Readings on Child Language

(Weeks 4 and 5)

The following selection is intended to point you in the direction of current, authoritative
descriptions and theories of child language acquisition. Expand your knowledge by
following the suggestions below, and explore the texts that are available in the library
(enter ‘Child Language’ in QCat and see what comes up). Some volumes in the library
are intended for levels considerably above Stage 1 undergraduate, so don’t panic if
you encounter some work that seems impenetrable; just make sure find your own
level. If you’re in any doubt about what is and isn’t suitable reading for the module,
ask your tutor for advice. In each of the following, the red, emboldened text (e.g.
‘O’Grady’) indicates the online title for the relevant chapter.

(i) O’Grady, William. How Children Learn Language. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2005.

‘O’Grady’ Chapters 1, 2 and Appendix

Chapter 1, ‘Small Talk’ raises some of the issues
and questions that will help us contextualise our
understanding of child language acquisition. For
example, O’Grady highlights the progress that
children make in terms of vocabulary learning, sound
production and sentence construction and asks how
these aspects of language develop. He refers to two
techniques for beginning to analyse child language
acquisition: the experimental method and the
observational method. For those who wish to test
their own observations, Grady provides guidance in
Appendix one (provided for you here).

The remaining chapters of How Children Learn

Language provide very useful and detailed
information on the core components of child
language acquisition. Chapter 2 (‘The great word
hunt’, also provided here) explores how children
begin to associate words with meaning and how young learners form words from
meaningful elements. Chapter 3 (‘What’s the meaning of this?’) focuses on the word/
meaning relationship, with attention being paid to some of the social and
psycholinguistic constraints involved in language maturation. The structuring of
sentences is considered in Chapter 4 (‘Words all in a row’), and the meaning of
utterances is discussed in Chapter 5 (‘What sentences mean’). The last two chapters
of the book (Chapter 6, ‘Talking the Talk’ and Chapter 7, ‘How do they do it?’) explore
some of the principles which operate in language acquisition, and suggest some ways
of understanding how children acquire language successfully. How Children Learn
Language is available in the SHL, pressmark P118/OGRA.

(ii) Bloomer, Aileen, Patrick Griffiths and

Andrew John Merrison. Introducing Language
in Use: A Coursebook. London: Routledge

‘Bloomer et al’, Chapter 10: Child Language

Acquisition
Bloomer et al offer an extremely helpful overview of
acquisition, which they break down into vocabulary,
phonology, syntax and communicative styles. They
suggest data on which you can base some analytic
activities, and they offer some feedback on what
might constitute appropriate responses to the
activity questions. In Week 6, you will read the
chapter on Psycholinguistics from Bloomer et al.

(iii) Pinker, Steven. Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language. London:
Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, 1999.

‘Pinker’ Chapter 7: ‘Kids say the darnedest things’

The aim of this chapter is to illustrate the ways in which
children form rules to help them produce language in a
systematic manner. Steven Pinker is an eminent,
persuasive and inspirational scholar, whose work on
language, language development and psychology has
made a considerable contribution to the discipline of
Linguistics. Visit his website at http://
pinker.wjh.harvard.edu, to get a sense of his work, and
enter ‘Steven Pinker’ as a search term in YouTube and
www.Ted.com. In the Main Library, you will find a variety
of texts by Pinker.
(iv) Crystal, David. How Language Works. London: Penguin, 2005.

‘Crystal’ - Chapters 13 and 14

The subtitle for this book is ‘How babies babble, words change meaning and
languages live or die...’ For this block of the module, we are interested in Chapter 13,
‘How children learn speech sounds: the first year’ and Chapter 14, ‘How children
learn speech sounds: later years’. Both are short and
provide a very schematised account of acquisition, so
supplement this information from Crystal with some of his
other work. Crystal is one of the most energetic and prolific
of contemporary linguists, and his work straddles almost
every pursuit in academic linguistics. For accessible
introductions to the breadth of his expertise, and for further
information on child language, start with The Cambridge
Encyclopedia of Language and The Cambridge
Encylopedia of the English Language (P29/CRYS and
PE1072/CRYS, respectively). You may wish to look at the
relevant section of Professor Crystal’s website (http://
www.davidcrystal.com/David_Crystal/child.htm), from
where it is possible to download some of his articles.

(v) Gillen, Julia. The Language of Children. London: Routledge, 2003.

‘Gillen’: Unit one, ‘Setting the Scene’

This is a practically-oriented and brief book which,

in each chapter, deals with aspects of acquisition
and then provides some data and activities. Try
your hand at the activities and, if you wish, bring
any questions you have to seminars. The chapter
that is provided online (‘Setting the Scene’) should
give you a sense of the book’s orientation and, for
further reading, it is available in the library (P118/
GILL).