Dr. Hashim Noor

COGNITISTS

This chapter tries to answer the following questions:

1. How’s child’s language 1. How’s child’s language developed? developed?

2. What strategies the child uses in 2. What strategies the child uses in the process of understanding the process of understanding and developing the language? and developing the language?

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According to the COGNITISTS,

language is developed simultaneously with the child’s intellectual growth.

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Linguistic structures will appear and later develop in the language of the child, only if there is an already-established cognitive foundation.

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Child’s Language DevelopmentChild’s Language Development Number of words per a sentence Number of words per a sentence

Dr. Hashim Noor

Five

Four

Three

Two

One word

42 36 30 24 18 12 Child’s age inmonth

This means that less complex structure appears (acquired) in the language of the child earlier than more complex structure.

e.g. present progressive (She is writing…) is acquired before present perfect (She has written…) or present perfect progressive (She has been writing…)

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COGNITISTS

The child follows a number of strategies in order to understand and develop the language.

These strategies are called operating principles:

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COGNITISTS

1. AVOID EXCEPTIONS

Children tend to follow rules of the language without thinking of any exceptions. This’s called Generalization Strategye.g. children may produce breaked, mans for broke, men. This proves that regular rules are acquired before irregular ones.

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2. Words inside the sentence should have clear meaning-relationshipsThere seems to be a natural tendency to prefer the first noun in a sentence as the subject and the second as the object:1) Huda drinks tea after dinner2) Tea is drunk after dinner

This shows why active is easier than passive.

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3. Grammatical markers help to make semantic sense of what the child hears

Children tend to use grammatical markers in order to understand the patterns they hear. For example:

- She is a student. - They are smart boys

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This accounts for the late acquisition of φ –marked adult category: I will appears before I’ll

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COGNITISTS

The study of such strategies or operating principles may lead to better understanding of what is easy for the child (which appears first) or difficult (which appears later) and why.

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Dr. Hashim Noor