Jan 2012 CLA exam response

 Text A is a transcript of Ruby, aged 3 years and 4 months. I believe the language shown in this text shows that Ruby is in the telegraphic stage of development. However she expresses signs of post telegraphic language.

            Ruby uses mainly declaratives such as “it’s not a jacket it’s a coat”. This particular declarative shows she has pragmatically understood the inflexion “it’s”, this is difficult for children to understand as it is difficult to hear. This difficulty to hear can often support Skinner and his nurture theory. This is because they only pick this up by hearing what has been said. As this is a difficult thing to pick up it often comes later in a child’s development.

            Ruby however also uses quite a lot of interrogatives, most of which are “what” questions such as “what’s up wiv Felma”, “what” questions often come first. This is because of Halliday’s functions, informative language. As the child, in this case Ruby is interested in what is going on around her she expresses the need to know more. The comfortable context that Ruby is in could have contributed to the amount of questions she asked. Ruby is in a comfortable context, with a close relative in surroundings that are familiar and safe to her, this enables her to speak what is on her mind without worrying about others opinions.

            When discussing the cats, Ruby uses the verb “bitted”. Here Ruby has added the regular past tense “ed” to the irregular verb. This supports Noam Chomsky and his theory of the ‘LAD’, language acquisition device. He believes that children have an innate ability to speak. As Ruby has applied an ending that she believes is correct due to other words with ending this shows she is unconsciously thinking about her language as she would never have heard someone say “bitted” before. Further evidence for Chomsky is the FOXP2 genome, the specific area used for language, that was found in genome 7 as a result of the KE family and their speech defect. Ruby’s use of “bitted” also follows the results drawn from the “wug test”, where it was shown that children can apply the regular rules of language to imaginary words.

            As a care giver in the situation Lou scaffolds back to Ruby the correct Lexical choce “bitten”, this is a key example of care givers language. Another example of care givers language is the “for two pussy cats”. The addition of “pussy” to this interrogative shows convergence of Lou to a language similar to Ruby’s. This was explained by Deb Roy “caregivers speech would systematically dip to minimum making language as simple as possible and then slowly ascend back up in complexity.” This was found by his “speech home project”. The reason for this is, I believe, to ensure that the child fully understands all of your language to enable them to learn from it. This is shown again when Lou repeats Ruby and fails to correct her “grandma has glass and cups”. Here both Ruby and Lou have made a virtuous error by failing to add the plural. This is a sign of Ruby being in the telegraphic stage of development.

            Ruby lacks some of the politeness strategies that are required in normal conversation. This is shown by her very short utterances, as she quite often only responds with a “yes” or “no” answer and does not continue. This could be explained easily by Ruby being more interested in something else, for example her breakfast that is being made. However Lou is the person in this situation with the most power indicating that she should be setting the conversation.

            Ruby shows a high level of awareness to do with her pronoun choices. She is able to use the first person pronoun “I” correctly in the right order “I want to sit in the room” This shows she is at stage 3 or Ursula Bellugi’s pronoun stages. Ruby is also able to use the plural first person “we” correctly the majority of the time. Apart from “we getting a book” when Ruby missed out the 3^rd person plural indicative of be “are”. This could be explained by Ruby’s excitement of becoming a big sister.            

In conclusion Ruby is still in the telegraphic stage however she expresses lots of example to show she will shortly be moving into the post telegraphic stage. There are plenty of example to show Aunt Lou has converged her language and is using techniques, whether known or unknown, to aid her nieces development.