7 - First combinations, first constructions

Summary

As children add words, they also add more specificity to their utterances, hence more complexity. They start to combine words with gestures, then words with other words. They advance from one word at a time to sequences of words and then combine these under the same intonation contour. The early composition of children’s vocabulary is strongly affected by adult input, and this may determine the proportions of nouns, verbs, and adjectives available to children early on. Their early constructions are limited in scope, tied to specific lexical items. Conversational exchanges at this stage often depend on adult scaffolding. Children distinguish ‘given’ from ‘new’ information, making use of word order and stress, as well as information from inflections, to identify word classes. Early word combinations in their first constructions are very similar across languages in the meanings expressed. Early combinations may be viewed as frozen forms, as intermediate forms, and as constructed forms, depending on their history in each child’s speech. Children learn to put together new combinations as they talk with adults and so discover more of the options in the language being acquired.