Language Development in the Preschool Child

8/3/2019 . Language Development in the Preschool Child

1/22

CHAPTER VIILANGUAGE DEVELOPMENTOF THE PRESCHOOL CHILD*

D O R O T H E A M C C A R T H Y

IntroductionThis investigation was undertakenin an effort to arrive at a more com-plete description of how young childrenlearn to speak than had heretoforeIx^en available. The acquisition of orallanguage, which has an amazinglyrapid development during the pre-school period, is perhaps the mostimportant single aspect of the child'smental development, for he therebyacquires the basic tools of his laterthought processes, as well as theabilities to acquire knowledge throughunderstanding the speech of othersand to communicate his ideas to thoseabout him.

Most of the earlier studies have beendone on one or two precocious childrenand are subject to the bias of parents'reports. For the most part they havebeen mere vocabulary counts, whichhave been recorded with such avariety of methods that comparisonsof the results have been impossible.Only a few isolated studies have beenconcerned with analysis of sentenceformation, usually of samples of all-dayconversations of superior children.Smith (5) devised a vocabulary testand made an attempt to analyze 1-hr,conversations of nursery-school chil-dren, but the groups were far fromrepresentative of the population andwere not discrete with regard to age

and the amount of the sample ofconversation varied tremendously fromchild to child.The present investigation is an at-tempt to add to our knowledge ofthe development of the language of thechild, as it is found in samples of therunning conversation of a large numberof children selected so as to give arandom sampling of the population.The function of language in the child'slife, the changes in the length ofsentences, the complexity of sentencestructure, and the proportions of thevarious parts of speech that occur inthe material are the chief aspects ofthe problem attacked.

Collection of DataSubjects. Age.On the basis ofseveral indications in the literature,children between the ages of eighteenand fifty-four months were included inthe study. While the average childspeaks a few words before eighteenmonths, it is not until approximatelythis age that word combinations beginto appear even in the most advancedchildren. By fifty-four months the

period of most rapid linguistic develop-ment is usually over, and while thechild's speech has not reached thedegree of perfection found in the adult,his speech is so fluent that an accuraterecord of it over any extended period* This summary of the original monograph (3) is published with permission of theUniversity of Minnesota Press.

107


2/22

108 Child Behavior and Development

c0&

13;c00o"ouo.

JO

"5To

00

ot-r

n

3TO

i - 1 " CO C-J C^

* *

- n j5XocaAl

sc033

Al

irs1

Oo

i-l - 1 Tt" C


3/22

Language D evelopment of the Preschool Child 109was moderately so within each of theseven age levels as well.Intelligence. M ental test recordsbased on the Kuhlmann Revisionof the Binet Scale (1922) whichwere available on 95 per cent of thecases yielded a mean I.Q. of 109.1for the group as a whole, 105.6 forthe boys and 112.6 for the girls.

ulation among whom language develop-ment had been investigated.Method of Observation.Each childwas observed individually in his ownhome or in a place very familiar tohim, such as a room in the nurseryschool or in one of the day nurseriesof which the child was a member.Whenever possible, the child was alone

10 Pep cent20 30 4 0

MinneapolisExperimental Gpoup

///////////////////?/^^

% % % % % ^ ^

VI

FIG. 1.Distribution of cases by paternal occupation.This is only two points higher forthe group as a whole than was obtainedin Kuhlmann's normative group atthese age levels. Thus, the experimentalgroup, while perhaps slightly morehighly selected than a cross section ofthe population with regard to generalintelligence, in spite of the above-described precautionary measures, wasmore nearly representative than anypreviously assembled experimental pop-

in the room with the examiner, but inmaking home visits this condition wasoften difficult to control.Fifty consecutive verbal responseswere recorded for each child exactlyas they sounded to the experimenter.This number gave a fairly representa-tive sample of the child's stage oflinguistic development in a relativelyshort period of time, without tiringthe child with a prolonged observation.


4/22

110 Child Behavior and DevelopmentA response was considered as a separateunit if it was marked off from thepreceding and succeeding remarks bypauses. A complete sentence wasalways considered as a single response,but a response was frequently lessthan a sentence. The responses wererecorded exactly as they sounded tothe experimenter, even in the casesof the youngest children, many ofwhom gave verbal responses that wereentirely incomprehensible. However,these children have many sounds intheir vocal repertories for which wehave no adequate written symbols;hence, any attempt to record theirutterances in writing is very unsatis-factory. Such responses have beentreated separately, and the onlyaccurate result they yield is the num-ber of syllables combined per response.In some cases of peculiar articula-tion, the mother's interpretation wasconsidered if it clarified the child'sspeech and if it was obvious that shewas giving a literal reproduction andwas not elaborating on what the childhad said. The record did not includerecitation of nursery rhymes frommemory or responses uttered in directimitation of another person.

In order to overcome self-conscious-ness and to establish rapport, thechild was shown picture books andtoys which usually were quite effectiveas an introduction. The same set oftoys was used throughout the experi-ment. The toys used were a little redauto, a cat that squeaked, a telephonewith a bell, a little tin mouse, a musicbox, a small ball, and two picture books.The toys were not presented in thesame order to all children. Frequently,the older children were asked whetherthey preferred to look at toys orpicture books first. A preference wasusually indicated, but if not, theexperimenter presented the toy thatseemed best suited to the age, sex, andapparent interest of the child. If itfailed to bring forth any verbalresponses after considerable inspection

on the part of the child, another toywas tried. Sometimes a child becameso fascinated with the first or secondtoy that the quota of 50 responseswas obtained without the presentationof other toys. Some of the children, onthe other hand, flitted from one objectto another so rapidly, and with so fewcomments, that the whole series wasgone through several times before thedesired number of responses wasobtained.Since the aim was to secure spon-taneous responses, the child wasaddressed as little as possible duringthe observation. In the cases of somequiet, shy children, it was necessaryto stimulate conversation to someextent, but an effort was made, in suchcases, not to use questions that couldbe answered by a single word. If thechild's response was brought about bysomething the examiner or the motherhad said, it was recorded as an elicitedresponse, and, where necessary, theremark of the other person was alsorecorded verbatim. In this way equalsamplings of the children's languageresponses were recorded in similarsituations.

Other data obtained for all the sub-jects of the experiment included: thelength of time required to secure the50 responses; the time of the observa-tion (appointments were made attimes that would not interfere with thechildren's usual nap hours); the na-tionality of the parents, if they were offoreign birth; whether or not the childheard a foreign language in the home;the age of the child's associates; andwhether the child had lived chiefly inthe home or in an institution.

Analysis of DataIn any attempt to deal with data ofthis sort, one is immediately con-fronted with a great many difficulties.Everyone who has tried to understandthe chatter of little ones realizes fromthis casual observation how difficult it


5/22

Language Development of the Preschool Child 111is to hear the child's words correctly.Children of eighteen and twenty-fourmonths vocalize a great deal, andwhether we und erstand them or not, wecannot afford to ignore these importantstages in their linguistic development.Even children who can be readilyunderstood most of the time frequentlyuse words and phrases th at are entirelyunintelligible to the hearer. It wasnecessary, therefore, to divide thedata of this experiment into: (A )comprehensible responses, which in-cluded all responses that could beunderstood by the experimenter inspite of poor articulation, letter sub-stitutions, or faulty or incompleteconstruction; (B ) semi comprehensibleresponses, which included all responsesin which the hearer had a general ideaof what the child was talking about,but could not get the full meaningbecause of the lack of certain key wordsin the sentence; and (C) incompre-hensible vocalization, which includedall responses which were mere soundsforming no recognizable words andwhich were entirely devoid of meaningto the hearer. These responses includedthree subgroups: (a) single sound; (6)repetition of the same sound, or bab-bling; and (c) series of varied sounds.Analysis According to the Lengthof Response.The only quantitativetreatment of these data that is possibleis the analysis according to the lengthof response. The semicomprehensibleresponses and the incomprehensiblevocalization were scored according tothe number of syllables combined perresponse, while the comprehensibleresponses were scored by the numberof words per response. In a ttem pting tocount the number of words in aresponse, many problems arise as towhat is to be considered a separateword and what combinations are to becounted as one word. In order toovercome these difficulties and tostandardize this part of the scoringsystem, it was necessary to formulate aset of arbitrary rules, as follows:

1 . C on trac t ion s of the subjectand predicate like " i t ' s , " "we're,""you're," etc., were scored as twowords. In such cases the child speakscorrectly according to adult conver-sational usage, which really is his onlymodel of correct speech. Each partof the contraction is an essential partof the sentence, and if the sentence isto be considered complete, it is neces-sary to recognize these two parts. Inorder, therefore, to make the analysisaccording to the length of responseconsistent with the later analysisaccording to the construction of theresponse, it seemed justifiable to scoresuch contractions as two separatewords.2. Contractions of the verb and thenegative like "can't," "won't," etc.,were scored as single words. The childwho has no knowledge of how wordsare written does not know that"can't" is a contraction of "can" and"n ot ." He hears " c a n " as one wordand "can't" as another; they havedifferent meanings and hence areprobably two distinct and independentwords to the child.3. Hyphenated words and compoundnouns, particularly proper nouns, whichare not hyphenated bu t which probablyfunction as single words and as namesof single objects, were scored as oneword. For example, "merry-go-round,""Mother Goose," "Betty Lou," andsuch expressions were scored as singlewords.4. Each part of a verbal combinationwas scored as a separate word. Forexample, "have been playing" countedas three words.5. "Lookit," which occurred fre-quently, was scored as one word if itwas used alone and functioned simplyas "look." If, however, it was followedby an object, it was counted as the twowords "look at."Functional Analysis. In consider-ing the linguistic development of theyoung child, it is important to con-sider not only the increasing length of


6/22

112 Child Behavior and Developmentspeech units and their increasingdegrees of complexity as the childgrows older but also the functionsof the child's speech in relation to hisenvironment. W hat situations in whichthe child is placed bring about languageresponses? The young infant veryearly expresses himself in gestures, butwhen he begins to substitute verbalresponses for his overt bodily responses,which overt responses are first super-seded by verbal responses and inwhat situations does speech firstappear?

Piaget (4) considers this a problemof functional psychology, which indeedit is. Sometimes, he says, languageconveys information, sometimes itprovokes action in others, etc. This isan important aspect of the linguisticdevelopment of the young child thathas heretofore been neglected. The oldgrammatical classification of sentencesinto declarative, interrogative, impera-tive, and exclamatory sentences is acrude analysis in this direction, whichserves fairly well for written languageand less well for adult conversationand is quite inadequate when appliedto the speech of children. As Claparedeso aptly says in the preface of Piaget'sbook, "In examining child thought, wehave applied to it the mould andpattern of the adult mind."

So often a sentence is structurallyof one kind and functionally of ano ther;there is so much overlapping of thecategories; and so many subheadswould have been necessary to make itmeet the demands of children'sconversation, that the rigid gram-matical classification of sentences wasabandoned in the present study. Thefunction of the child's response inrelation to his environment was con-sidered the important thing in thistype of approach. Practically the onlyattempt at treatment of this sortthat is available in the literature isthat of Piaget. This method hasrilled a serious need in the presentstudy very satisfactorily and has been

adopted with certain modifications inthe functional analysis of the data.Modifications of the classification weremade necessary by the different cir-cumstances under which the observa-tions were made, by the use of youngersubjects, and by the desirability ofsubdividing some of the larger cate-gories for a more detailed analysis. Allof the comprehensible responses werescored according to this functionalanalysis, which, as modified for thepresent purposes, consisted of thefollowing categories:A. Egocentric speech.1. Repetition or echolalia.2. Monologue.3. Dual or collective monologue.B. Socialized speech.1. Adapted information.a. Naming.b. Remarks about the immedi-ate situation.c. Remarks associated with thesituation.d. Irrelevant remarks.2. Criticism.3. Emotionally toned responses.4. Questions.5. Answers.6. Social phrases.7. Dramatic imitation.

By egocentric speech Piaget meansthat in which the audience is disre-garded. The child "talks ei ther forhimself or for the pleasure of associat-ing anyone who happens to be therewith the ac t ivi ty of the moment ." He"speaks only about himself and makesno at tempt to place himself at thepoint of view of his hearer." In thisstudy this category includes instancesin which the child speaks aboutpersons and things other than himself,but in which he disregards an audience.The three types of egocentric speechare defined as follows: Repetition orecholalia means "repeti t ion of wordsand syl lables . . . for the pleasure oftalking, with no thought of talking toanyone, nor even at t imes of sayingwords that wi l l make sense." Mono-


7/22

Language Development of the Preschool Child 113logue occurs when the child "talks tohimself as though he were thinkingalo ud " without add essing anyone.In the third type, called "dual" or"collective" monologue, "an outsideris always associated with the actionor thought of the moment but isexpected neither to hear nor to under-stand. The point of view of the heareris never taken into account. Hispresence serves only as a stimulus . . .The child talks about himself with-out collaboration with his audienceor without evoking a dialogue."

Socialized speech occurs when thechild addresses his hearer, or con-siders his point of view, tries to influ-ence him, or actually exchanges ideaswith his hearer. The first category ofsocialized speech according to Piagetis adapted information, in which thechild really "exchanges his thoughtswith others, either by telling himsomething that will interest him,influence his actions, or by actualinterchange of ideas." It occurs when-ever "the child adopts the point ofview of his hearer, and when the latteris not chosen at random." This groupwas found to include such a largeproportion of the conversation ob-tained in this experiment that itseemed advisable to analyze it in moredetail.

The first subgroup that appears tobe quite distinct is that of naming, inwhich the child announces the nameof an object either as a single word or ina complete sentence. The second typeincludes all remarks about the immedi-ate situation, other than naming.The third group is made- up of allremarks tha t are not about the immedi-ate situation but are logically relatedto it, i.e., where the observer can seethe connection between events orremarks in the situation. For example,if upon presentation of a toy auto thechild said, "It's a auto," the responsewould be placed in the naming group.If his next remark was, "It's got aspare tire," this remark would belong

in the second type of adapted informa-tion, or the remarks about the immedi-ate situation. If the succeeding remarkswere, " I have a car like th at ," "M ine'sbroken," they would be additionalinformation volunteered by the child,which was obviously brought aboutby the situation and associated with it,and hence belong in the third type ofadapted information, or remarks asso-ciated with the situation. The fourthtype of adapted information consistsof irrelevant remarks; i.e., those inwhich the observer cannot notice anyconnection with previous remarks oractions.

The second type of socialized speechis criticism, which includes "all re-marks about the work or behavior ofothers, but having the same characteras adapted information," according toPiaget's definition. In the presentanalysis, this classification was ex-tended to include criticisms of objectsas well as of persons and also com-plaints about situations in which thechild is thwarted.In the third group of socializedspeech, Piaget includes all "commands,requests, and threats." For the presentpurposes, this category has beenextended to include all emotionallytoned responses. Single-word sentencesuttered with a decided emotional orcommanding inflection are also in-cluded in this group.The fourth group consists of ques-tions, by which are meant real interrog-ative sentences with an interrogativefunction and declarative sentenceshaving an interrogative function, i.e.,any remark that definitely requires ananswer from the hearer. It does notinclude declarative sentences with aquestion added at the end merely foraffirmation or approval of the state-ment and requiring no answer on thepart of the hearer, as "I made it go,didn't I?"In the fifth group are included allanswers that are "answers to realquestions and to commands." In this


8/22

114 Child Behavior and Developmentstudy the category includes all theelicited responses. However, remarksoccurring in the course of conversationwhich have th e form of answers bu t areanswers to remarks that are not ques-tions are not placed in this category,but rather under adapted information.A sixth category has been added toPiaget's classification to provide forthe social phrases which occur only insocial situations, but which the childhas been taught to say parrot-fashionand which probably function as singlewords to the child, such as, "please,""thank you," "you are welcome,""bye-bye," etc.The last group of socialized speechis called "dramatic imitation," whichconsists of all talk in imitation of theconversation of adults, like imaginaryimitative telephone conversations. Italso includes imitation of the soundsmade by animals, like "bow-wow-wow," "meow," "moo-moo," and theimitation of the sounds of automobilehorns, etc. Probably Piaget would putsuch remarks in one of the categoriesof egocentric speech, but, while manysuch remarks might be placed there,some of them are used in decidedlysocial situations and in social contexts,and hence this classification has beenprovided for them in this study.Construction Analysis. W e h a v enow outlined two methods of analysisof these data, both of which considerthe response as a whole. The firstwas a quantitative analysis based onthe length of response, and the secondwas a functional analysis of theresponse according to its relation tothe child's environment or to the totalsituation. There is still another impor-tant aspect of the development ofspeech that must be considered. This isan analysis according to the construc-tion of the response, which attempts toindicate the stage of grammaticalcomplexity that the child has reachedor to determine how closely hissentence structure approximates adultconversation.

The first and most obvious way toclassify responses of this sort is tothrow them into the dichotomy ofcomplete versus incomplete sentences,and these are the two main groups ofthis type of analysis. However, in apreliminary perusal of these data, oneis impressed with the frequency ofresponses that are incomplete sen-tences. Ordinarily, we think th at adu ltsspeak in complete sentences and thatthe sentence is the essential un it oflanguage. A superficial analysis of asmall sample of adult conversation issufficient, however, to show that alarge proportion of adult conversationis composed of phrases and othergroups of words that really do notconstitute sentences according to thegrammarian's definition. Often thewhole sentence is merely implied or"understood." The child knows noth-ing of w ritten language; his sole p atternand criterion of correctness of languageis the conversation of the adults withwhom he associates. If a response isadequate in the situation and is whatan adult would say in such circum-stances, the child is using the mostcomplete form that he has had anopportunity to learn, and, therefore, inthis study such responses have beenclassified separately as a type ofcomplete response that is functionallycomplete but structurally incomplete.This group, then, includes practicallyall the single-word sentences and mostof the elicited responses or thosebelonging in the answers group of thefunctional analysis. The outline of theclassification used in this third typeof analysis is as follows:

A. Complete responses.1. Functionally complete but struc-turally incomplete responses.2. Simple sentences without aphrase.3. Simple sentences with a phrase.4. Compound sentences.5. Complex sentences.6. Elaborated sentences.


9/22

Language Development of the Preschool Child 115B. Incomplete responses.1. Omission of the verb.2. Omission of the subject.3. Omission of a preposition.4. Omission of a conjunction.

5. Omission of the verb and thesubject.-6. Miscellaneous omissions.The category of elaborated sen-tences, which included sentences withtwo phrases, two clauses, or a phraseand a clause, was added to the con-struction-analysis classification in orderto differentiate these more involved

responses and to see if they provedindicative of a more advanced stageof linguistic development.All responses that were incompletefunctionally as well as structurallywere scored as incomplete and classifiedaccording to the categories of theabove outline. It was possible to giveconstruction analysis scores only tocomprehensible responses and to themore complete of the semicompre-hensible responses.Word Analysis.In addition tothe above-described analyses involvingeach verbal response as a whole, a wordanalysis was also conducted. Becauseof the representativeness of the sam-pling and the constancy of method inthese data, it was thought that suchan analysis might yield valuablecomparisons with the voluminous liter-ature of vocabulary studies.While no estimates of the totalvocabularies of the children can bemade from these short samples of50 consecutive responses, the age andsex trends in the number and varietyof words occurring in such samples, aswell as shifts in the proportions of thevarious parts of speech, are of consider-able interest. The literature on chil-dren's vocabularies does not yield anyconsistent method of counting words.In this study, however, Bateman'srules for counting words and parts ofspeech which have been used by a fewother authors have been employed.They are as follows:

1. Include no proper nouns.2. Include no plural form unless thesingular was not used.3. Include all forms of pronouns.4. Include no variants of verbs or ofadjectives unless they are from adifferent root.5. The same word may be listed morethan once according to its grammati-cal use; i.e., if a word is used as anoun and also as a verb, it is in-cluded twice.

ReliabilityAt first the classifications described

in the various analyses may appearto be somewhat subjective and henceunreliable, particularly in the func-tional and construction analyses. Twochecks on the reliability of the methodwere therefore employed. In the first,scores yielded by the odd-numberedresponses were correlated with thescores yielded by the even-numberedresponses. These correlations, aftercorrection with the Spearman-Brownprophecy formula, yielded a meanreliability coefficient of +.91 for lengthof response, indicating a satisfactorydegree of consistency in the responseswhich the children made. The cate-gories of the functional and construc-tion analyses also yielded satisfactoryodd-even reliability coefficients (above+ .85) where d ata were sufficient towarrant such an analysis. It is prob-able that the few categories whichwere inadequately represented wouldalso yield satisfactory odd-even relia-bility coefficients if longer samples ofconversation were employed.

The second approach to reliabilityattacked the problem of how con-sistently different scorers could in-terpret the scoring rules and classifythe responses. Ten per cent of the datawere therefore analyzed by four inde-pendent scorers. There was practicallyperfect agreement among the scorerson counting the words to determinethe mean length of response, asindicated by a reliability coefficient of+ .99. Again the size of the coefficients


10/22

116 Child Behavior and Developmentappeared to be related to the frequencyof occurrence of the type of responseunder consideration, the less frequentlyoccurring responses yielding the lowestcoefficients. In general the classifica-tions proved surprisingly objectiveas indicated by mean correlations foreach scorer with every other scorer asfollows: Scorer A, + .83; Scorer B,+ .84; Scorer C, + .7 9 ; Scorer D, + . 8 1 .The average scorer intercorrelation forall categories analyzed was +.78, butthis value would have been +.88 ifthe work of Scorer C, who was obvi-

earlier among girls than among boys.It must be borne in mind, therefore,that the number of responses uponwhich the figures in the major analysesare based is larger at the higher agelevels and hence the figures are prob-ably more dependable in the upperage groups.Length of Response. T h e mo s treliable single quantitative measure ofthe response as a whole is the meannumber of words per response. As maybe seen in Fig. 2, this measure shows aconsistent increase with advance in age,

T A B L E 2 . M EA N PE R C EN T COMPREHENSIBLE RESPON SES BY CHRONOLOGICAL AG EAND S E XChronological Age, Months

BoysGirlsAll

18

14.038.026.0

24

49.078.067.0

30

93.086.089.0

36

889993.030

42

959997.582

48

99.399.899.6

54

99,10099.608

ously less interested and less coopera-tive than the others, were omittedfrom the computations. It appears,then, that conscientious scorers canclassify the responses of preschoolchildren with a satisfactory degree ofagreement.Results

Comprehensibility of Children'sSpeech.Before proceeding with anyof the major analyses it was necessaryto separate the incomprehensible re-sponses from those which were com-prehensible. It may be seen from thefigures in Table 2 that children's speechbecomes increasingly comprehensiblewith increase in age, that it is almostentirely comprehensible by the age ofthree or three and one-half years, andth at this development occurs somewhat

the most rapid increase occurring be-tween eighteen and forty-two months,with a more gradual increase afterforty-two months. Girls used slightlylonger sentences at six of the seven agelevels. At the two-and-one-half-yearlevel, where the only exception to thissex difference occurs, eight of the twelvegirls happened to come from the lowersocioeconomic classes, whereas five ofthe eight boys are from the upper occu-pational levels. This age level reversesthe slight sex differences in favor ofgirls throughout the study owing tothis sampling factor, and hence thecrossing of the curves here should notbe interpreted as having any compara-tive developmental significance for thetwo sexes.*

The mean length of response showsclear-cut differences among the chil-dren coming from the various socio-* See chap ter on "La ngua ge De velop m ent" by D orothea M cC arthy (1), for a sum-mary table showing comparable data on length of response by C.A. and sex from teninvestigations appearing between 1926 and 1941. In general the other studies tend toconfirm these findings. Discrepancies can nearly always be accounted for on the basisof sampling or methodological factors.


11/22

Language Development of the Preschool Child 117economic levels. As may be seen fromFig. 3, the children whose fathers areprofessional men are definitely supe-rior to the others, and those comingfrom the other occupational groupsappear in their expected positions atnearly all age levels. There is very littlecrossing of the lines, most of it beingaccounted for by the sixth group, which

differences do not stand out so clearly,however, because the groups were notdiscrete with respect to mental ageand there was wider dispersion in men-tal than in chronological age.There is disagreement in the litera-ture as to whether children who asso-ciate chiefly with adults learn to talkearlier and better than those who have

GipbBoth.

24 30 36 42 46Chronological age in monthsFIG. 2.Mean length of response by chronological age and sex.

54

was made up of children of day la-borers, many of whom had contactsoutside the home, such as in a daynursery or institution. When the datafor the three upper and the three loweroccupational levels are grouped, thedifferences in favor of the upper socio-economic levels are statistically sig-nificant at the higher ages.When the mean length of responsewas studied in relation to mental age,the same general trends appeared asin relation to chronological age. The

child associates. In order to shed lighton this problem the subjects of thisexperiment were all placed in threearbitrary groups on the basis of theages of their associates. Group 1 in-cludes all children who spend most oftheir time with associates over twelveyears of age. Group 2 includes childrenwho, in addition to association withadults, also associate with children whoare more than two years older thanthey . Group 3 includes all children who,in addition to association with adults,


12/22

118 Child Behavior and Developmentalso associate with children their ownages or younger; i.e., with chi ldren whoare not more tha n two years o lder th ant h e y .These three groups were then con-sidered with respect to the mean lengthof sentence. Each child was given apercent i le rank within his own age

hav e a decided adva ntag e in the lengthof sentence over those who associatewith children. The figures for the othertwo groups, however, are the reverseof the expectat ions . Fur ther examina-t ion of these data revealed that thechildren who associated chiefly witholder chi ldren cam e pred om inan tly

24-30 36-4Z 4834Cfironoloqical aqc in montfiaFIG. 3.Mean length of response by chronological age and paternal occupation.roman numerals refer to occupational categories. T h elevel, on the basis of his mean lengthof response. Then the median percen-tile rank for each of the above groupswas computed. The resul ts of this anal-ysis were as follows: For 27 childrenwhose associates were chiefly adults,the median percent i le rank for lengthof response was 70; for 70 children wh oassociated with older children, 42.5;and for 43 who associated with childrentheir own ages and younger, 52.5.

Thus, i t appears that those whoassociate with adults only, seem to

from the lower socioeconomic groupswhere larger families affording suchassociat ion are more numerous .Bi l ingual i sm.Fourteen chi ldren , or10 per ce nt of the ch ildre n in th e experi-mental group, heard a foreign languagein the i r homes. The median percent i leran k for this group on th e basis of m eanleng th of respon se w as 40 , wh ich is onlysl ight ly below the m edia n for the groupas a whole. This resul t is even moresurprising when i t is real ized that ninewere boys and only five were girls and


13/22

Language Development of the Preschool Child 119also that ten were members of the lowersocioeconomic levels and eight were thechildren of day laborers.Thus, it appears that in spite of apredominance of boys and a great over-weighting of the lower occupationalgroups, bilingualism does not seem tobe a serious handicap in linguistic

environment. For what purpose doesthe child talk? W hat needs does hesatisfy by the use of verbal responses?In what situations are verbal re-sponses brought forth, what kinds ofresponses are used in these varioussituations, and what changes do theseresponses show as the child grows

24 30 36 42 4& 54 18 24 30Cnronologicol age in months

orv Jocial

10

4Z 48 M

Dramatic Imitation

F I G . 4.-

16 24 30. 36 42 46 54Chronological a


14/22

120 Child Behavior and Developmentinterrogative, imperative, and exclama-tory sentences proved inadequate andinappropriate when applied to youngchildren's oral speech, the functionalanalysis adapted from Piaget's classi-fication, outlined above, was employed.The percentage of the total numberof responses falling in each categorywas determined for each child, andmeans of these percentages were com-puted according to age and sex groupsas well as according to paternal occupa-tion. While in the original report ofthis investigation this analysis wasmade both including the incompre-hensible responses and excluding them ,the present report is restricted to thatbased on only the comprehensibleresponses as shown in Fig. 4, whichshows some of the relationships moreclearly. Perhaps some incomprehensibleresponses belong in the egocentriccategory, but, since many others weredefinitely socialized as judged by theiraccompanying gestures and inflections,it seemed best to treat them separately.

The results of the functional analysisfailed to confirm Piaget's claim thatover 40 per cent of the young child'sspeech is egocentric and tha t it becomesincreasingly socialized as the childgrows older. In fact in this study allegocentric categories together neverexceeded 6.5 per cent at any age level,the average for all levels being only3.6 per cent. This seeming discrepancyis probably much more apparent thanreal. It can probably be accounted forby (a) differences in definition andinterpretation of terms, (6) differencesin the situations in which the responseswere recorded, and (c) individualdifferences in the characteristics of thechildren observed. Undoubtedly chil-dren's speech is often egocentric in thatthey speak about themselves and theirown activities, but it is at the sametime socialized in that it is directed

toward a hearer who is expected tounderstand and reply, and perhaps inthis sense it is not much more ego-centric than much adult conversation.*Since these data are reported in per-centages, and the studies differ somarkedly in the percentage of ego-centric remarks, none of the otherfigures can be compared directly withPiaget's findings.Adapted information is the largestsingle category of socialized speech.At all ages it represents approximatelyhalf of the comprehensible responsesand shows a marked increase with agewhen considered as a percentage ofthe total number of responses. Ques-tions and especially answers also showfairly regular increase with increase inage as more give-and-take appears inthe conversations of the older children.Emotionally toned responses showedan interesting decrease with age. Itseems, then, that the young child firsttalks comprehensibly about his wishesand about things that have a strongemotional tone and that this type ofresponse becomes less important as hegrows older and is able to express fineshades of meaning in a more subtlemanner. The three minor categories ofcriticism, social phrases, and dramaticimitation yielded small percentages atall ages and showed no important ageor sex trends.

Since the adapted-information cate-gory included about half of the re-sponses at higher ages, it was thoughtadvisable to subdivide it as outlinedin the description of methods of analy-sis. Responses which were mere namingconstituted about 87 per cent of theadapted information responses amongthe eighteen-month-old children andshowed a marked decline to about 25per cent by four years. Remarks aboutthe immediate situation and remarksassociated with the s ituation both show

* Other writers who have attempted to use Piaget's classification subsequent tothis investigation have not substantiated his claims. For full discussion of thisjproblemin the literature see chapter on "Language development" by Dorothea McCarthy (1).


15/22

Language Developm ent of the Preschool Child 121marked increases in the age rangestudied.As will be seen from the diagramsthat have been under consideration inthe preceding paragraphs, there is aconsistent difference in the items thatshow trends with increase in chrono-logical age in favor of the more rapiddevelopment of these functions amongthe girls.

age analysis, although they are lessmarked and the sex differences areless clear-cut.Construction Analysis.It is impor-tant not only to measure the extentof the child's vocabulary and the in-crease in the number of different kindsof words and their proportions in thechild's vocabulary from time to time,bu t also to consider the child's progressAdopted Infbrma tion

10 24-30 36-42 48-54Chronological acja In nx>ntfi:5Occupat ional gpoupj: I Upper LocaepFia. 5.Functional analysis by chronological age and paternal occupation.

When the functional analysis wasconducted in relation to paternal occu-pation it appeared that the children ofthe upper socioeconomic levels use alarger percentage of adapted-informa-tion responses and ask more questionsat all ages than the children of thelower socioeconomic levels (see Fig. 5).No significant trends appeared in theanalysis according to age of associates.Analysis according to mental agegroups showed the same tendenciesas were revealed in the chronological

in the ability to combine these newlyacquired words into various degrees ofgrammatical complexity. Which gram-matical combination appears first, inwhat sequence do more advanced formsappear, and at what ages do theyappear?Adult conversational usage was thecriterion of completeness of sentencestructure in this analysis. The single-word sentence was scored as one typeof complete response because of itsadequacy in the situation. Omissions


16/22

122 Child Behavior and Developmentof articles were disregarded. OmissionoLany essential part of a verbal com-bination, such as the omission of theauxiliary, was considered an omissionof the verb. In scoring the types ofomission for the incomplete sentences,the simplest possible hypotheticalcompletion of the response was used.

60%70

60504030ZO

10,0160%50-40

3 0

2 0

1 0

0

Fcincrionolicj Cbropictg

.Simple .5gntancg3

sible. Grammatical errors in tense,number, case, gender, and the like weredisregarded in this analysis. The em-phasis has been chiefly on the com-plexity of the response as a whole,rather than on correctness of syntax.Consideration of only the comprehen-sible responses brings out the changes

5impl


17/22

Language Developm ent of the Preschool Child 123amount with increase in age, but theycontinue as a large proportion of theresponses in the upper ages, owing tothe increase in the number of answers.At twenty-four months the girls havefewer responses of this type than theboys, probably because of their moreprecocious development and the drop-ping out of the single-word sentence asthe word com binations begin to appear.They do not continue to have a smallerproportion of this category, however,in the upper age levels, because of theincrease in the number of answers,which were more numerous among thegirls than among the boys.

The simple sentence without aphrase has already entered into thechild's language by eighteen monthsbut in very small proportions. Thegirls are superior to the boys inthe number of simple sentences at theyounger ages, but in the upper agelevels, when the girls are acquiring themore complex forms, the two sexes areabout equal in the proportion of theirconversation which consists of simplesentences.The phrase was considered an addedcomplexity in sentence formation,which was analyzed separately in thesimple sentence with a phrase. Thephrase first appears among the girlstwenty-four months old. They main-tain a fairly consistent superiority overthe boys in the proportion of simplesentences with phrases, until at fifty-four months 8.8 per cent of the totalnumber of responses obtained from theboys and 12.2 per cent of those ob-tained from the girls belong in thiscategory.

In the present investigation, com-pound sentences did not appear untilthe age of thirty months. They neverexceed 4 per cent of the total numberof responses at any age level, and nosex differences appear for this group.Complex sentences appear as a verysmall proportion at the age of twenty-four months. Their number remains

small throughout, and no sex differenceis noticeable.The number of complex sentencesgiven above is probably too small,since the sixth type of complete sen-tencethe elaborated sentence, whichhas been studied separatelyincludesthe more involved of the complex sen-tences. The elaborated sentence group,which includes many complex sen-tences, first appears among the girlsat twenty-four months and amongthe boys at thirty-six months. Thegroup increases quite markedly withincrease in age, the girls appearingslightly superior to the boys in the per-centage of elaborated sentences.

The remainder of the responses, i.e.,those that were not included in anyof the above categories, were scoredas incomplete sentences and classifiedaccording to the different types ofomissions. When considered in relationto the comprehensible responses only,the tendency for the incomplete sen-tences to decrease with advance inchronological age is apparent.Omission of the verb, i.e., someessential part of the verbal combina-tion, proved to be the most frequenttype of omission at nearly all ages, par-ticularly in the lower age groups.Omission of the subject comes next inimportance, bu t it is relatively lessimportant at the lower age levels, inwhich the child is in the naming stage.The only other type of omission thatis at all large is the omission of boththe verb and the subject. None of theother types of omission occurred withsufficient frequency to indicate anytrends with chronological age or sex.The girls show a clear superiorityover the boys in all the items of thisclassification that show developmentaltendencies. The children of the upperoccupational groups are markedlysuperior to those of the lower occupa-tional groups in all of the items of theconstruction analysis. The same tend-encies appear in the construction anal-ysis when it is considered in relation


18/22


19/22

Language Developm ent of the Preschool Child 125of the total number of words used.Pronouns represent about 10 per centof the total number of words used bythe eighteen-month-old children, andthey increase to approximately 20 percent of the words used by the fifty-four-month-old children. Prepositions donot appear at all among the eighteen-

Noun.

this tendency becomes less marked atthe upper ages. As may also be seenfrom Fig. 7, the sex differences infavor of the girls, which were noted inconnection with the other types ofanalysis, also appear in this analysisaccording to th e various par ts of speech.It is obvious that the proportions

AdwrB

I 1Adjective 10

"Prgpasition

nInterjection.tMi^callanoouJ

10 24 3 0 3 6 4Z. 4b 54 18 24 30 36 42 48 54Cfironological aga in months Ba p E3 GirbF i o . 7.Parts of speech by chronological age and sex (based on total number of words usedin 50 responses per child).

month-old children and increase withage from about 3 per cent at two yearsto about 7 per cent among the olderchildren. Conjunctions appear late,and, although they show a steady in-crease with age, they never equal morethan 4 per cent of the total number ofwords obtained. Interjections decreasewith age from 16 per cent of the wordsof the boys eighteen months old to lessthan 1 per cent among the children offifty-four months.The mean number of words securedfrom the girls is greatly in excess ofthe mean number of words used bythe boys at the lower age levels, but

of the parts of speech according to thenumber of different words is deter-mined largely by the proportions ofthe different parts of speech that arerepresented in the dictionary. When,however, the active vocabulary isconsidered regardless of variety, amuch better measure of linguisticdevelopment is obtained. This is seenby the fact that the changes with ageappear so much more clearly in theanalysis according to all the wordsused.It has been shown that, in consider-ing the parts of speech as they appearin the child's vocabulary, we are deal-


20/22

126 Child Behavior and Developmenting with material that is ratherquestionable from the psychologicalstandpoint. The question of the part ofspeech under which the single-wordsentence is to be classed, the problemof the inclusion of variants of words,the use of the total number of words,or simply of the number of differentwords usedall make material of thissort rather elusive. It is well to note,however, in connection with themethod used here, that essentiallythe same results have been obtainedfor this larger number of children,using only samplings of their speechrecorded in a comparatively shortperiod of time, as have been found forsmall numbers of children for whomvery careful and detailed records werekept over long periods. It would seemfrom such indications as these thatnearly as good a measure of the child'slinguistic status can be obtained by aseries of short observations as by long-continued study.

ConclusionAs has been shown in the study heredescribed, the average child of eighteenmonths is just beginning to use wordsto communicate his ideas to others.

Previously, he could communicate withthose around him only by crying andby gestures. By the age of four andone-half years, he is a highly socialindividual, using language for his everyneed and desire, not only physical,but intellectual, and, in addition, heis using all the most complex forms ofsentences found in adult conversationand his vocabulary amounts to severalthousand words. A glance at any of thecharts will suffice to show that thechanges that occur are very rapid upto three and one-half years of age.From then on, the developmentalprocess continues at a slower rate forthe next few years. The decrease inthe percentage of the child's conversa-tion that is incomprehensible and theincrease in the m ean length of response

are among the most striking changes.This rapid development in such anintricate and distinctly intellectualfunction is indeed remarkable, whenwe realize that it occurs in individualswho are decidedly immature physicallyand who have mental ages of only two,three, and four years.

REFERENCES1. CARMICHAEI,, LEONARD (cd.). Manualof child psychology. Boston: Houghton,in press. Chap ter onLanguage develop-ment by Dorothea McCarthy.2. GOODENOTJGH, FLORENCE L. TheKuhlman Binet tests : Acritical studyand evaluation. Inst. Child Welf.Monogr., No. 2. Minneapolis: Univer-sity of Minnesota Press, 1928. Pp.via + 146.3. M C C A R T H Y , D O R O T H E A . Languagedevelopment of the preschool child.Inst. Child Welf. Monogr., No. 4.Minneapolis: University of Min-nesota Press, 1930. Pp. xiii + 174.4. P I A G E T , J E A N . The language andthought of the child. New York:Harcourt, 1926. Pp. xxi i + 246.5. SMITH, MADORAH E. An investigationof the development of the sentenceand extent of vocabulary in youngchildren. Univ. la. Stud. Child Welf.,1926, 3, No. 5. Pp. 92.

S E L E C T E D B I B L I O G R A P H YANDERSON, J. E. An evaluation of variousindices of language developm ent. ChildDevelpm., 1937, 8, 62-68.The development of spokenlanguage. Thirty-eighth Yearb. Nat.Soc. Stud. Educ, Chap . X, P a r t I,Child development and the curriculum,pp. 211-224, 1939.BATEMAN, W. G. TWO children's progressin speech. J. educ. PsychoL, 1915, 6,475-493.

Papers on language development.I : The first wo rd. Fed. Sem., 1917, 24,391-398.DAVIS, E. A. The development oflinguistic skill in twin s, singletons withsiblings, and only children from agefive to ten years. Inst. Child Welf.,Monogr., N o. 14. Minneapolis: Univer-sity of Minnesota, 1937. Pp. ix -f 165.DAY, E. J. The development of languagein twins: I, A comparison of twinsand single children. Child Develpm.^1932, 3, 179-199.


21/22

Language Development of the PreschoolChild 127FISHER, M. S. Language patterns ofpre-school children. Child Develpm.Monogr., No. 15. New York: TeachersCollege, Columbia University, 1934.Pp. 88.H E I D E R , F. K., and G. M. H E I D E R . Acomparison of sentence structure ofdeaf and hearing children (In) Studiesin the psychology of the deaf No. 1 bythe Psychological Division, ClarenceW. Barron Research Department,Clarke School for the Deaf, Northamp-ton, Mass. Psycho. Monogr., 1940, 52,No. 1, 42-103.H E N L E , M.J and M. B. HU B B EL L ." E gocentricity " in adult conversation.J. soc. Psychol, 1938, 9, 227-234.HORN, E. The commonest words in thespoken vocabulary of children up toand including six years of age. Chap.VII, pp. 186-198. Yearb. Nat. Soc.Stud. Edvc: Part I. 1925.HORN, M. D. The thousand and threewords most frequently used by kinder-garten children. Childh. Educ, 1926-1927, 3, 118-122.International Kindergarten Union. Astudy of the vocabulary of children

before entering the first grade. Bal-tim ore : Williams & W ilkins, 1928. Pp.36.IRWIN, O. C. Research on speech soundsfor the first six months of life. Psychol.Bull., 1941, 38, 277-285.J E R S I L D , A. T., and R. RITZMAN. Aspectsof language development: the growthof loquacity and vocabulary. ChildDevelpm., 1938, 9, 243-259.JOHN SON , E. C, and C. C. J O S E Y . A note

on the development of the thoughtforms of children as described byPiaget. J. abnorm. soc. Psychol., 1931,26, 338-339.LABRANT, L. L. A study of certainlanguage developments of children ingrades four to twelve inclusive. Genet.Psychol. Monogr., 1933, 14, 387-491.LEWIS, M. M. Infant speech: Astudy ofthe beginnings of language. New Y ork:Harcourt, 1936. Pp. xii + 335.The beginning of reference topast and future in a child's speech.Brit. J. educ. Psychol., 1937, 7, 39-56.The beginning and early func-tions of questions in a child's speech.Brit. J. educ. Psychol, 1938, 8,15 0-17 1.L I T T L E , M. F. and H. M. WIL L IAMS. Ananalytical scale of language achieve-ment. Development of language andvocabulary in young children. IV .Univ. la. Stud. Child Welf., 1937, 13,No. 2. 49-94.

LYMAN, II. L. Summary of investigationsrelating to grammar, language andcomposition. Supplementary Educa-tional Monographs, No. 36, Chap. I l l ,Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1929. Pp. viii + 302.MARKEY, J. F. The symbolic process.New York: Harcourt, 1928. Pp.ix + 142.MCCARTHY, D. A comparison of chil-dren's language in different situationsand its relation to personality traits.J. genet. Psychol., 1929, 36, 583-591.

Language development. (In)Murchison, Carl (ed.). Ahandbook ofchild psychology, Chap. V III , pp . 32 9-373, 2d ed. rev. W orcester, M ass.: ClarkUniversity Press, 1933.

MCGRANAHAN, D. V. The psychology oflanguage. Psychol. Bull., 1936, 33 , 178-216.NICE, M. M. Concerning all-day conver-sations. Ped. Sent., 1920, 27, 166-177.Length of sentences as a criterionof a child's progress in speech. J.educ. Psychol., 1925, 16, 370-379.An analvsis of the conversation

of children and adults. Child Develpm.,1932, 3, 240-246.OLSON, W. C, and V. S. K OETZ L E.Amount and rate of talking of youngchildren. J. exper. Educ, 1936, 6, 175-179.PIAGKT, J. Le langage et la penseVchez l'enfant. Neuchatel & Paris,Delachaux & Niestle", 1924. Pp. 341.The language and thought of the child.Trans, by M. Warden. New York,Harcourt ; London, Kegan P aul,Trench,Tru bner & Co., 1926. Pp. xxiii + 246.R U G G , II., L. K R U E G E R , and A. SONDER-GAARD. Studies in child personality. I.A study of the language of kindergartenchildren. / . educ Psychol., 1929, 20,1-18.SEASHORE, R. H., and L. I). ECK ERSON .The measurement of individual differ-ences in general English vocabularies.J. educ. Psychol., 1940, 31, 14-38.SMITH, M. E. An investigation of the

development of the sentence and theextent of vocabulary in young children.Univ. la. Stud. Child Welf., 1926, 3,No. 5. Pp. 92.The influence of age, sex, andsituation on the frequency, form, andfunction of questions asked by pre-school children. Child Develpm., 1933,4, 201-213.A study of some factors influenc-ing the development of the sentence in


22/22

128 Child Behavior and Developmentpreschool children. J. genet. Psychol.,1935, 46, 182-212.Some light on the problem ofbilingualism as found from a study ofthe progress in mastery of Englishamong preschool children of non-American ancestry in Hawaii. Genet.Psychol. Monogr., 1939, 21, 121-284.

VAN ALSTYNE, D. The environment ofthree-year-old children: factors relatedto intelligence and vocabulary tests.Teach. Coll. Contr. Educ, 1929, No.366. Pp. 109.WELLMA N, B. L., I. M. C A S E , I. G. MEN-GEBT, and D. E. BRADBURY. Speechsounds of young children. Univ. la.

Stud. Child Welj., 1931, 1, No. 2,Pp. 82.WILLIAMS, H. M. An analytical study oflanguage achievement in preschoolchildren. Part I of Development oflanguage and vocabulary m young

children. Univ. la. Stud. Child Wei}.,1937, 13, No. 2, 9-18. New Series 336.A qualitative analysis of theerroneous speech sound substitu tions ofpreschool children. Part 11 of Develop-ment of language and vocabulary inyoung children. Univ. la. Stud. ChildWelf., 1937, 13, No. 2, 21-32. NewSeries 336.

and M. L. MCFARI.AND. A revi-sion of the Smith vocabulary test forpreschool children. Part III of Develop-ment of language and vocabulary myoung children. Univ. la. Stud. ChildWelf., 1937, 13, No. 2, 35-46. NewSeries 336.YOUNG, F. M. An analysis of certainvariables in a developmental study oflanguage. Genet. Psychol. Monogr.,1941, 2 3, 3-141.ZYVE, C. I. Conversation among children.Teach. Coll. Rec, 1927, 29, 46-61.

Documents

Language Development in the Preschool Child