Child Language Acquisition

Referring in detail to both transcripts, and to relevant ideas from language study, describe and comment on the language used by Hollie and Ewan in their interactions and role play.
As Hollie and Ewan are the same age and related, this means that they will know each other well, have a shared knowledge and be at a similar stage of language development. The language used by Hollie and Ewan has a semantic field of shopping in a supermarket ‘would you like cashback’ ‘two pounds then’. This is specific vocabulary is chosen by the children as they are using role play of being in a shop where they would usually go with their parents so they will therefore be purposefully imitating the conversations they see having with their parents which therefore supports the imitation theory by Skinner as they can remember certain features of the conversations their parents would have with the shop keeper. This also supports Vgotskys language development theory as they are learning from social situations in their immediate environment. However, language that the children uses is not completely grammatically correct for example; ‘me give you money’ ‘I’m gonna’ ‘I’ve got loads of scans’, this reflects that the children aren’t only imitating but using innateness as their parents would not have errors in their language like the children do. Ewan’s speech involves a lot of ellipsis ‘me got real one’, this is usually due to confusion regarding the use of personal pronoun ‘me’, this is substitution ‘I’ which leads to ellipsis of the definite article ‘have’ in this case. This shows that Ewan does not yet understand how to use these pronouns correctly however this shows cognitive development as he is still mastering these language ‘rules’.
Ewan and Hollie follow a turn taking discourse structure using adjacency pairs. As they are doing role-play they are imitating the structure that they have observed that their parents have in a supermarket, this is also influenced by the roles each