingram, D., & Snow, C. E. (1981). Social Interaction and Language Acquisition. Child language, an international perspective: selected papers from the First International Congress for the Study of Child Language (pp. 195-214). Baltimore, Md.: University Park Press. Lh12qv (talk) 01:30, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Rebecca's Sources APA Citation

• Hoff, E. (2014). Language Development. Belmont, CA : Wadsworth Cengage Learning
• Hoff, E. (2009). Language Development. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning
• Hoff, E. (1997). Language Development. Pacific Grove, CA : Brooks/Cole Pub.
• Gleason, J. B. (2005). The Development of Language. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon
• Fletcher, P., & MacWhinney, B. (1995).The handbook of child language. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, Mass.,

USA : Blackwell

• Fletcher, P., & Garman, M. (1986). Language acquisition: Studies in first language development.

Cambridge; New York : Cambridge University Press

• Singleton, D., & Ryan, L. (2004). Language Acquisition: The age factor. Clevedon, UK ; Buffalo, N.Y. :

Multilingual Matters, Ltd. --Rebecca L 01:57, 30 September 2014 (UTC) Description of these sources are from my earlier post. Nicole we have one of the same sources: Hoff, E. (1997). Language Development. Pacific Grove, CA : Brooks/Cole Pub. The sources listed were great, I think we will have plenty to work with for this article! Great job :) --Rebecca L 01:57, 30 September 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

Zack's Sources :)

• One of the sources I found is called "Child language : acquisition and development" by Matthew Saxton. It main deals with how children acquire their first language and how nature vs nurture and genetics play a role in language development. It even contains chapters on the components of oral language development the initial author of the article touched on under "what develops."

Saxton, M. (2010). Child language : acquisition and development. London, UK: Sage Publication.

http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=4&sid=2e501ca1-ed31-485d-9599-1d2f2c43897f%40sessionmgr4004&hid=4102&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#db=cat00778a&AN=bu.b2077669

• Another source I found titled "The language of children" by Julia Gillen is all about how Children communicated throughout the various stages of their lives (first words, etc). It also has a great deal about acquisition again.

Gillen, J. (2003). The language of children. London; New York: Routledge.

http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?sid=617f06a6-8496-4077-baad-14d7588fbd4c%40sessionmgr4003&vid=1&hid=4102&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#db=cat00778a&AN=bu.b2436460

• Once again another perspective on language acquistion is "Language acquisition" by Jill G. de Villiers and Peter A. de Villiers. It also deals with acquisition but also touches on speech disorders which is something I don't think we should leave out of our article.

De Villiers, J.G., & De Villiers P.A. (1978). Language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?sid=617f06a6-8496-4077-baad-14d7588fbd4c%40sessionmgr4003&vid=3&hid=4102&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#db=cat00778a&AN=bu.b1019405

Most of my sources deal with languages acquisition but all 3 provide valuable information we are looking for hidden under the title Zk13be (talk) 03:27, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Professor advice about summarizing and collaborating

Rl11ge, Nm13su, Lh12qv , Zk13be you have a lot of information.

I have some suggestions for you – to help you keep your work manageable and within the scope of this assignment. You have the potential to get overwhelmed by the amount of information that you have.

See the course page for information about your tasks due October 22.

As you're summarizing relevant information from your sources, keep your focus on what you could add to the aging article about communication. You have some great suggestions of editing goals. It doesn’t seem that you came to a conclusion. You may not be able to achieve all of those goals within the scope of this assignment. That’s okay. You could always leave a suggestion of what you think would improve the article on the article talk page.

Please don’t forget my previous comment about sources for some of the comments that need citations. Google searches will turn up near matches for much of that information – both the likely original source and all of the other websites that plagiarised from Wikipedia or from that source.

You will come across irrelevant information. Don't let yourself get side tracked by it (if you want you can keep it in mind to make additional editing suggestions but keeping focused will help you keep the scope of this assignment reasonable). Thinking about the communication model we learned about the first week of class might help you focus and organize your information – but this might not be as relevant for your topic as some of the other topics.

Your summaries should be between 250 and at most 400 words for each source. Try not to make them long. If there aren’t 250 words worth of information in your source, don't blather on to fill space. I am looking for summaries I can understand and that are logical and coherent. You'll need to really focus in on the heart of the relevant findings. You should be aiming to tell your group members what the key messages are in your sources and how you think the information fits or doesn't fit with the article (it's okay if you logically determine that it wouldn't add to the article). If there is repetition within your sources, you should note that. Each summary should have a citation that is acceptable for Wikipedia and that has the information needed for a reader to verify your interpretation by finding your source. Links that only work within the university aren’t user friendly for me or your group members. If there is information that you can’t paraphrase, indicate quotes with quotation marks and page numbers.

When you've got your summaries done, hopefully there will be some themes and repetition among your summaries. Your job then is to collaboratively decide on what deserves to be suggested as an edit for the article and craft summaries of what your group found that could be incorporated in the article. That might be citations for information that is already there or new information. Discuss why your new information is relevant to the article.

I can copy the child development article over to your sandbox so you can practice editing before you make any suggestions to the editors of the article. If you want me to do that, let me know by email or by using my user name in a response to this post. As always, I'm available to guide you.

Don't forget to sign your posts. I look up your contributions by user name for grading. If you don't sign your posts, you won't get credit for them when I'm grading. LynnMcCleary (talk) 02:01, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Summary of Sources

Summaries for three unique credible sources by Rebecca L

This first source is Chapter 1 (called Introduction to the Study of Language Development) in citation: Hoff, E. (2014). Language Development. Belmont, CA : Wadsworth Cengage Learning. According to this chapter, language is defined as the systematic and conventional use of sounds, signs, or written symbols that serve the purpose of communication or self-expression. The definition neglects to acknowledge the complexity of language and how children achieves the ability to recognize, produce, and understand sounds that can and cannot be formed together, but the subcomponents of language acknowledge these requests. The subcomponents of language development include phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax, and pragmatics, which are combined to form the components of language which are sociolinguistics (knowledge that allows the socially appropriate use of language) and literacy (knowledge of reading and writing). Children use language as a means of communication, but there are two opposing views about the relationship between communication and language: 1) formalism, the view that language and the acquisition of language have nothing to do with language being used for communication; 2) functionalism, the view that both language and the process of language acquisition are shaped and supported by functions of communication, a purpose language serves. Theories of language development present views of the purpose to or existence of language development. These theories include generativist (universal grammar, being innate), social interactionist (language is a social phenomenon), usage-based (language as a set of formulas to construct utterances), connectionist (language is a system of patterns; use of experience), and behaviorist (language is built up by positive reinforcement). --Rebecca L 21:09, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

This looks like a good source to expanding that section in the original page titled "What develops?" It touches on the subcomponents of language development include phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax, and pragmatics; which is the and main content within that "what develops section." This also gives me a good idea on what to finally rename that silly title, "sociolinguistics literacy," if I'm reading your summary right the subcomponents of language development are all under sociolingustics and literacy. I'm not sure how relevant the two opposing views are but if they are signifcant in other sources too we may want to add a section on that in our articles too. Zk13be (talk) 18:53, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

I was thinking that we could instead of expanding underneath "What develops?", we should keep it very neutral and broad to act as an introduction! What do you think about this? I really like what was done with it already because it organizes the section of the article...it just states the sub-components of language and no detail, and what I also thought would be good to incorporate in this section would be an introduction to theory development (how language came to be...or influences of language, etc) and introduce the correlation between language and communication. What do you think about this? To go on about what you said Zack, I was thinking that we would go in depth about the sub-components of language development (phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax, and pragmatics) in the next section and keep this "what develops" just as a brief introduction :) (I think of it almost like an essay..."what develops" acts as the introduction paragraph, getting you ready for what follows). --Rebecca L 18:18, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Also, I agree with Zack about renaming "what develops", but I do not find "sociolinguistics literacy" to be an appropriate title. Any other suggestions? Maybe we should focus more on renaming this title keeping in mind that it is more of an "introduction" to the article section on language (that is if you all agree to keeping the first paragraph as an introductory paragraph to the concepts that will further be discussed in the section)... maybe something along the lines of "Mechanisms of Child Language Development" or "Introduction to Child Language Development" or just simply "Child Language Development"? Any suggestions, preferences, ideas? --Rebecca L 18:18, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

This information will be super professional and definitely credible. For this part, because it's rather scientific and can get a little bit confusing in regards to the terms and whatnot, I may look on the internet and see if I can find a website that puts all of this is more laymen's terms. My reasoning for this is because at the beginning of the project, before we actually started researching, we all made comments on how the article seems full of heightened language and gets mind-blowing in some sections. What would you guys think about trying to include small areas, whether it be sections within the sections, or just random notes, "dumbing the ideas down" so to speak. Could be time consuming and a little bit of a pain in the end but trial and error, right?Lh12qv (talk) 03:32, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Like the "dumbing it down" idea, we were jumping the gun and going full research on this page :p But we should keep it "broad" and so any reader could easily understand what is being portrayed. Nice connection to our original ideas Linsdey! --Rebecca L 20:28, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Chapter 3 (called Foundations of Language Development in Domain-General Skills and Communicative Experience) in: Hoff, E. (2014). Language Development. Belmont, CA : Wadsworth Cengage Learning. I believe that this information expands on what was summarized above because we are now incorporating the development of language and all the theories related to language acquisition to the acquisition of communication and communicative language. This Chapter focuses on how language or the development of language is used as a form of communication initially as non-verbally, at the beginning ages of life (infancy). It defines humans as social creatures and language being a vehicle of social interaction. Language development is viewed as a motive to communication, and the communicative function of language in-turn provides the motive for language development. Between 9-12 months of age, children view themselves as joining the communicative world. Before 9-12 months, babies interact with objects and interact with people, but they do not interact with people about objects. This developmental change is the change from primary intersubjectivity (capacity to share oneself with others) to secondary intersubjectivity (capacity to share one’s experience), which changes the infant from an unsociable to socially engaging creature. Around 12 months of age a communicative use of gesture is used. This gesture includes communicative pointing where an infant points to request something, or to point to provide information. Another gesture of communication is presented around the age of 10 and 11 months where infants start gaze-following; they look where another person is looking. This “joint attention” result in changes to their social cognitive skills between the ages of 9 and 15 months as their time is spent increasingly with others. Children’s use of non-verbal communicative gestures foretells future language development. The use of non-verbal communication in the form of gestures indicate the child’s interest in communication development and the meanings they choose to convey that are soon to be revealed in language. --Rebecca L 21:09, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

It sounds like a good way to organize our information or at least a significant portion of our articles should be like a timeline, as the purpose of our articles is language development in children and we can clearly document this in the form a time line. For example, pre-9 months blah blah blah, 10-11 months blah blah; of course with proper formatting and organization. This seems like the go to source for that type of information before two years of age. Zk13be (talk) 19:00, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Zack! I am a bit OCD so organization is key. I thought this was very important information to use when relating language to communication and we should incorporate this material in this section. We should add another "category" (or subheading) in this section solely addressed to the relationship between communication and language (since that really is the main purpose of this assignment). How do you guys feel about incorporating a section under Language about communication and titling it possibly "Language and its Relation to Communication"? Any other suggestions or ideas?--Rebecca L 18:52, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

This second source is Chapter 3 (Community Development: Foundations and Functions of Language) found in: Hoff, E. (2009). Language Development. Belmont, CA : Wadsworth Cengage Learning. As Chapter 3 of my first source touched on the non-verbal form of communicative language (due to limitations set by psychological competencies exposed to infants), this source focuses on the verbal forms of communicative language which are present among children two years plus. It was said that language acquisition and development contribute to the verbal form of communication. Children start out with a linguistic system where the words they learn are the words used for functional meanings. The instigation of speech has been termed pragmatic bootstrapping. According to this, children view words as social conventions that are used to connect the understanding of communicative intention of a speaker who voices (or speaks) a new word. Attainability of syntax or grammar is the outcome of learning to communicate verbally. This is termed pragmatic development; children have intentions of communication before they acquire adult linguistic means of expressing those intentions, and, both language and communicative functions develop in the first few years of life. In addition to acquiring language and knowing how to use language for communicative functions (pragmatics), children will acquire the knowledge on how to participate in conversation and relate to past experiences or events (discourse knowledge), and acquire the knowledge to use language in an appropriate manner to their social situation and social group (sociolinguistic knowledge). As children’s language abilities progress within the first two years, conversational skills develop. Mechanics of verbal interaction are developed such as taking turns, initiating topics, repairing miscommunication, and responding to sustain dialogue. When children interact with adults, it is asymmetrical because the adults perform structure and build conversations around the children’s contributions. In accordance to the child’s developing conversational skills, asymmetrical conversation between adult and child modulate to an equal temperament of conversation. This shift in balance of conversation suggests a narrative discourse development in communication. --Rebecca L 21:09, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

As we already discussed, we should have or touch on non-verbal communication as it is a large part of communication, and since children lack complete verbal communication at young ages it will be a great inclusion. Zk13be (talk) 22:46, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

The above source listed included many non-verbal forms of communication which relate to language so we could use that under a section in this article that pertains to communication and language. This source is solely based on the verbal form of communication for the section of the article that we will add in :). So yes Zack, non-verbal is very important and most definitely will be included in the language and communication section of this article. In that particular section, we should maybe first address the non-verbal forms of communication first (seeing as children use non-verbal communication before verbal communication) and follow it with the verbal forms of communication demonstrated through language. How do you all feel about this? Any suggestions? --Rebecca L 19:00, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

This third and last source I will summarize is Chapter 1 (From communicative competence to communicative language and pedagogy) found in: Richards. J. C., $ Schmidt, W. R. (Eds.). (1986). Language and Communication. USA: Longman Group Limited. If we incorporate communication with child language development as Lynn wants of us for the purpose of this Wikipedia Assignment, we should probably introduce communication; how it is achieved and what it is. This book illustrates communication in simplistic terms which are directly correlated to the components of language acquisition (found in my child language development sources) and its contributions to communication. Also, an understanding of communication will most definitely help us in retrieving information on child language development that will pertain to communication and how it is relevant or applicable! This book states that communication is understood as the exchange and negotiation of information between two or more individuals through verbal and nonverbal symbols, oral and written or visual modes, and the production and comprehension processes of communication. Communicative language involves communicative competence which is defined as the knowledge and skill required for communication. There are four components to communicative competence that allow for a theoretical understanding of communication and practical application to communicative language, which are: grammatical competence (vocabulary knowledge, rules of word sentence formation, etc), sociolinguistic competence (appropriateness of meanings and grammatical forms in different social contexts), discourse competence (knowledge required to combine forms and meanings), and strategic competence (knowledge of verbal and nonverbal communication strategies). Communicative competence is an essential part of actual communication. Actual communication is involved in communicative language for it is the use of knowledge (communicative competence) and skills in real acts of communication/interaction under limiting psychological and environmental conditions. --Rebecca L 21:09, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

I find that these sources were valid and will definitely help us in the editing process. They define language and are able to summarize language development in children (specifically) and in an unbiased manner. These sources provide great reference and referral to communication and how language formation in children lead to forms of communication. The last source I find ties it all together because it touches base on both language acquisition and components mentioned in previous sources, and connects it to communication or how it is a form of communication. I am looking forward to reading your summaries so that we can amalgamate our sources and edit this article :) --Rebecca L 21:09, 11 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

Great summary! These sources will definitely add to the article and help support some of the existing information. My summaries are on their way shortly, its been a bit crazy with midterms! As we had discussed , since we both had the Hoff book I'll try and find another source. However, I noticed you only used chapter 1 and 3. Were those the only chapters with relevant information to the wikipedia article or do you think I should look at some of the other chapters and see if anything relates? Nicole 14:30, 18 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nm13su (talk • contribs)

When writing the article and contributing to each other, we are not limited to just our compiled 12 sources. We can most definitely branch off and Nicole if you find anything you want to add from one of my sources by all means do so! It would most definitely enhance the quality of the article I am sure of that :) The only reason why I didn't branch off any further than the chosen chapters, was because that is what I found was relevant for me, but I could have easily missed something important! --Rebecca L 19:07, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

Nicole's Summary of Sources

I changed some of my sources from my original posting. After looking more in depth at the content of the books, some of them did not contain the type of information needed for this project. I believe all the sources I have chosen now are very reliable and do not conflict with any of your guys sources. If you have any issues with them though, let me know!

My first source is Hopper, R., & Naremore, R. C. (1973). Children's Speech. New York, NY: Harper & Row. I feel like the information from these two chapters could be used to add more content to the information in the What Develops section of our main article

Chapter 3(Development of the Sound System) Sounds are the building blocks of language and children must learn about sounds before they are able to make words. The sounds that are used to make words are called phonemes. Children acquire a phoneme system, or sound system, through learning contrasts in sounds, such as the contrast between consonants and vowels. By age two, most children are able to articulate clearly all the sounds of their language. A child must learn which sounds to use and how to put them together in order to fully learn the sound system. As children learn to talk, they often distort the sounds of words because some sounds are harder for them to articulate.

I am quite undecided about incorporating sounds and children's acquisition of sound comprehension into the language development section of this article...I think that will add on too much detail to what we should be focusing on. Maybe we could shyly touch base on how sounds can be contributed to the language development in children, but not go into detail about it. That is my view anyways...I'm curious to know why you chose to incorporate it?:) Maybe I'm missing the big picture here...any other suggestions from Zack or Lyndsey?--Rebecca L 19:31, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

From my understanding the sound system is the very beginning of the language. Language is based on a series of sounds and babies first start hearing/repeating/understanding in terms of sounds. I am not however overly attached to this information so I don't mind if we choose to include it or not. I chose to include information on it because the what develops section touched on it in the list of what develops. if it works great if not no worriesNicole 02:21, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Maybe we shouldn't pay attention to going into great details like this about sound then :) Unless Zack or Lindsey says otherwise? --Rebecca L 20:33, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Chapter 4(Development of Semantics) Children’s development of language also includes semantics or attaching meaning to words. The acquirement of meanings for words happens in three stages. First, each word means an entire sentence. For example, a young child may say “mama” and mean “Here is Mama,” “Where is Mama?” or “I see Mama.” In the second stage, words have meaning but do not have complete definitions. This stage occurs around age two or three. Third, around age seven or eight, words have adult-like definitions and their meanings are more complete.

Is there more in-depth information in this book? Because I think we should create a new subheading for like ages and what develops throughout the ages of language development, and this information you collected would be great to incorporate in a time-line like fashion in our new subheading! What do you think? This new subheading could be titled "Milestones of Language Development"...or do you guys have any other suggestions? --Rebecca L 19:40, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

My second source is Wood, B. S. (1976). Children and communication: verbal and nonverbal language development. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. The information from chapter 7 will as well add to the what develops section in discussing the development of syntax. I think chapter 9's information will fit in with the nonverbal communication we were discussing about adding in.

Chapter 7(The Syntax of Children's Communication) A child learns the syntax of his or her language when he or she is able to join words together into sentences and understand multiple-word sentences said by other people. There appear to be six major stages in which a child’s acquisition of syntax develops. First, is the use of sentence-like words in which the child communicates using one word with additional vocal and bodily cues. This stage usually occurs between 12 and 18 months of age. Second, between 18 months to two years, there is the modification stage where children communicate relationships by modifying a topic word. The third stage, between two and three years old, involves the child using complete subject-predicate structures to communicate relationships. Fourth, children make changes on basic sentence structure that enables them to communicate more complex relationships. This stage occurs between the ages of two and a half years to four years. The fifth stage of categorization involves children aged three and a half to seven years refining their sentences with more purposeful word choice that reflects their complex system of categorizing word types. Finally, children use structures of language that involve more complicate syntactic relationships between the ages of five years old to ten years old.

This would be great information to add into the "Milestones of Language Development" (or whatever we decide to title it) subheading of this article under the language section! Unless you guys have other suggestions? I think this is suitable because it gives a time-line of what to expect at different age groups and their acquisition levels...after mentioning all of this development, I think it would lead beautifully into the next subheading of this section of the article that will touch base on the relationship between language and communication! What do you guys think? --Rebecca L 19:44, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

Chapter 9(The Body Language of Children) A young child’s gestures can often tell us more about what they are really trying to say with their words. Jean Piaget uses the term “acted conversations” to explain the child’s style of communication that rely more heavily on gestures and body movements then words. Younger children depend on gestures for a direct statement of their message. As they begin to acquire more language, body movements take on a different role and begin to complement the verbal message. These nonverbal bodily movements allow children to express their emotions before they can express them verbally. The child’s nonverbal communication of how they’re feeling is seen in babies 0 to 3 months who use wild, jerky movements of the body to show excitement or distress. This develops to more rhythmic movements of the entire body at 3 to 5 months to demonstrate the child’s anger or delight. At 5 to 14 months children will use bodily movements such as making faces, turning their head or poking to portray the affection, fear or elation they may feel. By 14 to 24 months the child will show feelings of affection for others, anger, or jealousy through more purposeful contact movements such as hitting or caressing. By two years of age, children are capable of nonverbally communicating nearly a dozen different emotions. Nicole 14:50, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

This is very similar to the source I found about non-verbal communicative gestures! Excellent, this verifies that our sources are reliable because they are replicated :) Most definitely should add this into the communication subheading (possibly titled "Language and its Relation to Communication""?) that we are going to add under the language section of this article! Great findings and great job with your concise summary of your source :) --Rebecca L 20:03, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

My third source is Woolfolk, A., & Perry, N. E. (2012). Child and adolescent development. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Young children begin learning about language long before they begin to talk. Children between the ages of 2 and 3 can use about 450 words, this is know as their expressive vocabulary. However their receptive vocabulary, how many words they understand, is much larger than that. By age 6, children’s expressive vocabularies will grow to about 2,600 words and a receptive vocabulary of over 20,000 words. There is a great table on page 202 of this book called “Milestones in Language in the First 6 Years and Ways to Encourage Development” that could be very helpful for our page if we wish to use it. By some estimates, it’s said children learn 10 words a day between the ages of 1 and 18. Children are able to learn words quickly through a process called fast-mapping in which the child hears a word once and quickly locate the meaning on their mental map of language based on what they already know. Another process children use in learning words is know as mutual exclusivity which is based on the assumption that each object in the world belongs in just one category so it has just one category label. Pragmatics involves the appropriate use of language to communicate in social situations, such as entering a conversation or telling a joke. Children show their understanding of pragmatics when they do things like talk to a young child in simpler sentences. By the age of 5 or 6 years old, the majority of children have mastered the basics of their native language. A child’s vocabulary is able to grow by using context clues and word knowledge to figure out what a new, unfamiliar word might mean. With their increased cognitive development, older children are able to not only learn and remember more words but also organize the words they know into categories.

This is a fabulous source honestly cannot even get over it (I may seem like I'm over-exaggerating but trust me I'm not!)! Wow, this is absolutely perfect to incorporate into the "Milestones of Language Development" section of our article! Remember that a good Wikipedia article criteria includes being "broad in its coverage" so we don't even have to focus on disgusting minuscule details, but what you summarized is absolutely perfect! Really looking forward to your contributions :) Also, we could include some of the verbal development noted and incorporate it into the (possibly titled) "Language and its Relation to Communication" subheading of this section! Especially the part: "Pragmatics involves the appropriate use of language to communicate in social situations, such as entering a conversation or telling a joke". This is exciting, thank you for this contribution Nicole! --Rebecca L 20:12, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

This source has lots of information about language and communication development of the child from infancy to adolescent. I feel like there is a variety of content that could benefit our page Nicole 20:25, 21 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nm13su (talk • contribs)

Zack's summaries of sources

Chapter 1 from Saxton

Saxton, M. (2010). Child language : acquisition and development. London, UK: Sage Publication.

This chapter contains lots of information that Rebecca already mentioned in her summaries: phonology (the sound system), vocabulary, morphology (parts of words, especially those parts used for grammar), and syntax. It contain a very nice table of the developmental milestones throughout as a child ages, a topic we discussed highly, on page 17. It talks about more toddler aged language development stating that the average 4 year old assumes that other people share their own perspectived on the world, they believe that other people see the same things they see from the same vantage point. Meaning that a child's cognitive representation of the world is different from an adults. But from a linguistic perspective four-year olds are close to that of an adults, the difference being degree rather than kind of communication. For example differences in vocabulary but not grammar. Meaning that children are linguistically fast but cognitively slow.

I think that you've found very detailed information during a specific milestone in development! It's great to have found the components of language development (phonology, morphology and syntax, etc) and we can definitely benefit from this information and have it in the appropriate subheading section of this article section :) I think that there is a little bit too much detail included in this summary that would possibly deter our focus of the article...maybe we should refrain from going into too much detail about "4 year olds", and just slightly touch base on the prominent findings during this milestone of development! What do you all think? I just think we shouldn't focus on specific age groups in particular... there is a lot to cover in child language development and due to the good article criteria "broad in its coverage", we should probably save us the headache and refrain from going into too much detail :) --Rebecca L 20:24, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

You're absolutely right I focused too much on one specific example I found in the source, but I would be happy to contribute this sources information about phonology, etc, as it was very detailed.

Chapter 2 from Saxton The only relevant information in this chapter is it description of what is language. Discussing what it means to talk, the design of language and language acquisition, using animals as a medium (slightly unrelatable). He contemplates what is the ability to talk, is it simply the ability to produce human sounds or the ability to hold a conversation. He defines language through four features, creativity, semanticity, arbitrariness, and displacement. Children demonstrate linguistic creativity through novel utterances and grammatical errors.

If this source defines language then that's great we could definitely include that in our introduction kind of guideline paragraph/subheading in this section! --Rebecca L 21:19, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

It was less of a definition of language and more of the psychological aspect of language unfortunately, if you go to psyc lectures the author was trying to operationally define language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zk13be (talk • contribs) 04:15, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

The language of children by Gillen

Gillen, J. (2003). The language of children. London; New York: Routledge.

She states that imitation is inadequate as a complete explanation for how children learn to talk. Children’s communicative experiences are extremely varied in terms of languages and tools to which they have access. Children’s communicative practices are also varied, influenced by their culture and society. The assumption that children learning language is the journey from knowing nothing to adult understanding is incomplete as even adults vary in linguistic scope and practice. Linguistic capabilities of young children is very limited in multiple aspects. It also looks at language development in a more casual environment, actively and purposefully learning communication skills from play making. Close analysis of texts produced by young children can demonstrate signification knowledge of society's systems and the complex problems affecting thoes within the system. When tasked with something children are interested in they reveal profound creativity, enforcing ideas from Saxton's work. Many human activities can be referred to as 'play,' in children much of it involves language. Play tends to change throughout childhood but some forms continue to adulthood. Children use play to as an activity to extend their language capabilities (vocabulary) and stimulates the development of discourse features and conventions through the use of a different channel of communication. Linguistic play can involve variations from everyday norms in any or all of the syntactical, semantic and phonological aspects to humorous effect. Chidlren's first words, essentially first forms of verbal communication, are difficult to distinguish due to the many other vocalizations they make. Also, children have a grasp of the meaning of many words before they can pronounce and use them. Early words serve a variety of functions and aren't simply labels for objects or people (mama). Zk13be (talk) 02:03, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

This seems like there would be good information to include from this source, but in my opinion, we need to really narrow down what to focus on and elaborate from this particular source. Some of the things mentioned like: "Children's first words, essentially first forms of verbal communication, are difficult to distinguish due to the many other vocalizations they make. Also, children have a grasp of the meaning of many words before they can pronounce and use them. Early words serve a variety of functions and aren't simply labels for objects or people (mama)" would be good to include in our "Milestones of Language Development" section (if we agree to name it that) or maybe touch base a little bit in the "Language and its Relation to Communication" section? What does everyone think about that? --Rebecca L 21:27, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

Discussion

We've came to a consensus that we are changing the tile "What Develops". How do you guys feel about changing it to ==="Mechanisms of Child Language Development"===? Any other suggestions? I think that it would be beneficial to state what each subheading will discuss. We should mention the components of language development (phonology, syntax, etc), a brief introduction to the timeline of language development, and introduce the concept of the relationship between communication and language. This "subheading" (mechanisms of child language development) is more of like an introduction paragraph to what will subsequently be discussed. What do you guys think about this? Should we include more, less, do you agree with this idea/tactic? --Rebecca L 21:54, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

Isn't the title of Mechanisms of Child Language Development quite similar to the Mechanisms of Language development section that follows speed and pattern of develop? The Mechanisms of Language Development section is already relatively well written and cited so I think we should keep it. Could we simply delete the title and have it come under the heading of Language if that works with the information that goes there? That might look messy though. We could title it Language Development or something alongs those lines as it is introducing the concept and then the speed and mechanism paragraphs follow as a more indepth look? I agree that this should be an intro, and touch on syntax, pragmatics etc. Nicole 01:55, 23 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nm13su (talk • contribs)

"Mechanisms of Language Development" talks about theories and methods of language development, not the actual milestones or ages, etc. I was thinking we rename this "Mechanisms of Language Development" to something like "Origins of Language Development" or "Theories of Language Development" and go a little bit more in depth about theories that were used to develop the acquisition of language. How do you guys feel about this? And with that in mind, how does keeping the title "Mechanisms of Child Language Development" sound if we change the other title to something more appropriate that relates to the context it explains??--Rebecca L 20:41, 25 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

But I do agree with leaving the information from this section! Just need sources to back it up! I just think it'd be most appropriate to rename that section since it only talks about theories or methods/influences, etc. I could most definitely try and tackle that with help of course:p--Rebecca L 20:45, 25 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

We could add a subheading titled ==="Components of Child Language Development"===? This would include the components such as phonology, morphology, etc. We could further discuss these since the sources myself, Zack, and Nicole found went into detail about these components, and they are crucial to child language development so I believe they deserve their own heading and explanation. What do you guys think about this addition? Also, I think we could incorporate some theorists of language development because these theories are what lead to the compilation of these components and how language is studied or analysed. I believe this to be a good idea to incorporate the theories under this subheading because they relate to the components of language AND this would be a great transition into the next subheading :) How do you guys feel about this? My Erika Hoff book had a great summary of these theories so I could most definitely tackle these if you guys wish :) Zack seems to have a great understanding of the components of language development (like phonology, syntax, etc)! --Rebecca L 22:03, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Love love love this idea! Its exactly what the articles needs. I think this should be our "big edition" to the wiki page so to speak. From reading over our summaries, we all found a lot of information to contribute to a section like this. I think if you and Zach take this over, I could head for of the milestones section? But I'm still happy to contribute any information from my resources obviously Nicole 01:59, 23 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nm13su (talk • contribs)

That's a great idea Nicole! If you plan on taking on the milestone section all by yourself, I honestly did find some good information about that in my sources. Let me know if you need them Zk13be (talk) 04:04, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Sure I wouldn't mind working on the components of language development (phonology, etc). We're going to have to incorporate those eventually somehow. Zk13be (talk) 04:10, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

The subheading "speed and pattern development" should most definitely be changed and we have all decided on that previously. How do you feel about changing it to "Milestones of Child Language Development"? Under this subheading we should discuss of course the milestones of language development, so go into explanation about what happens throughout the course of an infant through to child's life related to language acquisition. Nicole you found excellent sources for this section... especially your third source! How does everyone feel about this subheading and context idea? --Rebecca L 22:10, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

an example would be at this age baby does this...at this age children can say this many words...at this age, so on and so forth --Rebecca L 22:13, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

Whoops! Should have read this before responding to the last one. I would be more than happy to do this and agree with the title change. This will be a large undertaking as I want to find sources for a lot of the information that is there now in addition to adding my own. However, I am up for the challenge! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nm13su (talk • contribs) 02:00, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Yeah in my sources I have lots of very relevant information about this sort of thing, let me know if you could use it. Its the chapter 1 from saxton source. Zk13be (talk) 04:10, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Lastly, we must include a subheading involving communication (hence the whole purpose of this assignment). How do you guys feel about titling this section "Language and its Relation to Communication"? I think here we should define communication (now that we're all experts in this field from this course we will have no problem doing so :p), and relate it to language, or how language is a form of communication, etc. A couple of my sources went into detail and were great in its coverage about communication and language, etc so I wouldn't mind tackling this section with help of course :) How do you guys feel about this suggestion about the communication portion of our article? --Rebecca L 22:21, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

Sure sounds good to me! I haven't come across much that would fit in this section, but I still think it would be a good section to add if you've been able to find info. Nicole 02:04, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

I have found little bit about this sort of thing, as we begin editing I'll show you what I have, nothing too detailed about it though. Its still something very important to include in our article. Zk13be (talk) 04:10, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Lindsay's Summary

Source One

Chapter 4 in my first source focuses on “normal” vocabulary growth in children. As infants, it’s expected that a baby will babble or cry to communicate wants and needs, this develops into children ‘speaking’ their first words, commonly reoccurring syllables and eventually repetitive words such as toys they play with or phrases their guardians use such as “no”, “uh-oh” or “see”. Around this age, children commonly mispronounce words, for example, pronouncing “gih” instead of “give”, and don’t know enough to repeat the words upon being asked. This chapter also comments about the idea of interpretation of language coming from guardians of the children at this age. For example, if a child says “bah” when they’re in a toy room with their guardian, it is likely to be interpreted as “ball” because the toy in is sight. However, if you were to listen to the same ‘word’ on a recorded tape without knowing the context, one might not be able to figure out what the child was trying to say. Around 18 months, children are reported being able to construct sentences but the words themselves are only distinguishable on slowed-down tape recorders. Between 20 and 28 months children were moving from understanding the difference between high and low, hot and cold, then to changing “no” to “wait a minute”, “not now” and “why”. Eventually, they are able to add pronouns to words and use them all together in short sentences. Fast forward to age 3, the average child has an 821 word dictionary, made up mostly of what their guardians say regularly. The 5th chapter in the same book does a very similar breakdown, this time talking about the development of a child’s responses, for example listening to what their friend says, deciding how this person feels, and then how they should respond to it. Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1999). Developmental Change. The Social World of Children Learning to Talk (pp. 53-72). Baltimore, Md.: P.H. Brookes Pub.. Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1999). Becoming Partners. The Social World of Children Learning to Talk (pp. 73-94). Baltimore, Md.: P.H. Brookes Pub..

Source Two

My second book deals with some of the information that Rebecca included in her first source, about phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax, and pragmatics, however my source includes additional information about studies done on these areas of communication that differ between male and female children. ‘The Development of Communication’, edited by Watson and Snow include conversations between parents and their children at different stages. Similarly to my first source, they give examples of conversations at multiple milestones of development. I’m not sure how much we want to go into detail differentiating between the genders but it could be beneficial to include a couple of pieces of information. The difficulty with this source is that it is less of a discussion piece, and more of a proof. So it may not be a big part of the actual formulation of an article, but can definitely be used to make our discussions sound more credible. Snow, C. E., Cherry, L., Lewis, M., & Waterson, N. (1975). Differential Socialization of Girls and Boys: Implications for Sex Differences in Language Development. The Development of communication (pp. 189-197). London, Eng.: John Wiley and Sons

Source Three

My final source, “Child Language- An International Perspective”, can be useful if/when we discuss the idea of social interaction. The book claims that “the general hypothesis [is that] access to social interaction is a prerequisite to normal language acquisition” (Snow, 195). It goes on to explain how the principle of conversation includes two or more people focusing on one topic. All questions in a conversation should be answered, comments should be understood or acknowledged and any form of direction should, in theory, be followed. In the case of young, undeveloped children, these conversations are expected to be basic or redundant. The role of a guardian during this stage is to convey that conversation is meant to have a purpose, such as mentioned previously, as well as beginning to recognize the other speaker’s emotions. In a separate section, they compare the communication skills of an infant with those of a child around 1 year of age. As an infant, one does not have the means to affect their environment in any way enough to complete a task, so they are dependent on their caregiver to mimic cause and effect relationships for them. For example, smelling a diaper and understanding when it needs to be changed. For an older child, they can grasp that they can build a tower and knock it down, kick a ball so it will move or rip pages out of a book so they’re no longer there. This seemingly subtle development is the basis of exponential communication growth we see as children get older.

Dale, P. S., Ingram, D., & Snow, C. E. (1981). Social Interaction and Language Acquisition. 	Child language, an international perspective: selected papers from the First International 	Congress for the Study of Child Language (pp. 195-214). Baltimore, Md.: University Park 	Press

Lh12qv (talk) 03:27, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

I just want to address my concerns. This group discussion of our Wikipedia assignment is not where it should be. I am not blaming anyone, and I do realize that we have other priorities, but we should make more of an effort to post earlier then the day before the Wikipedia checkpoints are due and more-so, the day it is due. We had two and a half weeks to work on the summaries for this checkpoint and I get that we had 1 midterm yesterday, 2 today, and 1 tomorrow (and get they do take priority), but this checkpoint is worth 30% of this assignment...about 6% of our final grade! Part of the 30% of this checkpoint includes group discussions, and quite honestly, there have been little to no discussion. This lack of discussion will not only hinder our marks, but will hinder our performance and the quality of this article. We have potential to write a really good article, but we need to put more of an effort in or else we will not succeed to the best of our abilities. Also, it isn’t fair that I have to scramble around the day before the assignment is due and the day it’s due just to put everything else that was already planned aside just to formulate a time-consuming discussion when I’ve had this summary done for two weeks now. I should have probably voiced my concerns earlier, and I really do not mean to offend anyone, but let’s put more of an effort into this assignment or else we will not (essentially) obtain the best marks that we could achieve. Thank you. --Rebecca L 22:25, 22 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

I completely understand where you are coming from with this. If you're are feeling this way in the future though, please say something sooner. I agree that our group discussion has been lacking, but you have done an amazing job of facilitating some great discussion. In terms of moving forward as a group, I think our communication needs to step up a bit. Either posting here in our sandbox or over facebook. Our next objective is the big one, editting the article in sandbox to its final product then posting it in the wiki group. In order for this to happen we need to be talking to each other and sharing ideas. Now that this crazy week of midterms is over, hopefully we can all focus more attention to this project. I think this will involve clearly designating tasks on what individuals should complete and by what time. I also think we should be careful we don't bite off more than we can chew. We have a lot of great ideas for where we want this article to go, but they may not be realistic in terms of this assignment. This is something we should think about and discuss. I am more than happy to take on the milestones section as my major task. And will begin workshopping it if everyone is ok with that. Nicole 02:16, 23 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nm13su (talk • contribs)

You guys are so understanding! Thank you :) And Nicole i completely agree with you and that awesome saying about biting more than you can chew, love it! But Go for it :) We will all end up editing eachothers work and adding or removing things anyways, so by all means Nicole tackle that section :) I know for sure I'll have a lot of questions come adding links or references I am so incapable of this! Also, anyone think to tackle the insertion of an image?? --Rebecca L 20:51, 25 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

Nm13su Rl11ge Zk13be Okay so reading over the whole thing and instead of responding to each section I figured I'd bring it up down here. I think it would be really beneficial if we could meet in person, maybe print off each of our sections of information and research separately, and try to come up with the 'big picture' of what we want to accomplish with this article. I may be the only one, but I feel like trying to read over everyone's information here gets me all jumbled up on what we're doing. Maybe we could lay out solid headings or sections we want to add or improve on, and then from there delegate who's sources will go to proving what, see if we need to bring in more sources on specific ideas as opposed to general 'communication', and then run from there? I think it would made the next section ten times easier. Lh12qv (talk) 03:53, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Great idea! I was just about to suggest it, I think that's just what we need to get our project rolling, plus its difficult to have personal conversations on wikipedia. Establishing a facebook group or exchanging numbers would be a good way to plan this out, as well as to have an easy way to communicate our individual expectations and deadlines. Zk13be (talk) 03:59, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

That's a great idea! I get worked up too...it's so hard following along on this talk page and responding after reading so much. Maybe starting a facebook group would be best just to quickly arrange meeting dates, etc? --Rebecca L 20:25, 25 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

Editing Discussion

Any discussion about what we're changing on the user page to the article, or questions about what you should change can go here! Nicole 20:12, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

I've been working on the Milestones in Language Development. I've found citations for info that needed it and I'm working on incorporating my own information with the information that is there. I'm struggling on making it work under the knew heading as a lot of information seems like it would fit better in a different section. I've bolded anything I think really doesn't fit but could be used elsewhere. Nicole 20:15, 2 November 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nm13su (talk • contribs)

Thoughts on rearranging the Milestones of Lanuage Development to be in chronological order? Nicole 20:21, 2 November 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nm13su (talk • contribs)

I like the order! Very organized Nicole. But why are some things bolded? The bolded sentences are good, I don't understand what you'd like us to consider with them :p --Rebecca L 01:16, 3 November 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

Also, for components of child language development I like what was done! We were originally going to go into depth about phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax, and pragmatics, but I like what was done :) Is there anyway we could incorporate our original ideas into that section? Considering phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax, and pragmatics are quite important to language development? --Rebecca L 01:24, 3 November 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

So I took the paragraph one of you added to "Language and its Relation to Communication" and incorporated it into the section as opposed to having it left alone at the end of that section! By the way, it was GREAT! So thanks for addition! Give that section a read to see how i wove it into the article and let me know what you think! --Rebecca L 01:37, 3 November 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

I went onto the actual article page and I added in the changes (title changes of our section) as well as adding my new material to the article! Go on our article and add your contributions :) Then we can edit on the real page there. Also, after every contribution to the real wikipedia article page, I went on the talk page and edited in the talk page of the article BRIEFLY explaining why i revised what i did and why i added things or changed things, etc. Is this what we were supposed to do?? --Rebecca L 03:37, 3 November 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

THIS IS SO CONFUSING! All i did was follow the instructions on the "moving out of your sandbox" and now our sandbox is an article and it's redirecting us to so many pages and such! I do not know why this happened...help? --Rebecca L 04:00, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Let's Start Editing :)

Hey guys, so I started editing the article! I changed the titles and worked on the Mechanisms of language development, theories of language development, and Language and its relation to communication. I uploaded an image as well! Tell me what you think and let's start editing :)--Rebecca L 16:09, 27 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

Hey guys!! So I've added my information into the Milestones of Language development, including my chart. Also, I moved a couple of the paragraphs around, just to put them in more of a chronological order. Let me know if there are any concerns! Lh12qv (talk) 04:54, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Also added into the language and its relation to communication section Lh12qv (talk) 05:21, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Language

Main article: Language development

Mechanisms of child language development

Language serves the purpose of communication to express oneself though a systematic and traditional use of sounds, signs, or written symbols. There are four subcomponents in which the child must attain in order to acquire language competence. They include phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax, and pragmatics. These subcomponents of language development are combined to form the components of language, which are sociolinguistics and literacy. Currently, there is no single accepted theory of language acquisition but various explanations of language development have been accumulated. --Rebecca L 16:14, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

File:Children-young.jpg

children in communication with one another

--Rebecca L 16:16, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Components of child language development

Phonology

Phonology is concerned with the sounds of language. It is the function, behavior, and organization of sounds as linguistic items. Phonology considers what the sounds of language are and what are the rules for combining sounds. Certain sound combinations are allowed but other combinations are impossible. Phonology also encompasses variations in pronunciation. It will explain patterns in the pronunciation of words.

Phonetics is a closely related discipline of phonology. Phonetics provides us a description of how speech sounds in any language are produced by various organs of the body (articulation) and a description of the sound waves (acoustics). It is the concrete measurable physical properties of cognitive speech sounds-physical sound. Consonants are produced by impeding a stream of air from the lings as it passes through the throat, setting up waves of disturbance in the air that are heard as sounds. Vowels are produced by air expelled from the lungs flowing through the vocal cords and then passing freely through the mouth. If the vocal cords are stretched with the right tension they vibrate as air passes through them, causing sound waves. These sound waves can be manipulative by the height and location of the tongue. Particular variations of this sound are grouped into phonemes, or speech units. They are the categories of sound that function to signal differences in the words in language. Phonemes are words that differ by only one sound but have different meanings, such as pin and bin. Phonological acquisition in children can be measured by accuracy and frequency of production of various vowels and consonants, the acquisition of phonemic contrasts and distinctive features, or by viewing development in regular stages in their own speech sound systems and to characterize systematic strategies they adopt.

Semantics

The main ideas of semantics are the propositional function, the operation definition, the predictive value as criterion of truth and the theory of types. It is the branch of linguistics used to derive meaning or to signify.

Lexicon

The lexicon can be viewed as a very large and complex dictionary of words, enabling language speakers to use those words in speech production and comprehension. Lexicon is the inventory of a language's morphemes. Morphemes are a minimal meaning-bearing element or a building block of something in language that makes sense. For example, in the word cats, the component cat makes sense as does at, but at does not mean the same thing as cat. While ca, do not mean anything. Morphemes are composed of lexical formatives, words like cat; grammatical formatives, things like suffixes -s; and derivational affixes, thinks like un- or -ness It is the acquisition of the meanings of words for objects, actions, etc.

Morphology

Morphology is the study of form or forms. It is the mental system involved in word formation or to the branch of linguistics that deals with words, their internal structure and how they are formed. Morphemes are the smallest linguistic pieces with grammatical function.

Pragmatics

Pragmatics is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms and the users of those forms. The use of utterance to serve different functions. The ability to communicate one's feelings and desires and to pass on information the world to others. Zk13be (talk) 07:55, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Milestones of child language development

Receptive language, the understanding of others' speech, has a gradual development beginning at about 6 months. However, expressive language, the production of words, moves rapidly after its beginning at about a year of age, with a "vocabulary explosion" of rapid word acquisition occurring in the middle of the second year. This vocabulary expansion is closely linked to the ability to repeat spoken words and enables the rapid acquisition of skill in their pronunciation. Grammatical rules and word combinations appear at about age two. Mastery of vocabulary and grammar continue gradually through the preschool and school years. Adolescents still have smaller vocabularies than adults and experience more difficulty with constructions like the passive voice.

Babies from one month old can produce "ooh" sounds which appear to grow out of pleasurable interactions with caregivers in a mutual "dialogue". According to Stern, this process is communication of affect between adult and infant in a mutual, rhythmic interaction. The atonement and "gaze-coupling" in which infant and adult take different roles is thought to anticipate the give-and-take of later dialogue.

From about 6 to 9 months babies produce more vowels, some consonants and echolalia, or the frequent repetition of sounds like "dadadada" which appear to have some phonetic characteristics of later speech. It is thought that a crucial part of the development of speech is the time caregivers spend "guessing" what their infants are trying to communicate thus integrating the child into their social world. When infants are trying to learn words from others they tend to create protowords, which is a "unique string of phonemes that serve word-like functions. The attribution of intentionality to the infant's utterances has been called "shared memory" and forms a complex series of actions, intentions and actions in response in an improvised way.

It has been argued that children's phonological systems develop in ways that are parallel to adult languages, even if they are using unrecognizable "words". First words have the function of naming or labeling but also condense meaning as in "milk" meaning "I want milk". Vocabulary typically grows from about 20 words at 18 months to around 200 words at 21 months. From around 18 months the child starts to combine words into two word sentences. Typically the adult expands it to clarify meaning. By 24–27 months the child is producing three or four word sentences using a logical, if not strictly correct, syntax. The theory is that children apply a basic set of rules such as adding 's' for plurals or inventing simpler words out of words too complicated to repeat like "choskit" for chocolate biscuit. Following this there is a rapid appearance of grammatical rules and ordering of sentences. There is often an interest in rhyme, and imaginative play frequently includes conversations. Children's recorded monologues give insight into the development of the process of organizing information into meaningful units.

By three years the child is beginning to use complex sentences, including relative clauses, although still perfecting various linguistic systems. By five years of age the child's use of language is very similar to that of an adult. From the age of about three children can indicate fantasy or make-believe linguistically, produce coherent personal stories and fictional narrative with beginnings and endings. It is argued that children devise narrative as a way of understanding their own experience and as a medium for communicating their meaning to others. The ability to engage in extended discourse emerges over time from regular conversation with adults and peers. For this the child needs to learn to combine his perspective with that of others and with outside events and learn to use linguistic indicators to show he is doing this. They also learn to adjust their language depending on to whom they are speaking. Typically by the age of about 9 a child can recount other narratives in addition to their own experiences, from the perspectives of the author, the characters in the story and their own views.

Theories of Language Development

Although the role of adult discourse is important in facilitating the child's learning, there is considerable disagreement among theorists about the extent to which children's early meanings and expressive words arise. Findings about the initial mapping of new words, the ability to decontextualize words, and refine meaning of words are diverse. One hypothesis is known as the syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis which refers to the child's ability to infer meaning from cues, using grammatical information from the structure of sentences. Another is the multi-route model in which it is argued that context-bound words and referential words follow different routes; the first being mapped onto event representations and the latter onto mental representations. In this model, parental input has a critical role but the children ultimately rely on cognitive processing to establish subsequent use of words. However, naturalistic research on language development has indicated that preschoolers' vocabularies are strongly associated with the number of words addressed to them by adults. --Rebecca L 16:18, 27 October 2014 (UTC) There is no single accepted theory of language acquisition. Instead, there are current theories that help to explain theories of language, theories of cognition, and theories of development. They include the generativist theory, social interactionist theory, usage-based theory (Tomasello), connectionist theory, and behaviorist theory ((Skinner). Generativist theories refer to Universal Grammar being innate where language experience activates innate knowledge. Social interactionist theories define language as a social phenomenon. This theory states that children acquire language because they want to communicate with others; this theory is heavily based on social-cognitive abilities that drive the language acquisition process. Usage-based theories define language as a set of formulas that emerge from the child’s learning abilities in correspondence with its social cognitive interpretation and understanding of the speakers’ intended meanings. Connectionist theories is a pattern-learning procedure and defines language as a system composed of smaller subsystems or patterns of sound or meaning. Behaviorist theories define language as the establishment of positive reinforcement, but is now regarded a theory of historical interest. --Rebecca L 16:17, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Language and its relation to communication

Communication can be defined as the exchange and negotiation of information between two or more individuals through verbal and nonverbal symbols, oral and written (or visual) modes, and the production and comprehension processes of communication. Communicative language is nonverbal and/or verbal, and to achieve communication competence, four components must be met. These four components of communication competence include: grammatical competence (vocabulary knowledge, rules of word sentence formation, etc), sociolinguistic competence (appropriateness of meanings and grammatical forms in different social contexts), discourse competence (knowledge required to combine forms and meanings), and strategic competence (knowledge of verbal and nonverbal communication strategies). The attainment of communicative competence is an essential part of actual communication. Language development is viewed as a motive to communication, and the communicative function of language in-turn provides the motive for language development. Between 9-12 months of age, children view themselves as joining the communicative world. Before 9-12 months, babies interact with objects and interact with people, but they do not interact with people about objects. This developmental change is the change from primary intersubjectivity (capacity to share oneself with others) to secondary intersubjectivity (capacity to share one’s experience), which changes the infant from an unsociable to socially engaging creature. Around 12 months of age a communicative use of gesture is used. This gesture includes communicative pointing where an infant points to request something, or to point to provide information. Another gesture of communication is presented around the age of 10 and 11 months where infants start gaze-following; they look where another person is looking. This joint attention result in changes to their social cognitive skills between the ages of 9 and 15 months as their time is spent increasingly with others. Children’s use of non-verbal communicative gestures foretells future language development. The use of non-verbal communication in the form of gestures indicate the child’s interest in communication development, and the meanings they choose to convey that are soon revealed through the verbalization of language. --Rebecca L 16:19, 27 October 2014 (UTC) Language acquisition and development contribute to the verbal form of communication. Children originate with a linguistic system where words they learn, are the words used for functional meaning. This instigation of speech has been termed pragmatic bootstrapping. According to this, children view words as a means of social construction, and that words are used to connect the understanding of communicative intentions of the speaker who speaks a new word. Hence, the competence of verbal communication through language is achieved through the attainability of syntax or grammar. Another function of communication through language is pragmatic development. Pragmatic development includes the child’s intentions of communication before he/she knows how to express these intentions, and throughout the first few years of life both language and communicative functions develop. --Rebecca L 16:19, 27 October 2014 (UTC) When children acquire language and learn to use language for communicative functions (pragmatics), children also gain knowledge about the participation in conversations and relating to past experiences/events (discourse knowledge), and how to use language appropriately in congruence with their social situation or social group (sociolinguistic knowledge). Within the first two years of life, a child’s language ability progresses and conversational skills, such as the mechanics of verbal interaction, develop. Mechanics of verbal interaction include taking turns, initiating topics, repairing miscommunication, and responding to lengthen or sustain dialogue. Conversation is asymmetrical when a child interacts with an adult because the adult is the one to create structure in the conversation, and to build upon the child’s contributions. In accordance to the child’s developing conversational skills, asymmetrical conversation between adult and child modulate to an equal temperament of conversation. This shift in balance of conversation suggests a narrative discourse development in communication. Ordinarily, the development of communicative competence and the development of language are positively correlated with one another, however, the correlation is not flawless. --Rebecca L 16:19, 27 October 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)

Sequential skill development in learning to talk.

Child Age in Months	Language Skill
0-3	Vocal play: cry, coo, gurgle, grunt
3-	Babble: undifferentiated sounds
6-10	Babble: canonical/reduplicated syllables
9-	Imitation
8-18	First words
13-15	Expressive jargon, intonational sentences
13-19	10-word vocabulary
14-24	50-word vocabulary
13-27	Single-word stage and a few sentences, two-to-three-word combinations, Articles: a/the, Plural: -s
23-24	Irregular past: went, modal and verb: can/will, 28 to 436-word vocabulary, 93-265 utterances per hour
25-27	Regular past: -ed, Auxiliary “be”: -‘m, -‘s
23-26	Third-person singular: -s, 896 to 1 507-word vocabulary, 1 500 to 1 700 words per hour

CONGRATS to all of us! We finally wrote the article! It looks great :) Rebecca L 03:39, 6 November 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rl11ge (talk • contribs)