Sven- Devl Of Lang

Question 1

What’s in a sound

Answer 1

Sounds have physical properties that lead to psych percepts: pitch, loudness, timbre, timing
Communicative sounds have social properties like emotions and attention

Question 2

Prenatal exposure

Answer 2

Respond to audit stim from 25-29 weeks, sounds filtered through mothers body so can’t hear above 1000hz and limited details like consonants but keeps pitch, loudness and timings called prosody.

Question 3

In utero testing

Answer 3

De Casper 1994: changes in foetal hr in response to fam stories as other increased hr. can learn sound patterns . Mampe: newborn cries reflect native lang and rising contour in french and falling in German. Can I’d other Lang’s

Question 4

Pre and post natal

Answer 4

Partanen: measured erp/brain activity after birth and 4motnhs later in response to original or modified song, found sig diffs for original shows learning spec and not just any melody. Decasper: infant showed preference for fam sorry by HAS (prosody not just storytelling)

Question 5

Testing after birth

Answer 5

Mehler 88: can tell native vs non lang as 4 day old french tested W french or Russian and measured HAS, faster sucking for diff. Non nutrivive sucking . Replicated when sounds were low pass filtered W other Lang’s so only prosody learnt . Also can learn diff intonations like statement vs q

Question 6

Lang rules

Answer 6

Phonemes classes of sounds that affect meaning, allophone are two or more similar sounds that are diff version of a phoneme , minimal pair words have diff meanings but same sounds W one phoneme diff. Vowels are voiced means vocal chords vibrate- allowed production of pitch and intensity. Syllables are building clocks and must have vowel, contributing to rhythm and prosody

Question 7

Testing logic

Answer 7

If infants need prosody and if it is carried by syllables then infants shouldn’t be able to tell souns W no vowels. Mehler: for pst and tsp there was no HAS but was for uptsu and pay so not just durations

Question 8

Infant directed speech

Answer 8

Exaggerated prosody, higher pitch and larger range, pauses and shorter, more rhythm. Infants prefers due to pitch patterns. Used for infant bonding and lang acquisition as attention and gives cues. Not universal not not needed for lang but also like music so have have general audit skills

Question 9

Categorical perception

Answer 9

Continuum perceived at diff categories. Some pairs of sounds seen as continuum like voice onset time (time between opening of lips and start of vocal chord vibration) like a to ba but have sharp phoneme boundary. If continuous would be diagnosed line. If cont shouldn’t be able to tell sounds within same category- can’t in cp but can if across boundary. Discrimination peak- adaptive for lang

Question 10

Cp at birth

Answer 10

Eimas 71: habituated babies to one sound using has, next was between boundaries 20ms vot, within shifted the same way but in same category or control which is same sound. Found between cat increased has so cp present at birth. Shown for other things like music so not lang spec

Question 11

Animals

Answer 11

Cp shown in many animals chinchillas, water, monkeys, birds, crickets. Khul: cont of d to t using vot, chinchillas taught perfect t or d. Presented cont and founds they performed same as adults as see cat not cont so reflect general properties/ coarse grained not find

Question 12

Airflow

Answer 12

When airflow is stopped in the mouth, you produce a stop consonant either fully blocked- oral stop but if passes via the nose it is nasal stop n
Voiced is vibration of the vocal chords
Aspirated stop is an unviced oral stop w long VOT and puff of air

Question 13

Babbling

Answer 13

Repeating syllables W no meaning 6-15m. Motor is consteaints: mostly stops, nasal sounds, glides like y and W, fricatives and liquids like l and r. Universal, later stages reflect own lang. non referential to referential. Also in deaf babies. Peottio and marentette 91: dead showed greater prop of manual babbling and increased w age

Question 14

Babbling precursor for lang - 2 arguments

Answer 14

Discontinuity hyp: Jakobson: no relation between babbling and phonological dev, innate, muscular exercise, all sounds babbled, silent period between babbling and real lang, happens in deaf so non linguistic. Continuity:mowrer- commonalities between late babbling and native language, adults can hear diff babies in diff Lang’s, no silent period, correlation detectable

Question 15

Precourser lang

Answer 15

Holowka and petitto: l has land and r emotions. When express emotions, control l side of face more, when ling, right side dom. graves 82: right asymmetry in speakers. H and p: when laughing, more left, when babbling more r

Question 16

Phonemes

Answer 16

Classes of sounds in lang. at 1.5, 50-60% correct. At 3, 90% consonants and all vowels but toddlers avoid hard phonemes like ma not mum, sub fricagives. Phonemes p,b,h,m first and seen in babbling

Question 17

Word learning

Answer 17

Ask parents but subjective and production not comp. tincoff and jusczek: when 6m, look at mother when hear mother, not father or another woman. Bortfeld: 1 heard story W mommy in each sentence, other heard Tommy. Word feet after mommy /Tommy. Group heard mummy had easier time learning feet as know mummy and boundary, Tommy had no preference. Helps segmentation but not semantic meaning

Question 18

Reference problem

Answer 18

Hard to infer intention from behaviour. Start combining 2 words at 18-25m but ambitious. Have 2 stages: random arrangements then more syntax like construction (deep structure visible)

Question 19

Segmentation

Answer 19

Less than 10% ids has isolated words- segmenting hard Brent. Statistical learning saffran: 8m heard continuous speech train, spot regularities (transitional probabilities between syllables). Split up then played word from string or non word (letters there but not in that order). Then played word and part word. Found more attention to novel word- high trans prob linked to lively words

Question 20

Vocab growth

Answer 20

Nouns first as referential, then verbs, modoeifers, social words, grammatical functions. Production follows comprehension. Age only relates to 50%, bio factors like genes/synaptogenisis, other cog abilities (pretend play, tom), environmental (talkative parents). Correlate W comp as comes first

Question 21

Lexical explosion

Answer 21

Spurt in word learning in second year-bloom. Qual changes in learning, naming insight (realise power by naming), onset of symbolism. Syntactic dev. But some don’t show explosion, happens at diff times so not needed-goldfield. Mcmurray: spurt shown in computer if words can be acquired in parallel and few words can be acquired quickly and greater number takes longer

Question 22

Multiword utterances

Answer 22

As vocab increases, useful measurement is mean length of utterance- no. Words in stenencd even when not correct. Children differ in age sentences increase, independent of vocab size as increase in MLU but diff starts. At 24m, longer MLU increasessyntactic complexity as more function, multiple clause and tenses

Question 23

Semantic development

Answer 23

Verbs can be inferred from known nouns in context- called syntactic bootstrapping. Markman and wachtel: whole object bias when learning so teaching features hard. Mutual exclusivity - when know name of object, novel word must mean something else. IDS may play a role in syntax and semantics

Question 24

Visual attention , hebbian learning

Answer 24

Smith: mother teaches word object pairing. Infant camera shows successful learning correlated W proportional of field of view but only after utterance. Hebbian: ability to track co occurring events and make link due to synaptic firing