Posted: March 11th, 2015

language acquisition- a three part question

language acquisition- a three part question

Order Description

Assignment 1.
Be sure to support your answers with well-developed points. The total number of words for this entire paper should not exceed 1000 words.

1. When studying children’s language, we need to consider both their performance and their competence. To do so, we must take account of what they say, what they understand, and what they know about language (Foster-Cohen 1999:12).
a. In your own words, explain the distinction between performance and competence. (2 marks)

b. Examine the conversation below and identify any production data, comprehension data, or metalinguistic data in the child’s responses. Justify your answer. (NB: an item may fit more than one category.) (2 marks)

A conversation:
Adult: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Child: A dowboy.
Adult: So you want to be a dowboy?
Child: [irritated] No, not a DOWboy! A dowboy!!

c. Based on the above exchange, what conclusions can we draw about this child’s language competence? Your answer should include comments on all the subsystems (morphology, phonology, semantics, syntax and pragmatics (2 marks)

d. In your answer to (c) above, some of your conclusions would have been based on performance data. Identify those conclusions and present arguments to support the claim that, when used judiciously, performance data can give us insights about competence. (2 marks)

2. Which of the following is most likely to be the age of the child in question (1) above? Defend your answer. (3 marks)
i. The holophrastic stage (age approximately 1;0)
ii. The telegraphic stage (age approximately 1;3)
iii. The early multi-word stage (MLU between 3.4 to 3.9)
iv. Later multi-word stage (MLU above 4.0)

3. Explain and illustrate the word formation processes of affixation, compounding, and conversion (2 marks) then consider the following utterance of a child aged 2;4 who is acquiring English as his first language.
I’m souping. (= ‘I’m having soup’)
Describe the syntactic and morphological competence of this child and defend your analysis. (Among the issues you should include: Does this child have knowledge of (i) the word class verb; (ii) the morphological processes of affixation & conversion?) (2 marks)