Child Language Acquisition

Since James is the youngest child in the transcripts he has the most to learn in language acquisition than the other children; we can therefore expect him to be the least advanced. Text A reveals to us that James is still at the telegraphic stage in development which would support his age. Evidence of this is the missing auxiliary 'will' in the phrase "I get it for you mummy" as this is expected of the telegrammatic stage. Another example of his stage of development is his inability to form questions. Again in Text A, "Want it" is ambiguous and has possibility to be a question but without the given context of "offering mints to his sisters" it would be deictic and possibly confusing.

In Text B James' use of phonemic simplification in the concrete noun 'wheelbarrow' [beelbarrow] is an example of his development in skill and supports Chomsky's theory of language being innate. James has obviously not heard this error and it is simply present as he is in the process of learning how to pronounce harsh sounds. His mother recasts his sentence; "are you a wheelbarrow James?" in an attempt to make him pronounce 'wheelbarrow' the correct way. However at this stage of development it has no impact and James continues to substitute the 'w' with a 'b'. This would again support Chomsky's theory and prove Skinner's theory of imitation to be incorrect as James mother has clearly repeated the noun in the correct way and James has not imitated.

There is more evidence to suggest that language is innate rather than imitated through James' speech. After his mother requests him to name the people in Molly's book, he responds with "who that" which is ultimately what she asked him primarily. Even though this would support Skinner's theory, there is a lack of the contraction "is" that was present in the mother's phrase "Who's that?" Chomsky's theory is here proved correct and we can assume that James has yet to develop this skill fully.

In Text B, there is again evidence of Chomsky's theory during James' speech. The phrase "The house falled" is an example of over-generalisation and supports the theory of language being innate. Surprisingly, James' mother does not correct him and instead relies on his possible repetition of the irregular dynamic verb 'fall' in the closed question "Does the house fall because it got wet?" We could assume that James' mother does not constantly correct James when he is in error as from having other children she is aware that errors can be made and does not want to dissuade James from talking by always telling him he is incorrect. We could suggest that James' mother is aware that there will not only be one mistake made when James is developing his skills in acquisition but that there will be a lot more than she can possibly correct in simply one correction.

Molly is the middle child so we can automatically assume that her speech exceed what James is capable of. In Text A she fails to show this as she only provides her mother with one word answers. This is significantly lower than what she should be capable of for a 5 year old however taking into account the context of the situation we could propose that her negative attitude to her mother is preventing her from excelling in her acquisition. Her mother uses interrogatives; "Molly do you want to read your book to me?", "do you Molly?" Since Molly obviously does not want to read her book she fails to respond and