Why Do Toddlers Use Referential Language?

When meaning is attached to words or sequences of speech sounds, young children begin to develop semantic knowledge. Children develop semantic knowledge through their experiences in varied environmental contexts that foster concept development. Semantic development is impacted by direct experiences because these experiences occur from birth on,

An 18 month-old child can use approximately 50 words and compare to 24 month-old child having approximately 200 words (Balakas & Murray, 2013). It is found that toddlers have a better understanding of language and have the ability to follow directions than expressing words for themselves

Dramatic steps in language acquisition are seen from ages two through six. The explosion of vocabulary is attributed to the connection of a new vocabulary word to new concept using a process called fast-mapping. Children only start to grasp the basics of grammar by constructing simple sentences. Overregularization occurs when acquired grammatical rules are used so consistently that they overuse the rules and miss the exceptions to the rules.

They can now balance and lift their heads, and even entertain themselves by watching their hands, feet as well as by putting everything in their mouth. Infants at this stage are able to recognize caretakers. Responding to others by reaching, smiling and laughing is also observed (Zastrow & Ashman, 2016, p. 79). By eight months infants are able to sit without support, but still require it to stand. They may also begin to crawl and play by banging objects as arm movements are better controlled. Self-help is attempted and achieved with easy to grab food items such as toast them (Zastrow & Ashman, 2016, p. 79-80). Their communication becomes more frequent and complex, trying to imitate sounds they hear. The few words they able to say, still hold no meaning and are simply sounds to them (Zastrow & Ashman, 2016, p. 79-80). By eighteen months, the newly toddlers begin to combine simple words to express themselves. Usually holding a vocabulary of three, to less than fifty words on average (Zastrow & Ashman, 2016, p. 81). Words are based on their individual experiences and surroundings (Zastrow & Ashman, 2016, p. 81). By twenty four months, toddlers do not take part in teamwork, but are more aware of the feelings of those around them and continually seek approval. By this stage, toddlers have mastered most locomotive skills and even some non-locomotive skills such as balancing, as well as having almost entirely mastered bowel and bladder

The topic for today’s reading was, Behavioral Language Assessment: Part 2 (VB-MAPP). In one of the assigned readings, Assessing Your Child, we read how most speech pathologists look at language as either expressive or receptive, and that talking is a learned behavior controlled by environmental variables such as motivation, reinforcement, and antecedent stimuli. As we talk, we receive some sort of acknowledgement for our speech and this is how language begins to take shape in typically developing babies. Speech pathologist call expressive language to what is known as the four primary verbal operant (the mand, tact, echoic, and interverbal), and receptive language to the nonverbal operant (imitation, and visual performance).

Throughout a child’s early stages of life, language is used primarily for communicating with parents in order to get what they need. From as early as birth babies communicate through crying in order to tell parents what they want. Parents soon learn to distinguish between the hungry cry, the wet/dirty cry and the tired cry. According to Halliday, 1975, children begin to learn their first language from between six – eighteen months old. He believes children are learning a ‘system of meanings’. He looks at language from a functional point of view and suggests there are seven functions that language serves for young children. The first four of these functions ensure that social, emotional and physical needs are catered to, they are called, Instrumental, Regulatory, Interactional and Personal. Instrumental refers to a child using language to ensure they get what they need or want. The Regulatory function tells others what to do in order to control their behaviour. The Interactional function relates to the use of language in order to interact with the people around the child particularly those seen as important such as parents and siblings or close friends. The personal function relates to how the child uses language to explain feelings, and their own identity. The other three functions are used as children become older and want to know more about the world, tell stories and pass on information.

At the second year, they start to say a few words that caregivers are more likely to recognize. Furthermore, they start to express feelings through different tones of a single word, which is holophrase. Around this point, a baby knows 10 times more vocabularies than s/he can actually speak them out. Once an infant is capable of saying 50 words, the first language spurt comes, which is naming explosion. A baby’s vocabularies increase quickly, with 50 to 100 words in every month. People around them are those can be remembered first. Babies also tend to refer things to their favorite

What different features, properties, and/or experiences in the word and with people allow infants and young children to learn and develop language? Mutual exclusivity, infant-directed speech, and a child’s socioeconomic status are all factors affecting language development in infants and young children. Children, between the ages of 3- to 4-year-olds, expect that a given entity will have only one name, that is they will not apply a new word to an object they already know which leads them to pick the novel object when given a word they do not know, this phenomenon is known as the mutual exclusivity assumption. Infant-directed speech studies have revealed that infants, between the ages of 6.5 to 7.5 months, who hear infant directed speech, find it easier to segment and discriminate words over part words than those who hear adult-directed speech. Finally, studies examining family socioeconomic status and language development have shown that the mothers in high SES groups had higher speech properties (number of word types, number of utterances, length of utterances, etc) that in the long term influenced the development of the children’s vocabulary complexity

How does language develop in early childhood? As children hit the age of 5, they can essentially master the sound system and grammar of their accustomed language and acquire a vocabulary of thousands of words. This shows the milestones of language development that typically-developing, monolingual children achieve

The article For the Love of Language by Geoffrey Cowley was published by Your Child's First Steps on October 2000. The author focuses on the importance of language and how children develop their language skills. Cowley states that the journey towards language starts in the womb and that babbling is the first step towards fluent speaking. Children also start associating names with objects around age one and children around two years old start to connect noun phrases with verb phrases. And lastly, children around seven months do not just seek out associations between words, but also extract principles governing word order. Cowley also uses terms like cochlear implant, mimicry, simple conditioning, operant conditioning, and specific language impairment (SLI).

Although children babble, children do not typically produce many words during the first year of life. Children begin to babble and coo as early as 2-months, the sounds children produce rarely have meaning to the child. During this time, children can also produce protowords, or words that have consistent meaning to the child but have no similarities to the actual word. These protowords, such as “binky” for “pacifier”, are the precursor to word and vocabulary development for a child.

Infants move through stages that allow them to make increasing varieties of sounds such as cooing, babbling, laughing, and advanced babbling. Understanding infants sound production is very important because use sounds to communicate. Language is taught as conversation. In order to be developmentally appropriate for infants, the environment for infants, cognitive, language, and literacy development the caregiver need to have specific ways to talk. The caregiver need to talk a lot to the infants and use a wide vocabulary. When talking, give the infants choices and ask them about things. Interaction with infants is the basis for cognitive development. Infants need to interact with objects and people. Interacting with objects and people will help them explore and add on to their understanding of the world. To encourage words in older infants give then experiences and objects to label. When they point to objects they want, say the name of the object. Creating patterns and labeling the same way each time is the key factors in learning particular contexts.

By 1 year a toddler may start to name single syllable objects like ball or dog and basic communication commences with them using compressed sentences for example saying ‘me’ to indicate that want something passing to them. They will also be able to imitate simple sounds like moo for a cow or woof for a dog. This will progress onto baby sentences like ‘baby bed’ or ‘baby milk’ to indicate they are tired or hungry. Gesture will be used to aid communication, waving when saying bye-bye or shaking their head if they do not want to do something.

Infants are able to recognize words through the " word– object association" method. It is evident that infants distinguish words that exist in their linguistic environment. Research has affirmed that children can progressively differentiate specific word forms at an early age, even though they do not know the meaning. At 11 months of age, word forms have been translated with enough detail that shows their preference for listening to a proper over an improper pronunciation of a word. (Fais, Werker, &Zamuner, 2014).

From a baby 's first word to their first complete sentence, there 's a lot to debate with their language development. The average child has a vocabulary of up to six-thousand words by the time they turn five years old (Brighthubcom, 2016). Language development is one of the most critical roles for an educator in both early childhood and primary settings. It is this ability of language development that is particularly interesting in the nature vs nurture debate. In order for educators to provide effective communication, it is important that they have the knowledge and understanding of the four key concepts of language, such as phonological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic development and the underlying theoretical perspectives that explain the processes of language acquisition and development.