Anthropology Midterm Part 7 Flashcards
Noam Chomsky and others have argued that our language capacity is innate
that we are genetically programmed to use language.
what evidence tells us that our language capacity is innate?
- children don’t need to be taught to speak
- all humans, unless they have a disability, speak
- all babies, even deaf infants, automatically babble (play with language)
- infants are born with the ability to distinguish a lot of sound differences, but then this ability
diminishes as they focus in on the sounds that are useful for the language they are surrounded by
Children acquire language with remarkable skill.
Within a short span of time and with almost no direct instruction, children analyze a language completely – learning the complicated rules that make up the grammatical structure and acquiring an amazingly large vocabulary. They have dissected the language into its minimal separable units of sound and meaning and have discovered the rules for recombining sounds into words and the rules for combining words into sentences.
Some have argued that language acquisition is nothing but imitation; that children learn to imitate the words and phrases they hear.
But clearly this is not the case. They learn RULES and you can see them put those rules into action.
children still need to be exposed to language in a conversational setting.
just like culture, language comes from living in a social setting in which it is used.
babies want to learn language!
First, infants prefer to attend to speech sounds rather than non-speech sounds, even from the moment of birth.
Second, within a very short period of time they prefer to listen to their mother tongue over other languages.
12 weeks – Cooing stage
Makes squealing-gurgling sounds called cooing, which is vowel-like in character. Responds when spoken to.
20 weeks – consonantal sounds
Vowel-like cooing sounds begin to be interspersed with more consonantal sounds; labial fricatives, spirants, and nasals are common.
6 months – babbling resembling one-syllable utterances
Cooing changes into babbling resembling one-syllable utterances; neither vowels nor consonants have very fixed recurrences; most common utterances sound somewhat like ma, mu, da, or di.
8 months – Reduplication
(or more continuous repetitions) become frequent; intonation patters become distinct; utterances can signal emphasis and emotions.
10 months – sound play
Vocalizations are mixed with sound play such as gurgling or bubble-blowing; appears to wish to imitate sounds, but they are never quite successful; beginning to differentiate between words heard by making differential adjustment.
12 months- words
Identical sound sequences are replicated with higher relative frequency of occurrence and words (like mamma or dadda) are emerging; definite signs of understanding words and commands (“show me your fingers”).
18 months - repertoire of approximately 50 words
still much babbling now of several syllables with intricate intonation pattern; no attempt to communicate information and no frustration for not being understood; little ability to join two words together outside of learned utterances (thank you, come here).
This is the one-word stage in which the maximum sentence length is one word. What is important to realize about these stages is that the children are not only learning vocabulary, but also syntax. These one-word utterances are sentences, sometimes referred to as holophrases (literally, whole sentences), and they will even use sentence intonation when they use them indicating questions, demands, etc.
holophrases
whole sentences
When children do start to be able to distinguish phonemes…
they learn to hear the differences well before they can themselves articulate the differences
24 months –two-word utterance
Vocabulary of more than 50 items; at this point children are learning perhaps 10-12 new words each day; spontaneously makes two-word utterances of own creation; increase in communicative behavior and interest in language.
two-word stage
in which the child experiments with many binary syntactical structures such as possessor-possessed (“Mommy hat”); actor-action (“Cat sleeping”); and action-object (“Drink milk”). They almost always exhibit the appropriate word order.
30 months –
Huge increase in vocabulary with new additions daily; no babbling at all; utterances have communicative intent and there is frustration if not understood; utterances consist of at least two words, and many have three or even five words.
3 years
Vocabulary of some 1000 words. 80% of utterances intelligible to strangers; grammatical complexity of utterances is roughly that of adult language, although mistakes still occur.
enculturation
enculturation is the process by which a person learns his or her culture.
most of the psychological literature on child development is very ethnocentric and uses white, middle-class, western culture as the norm
Ochs and Schieffelin argue that this model is limited and instead we need to look at the variable ethnographic context to understand what exactly is being learned and how.
the language used by children and to children is an important aspect of the enculturation or socialization process.
So, while children are learning language, they are also learning about the expectations of them as individuals within their culture.
babytalk
abytalk is not just a form of “degenerate” speech, as it has been labeled by some linguists. It is, instead, a very systematic form of modified speech which includes:
➔Use of high pitch
➔Exaggerated and slowed intonation.
➔Use of diminutives, reduplicated words, simple sentences, shorter sentences, and
interrogatives.
* The use of wordplay games, such as “peek-a-boo.
* Direct instruction: “Can you say ‘thank you’?”
protoconversation
This takes place when the caregiver responds to even facial expressions and actions as if they were being used to deliberately communicate a meaning that is verbal and that meaning is then “echoed” by the caregiver
In this context, the caregiver, from birth, is conceiving of the baby as a person worthy of being included in verbal exchange. They are social beings capable of intentionality
The Kaluli
a small, non-literate (meaning they don’t have written language), culture in Papua New Guinea, with whom Bambi Scheffelin worked.
Kaluli describe their babies as
helpless, soft, and having no understanding.
In this culture, infants are under the constant care of their mothers. When a baby cries, it is breastfed by the mother, but the mother generally gives little attention to the child while doing this. She will either be engaged in work or in conversation with others in the household.
Because they see their infants as “lacking understanding,”
mothers never try to engage in a conversation with their infants
Elinor Ochs
worked in a small village in Western Samoa
Samoan society is highly stratified
the caregivers of a child are also ranked in terms of their status. Children in Samoan are generally cared for by their mother and their siblings. Besides the mother, the eldest caregiver is considered to be the highest rank and the youngest the lowest rank.
in Samoan society, In the earliest months of a child’s life
they are mostly talked about rather than to. Language addressed to the infant is in the form of songs or rhythmic vocalizations, and are not seen as attempts at conversation.
If the infant makes a noise or gesture, it is interpreted, but these interpretations will be discussed with others and not with the infant itself.
in somoan society, when are they talked to?
Once a child starts to crawl, language starts to be directed toward the child. Most of the verbalizations, however, are negative sanctions for doing things they should not. At this stage, and up though about 3 years of age, the child is considered mischievous and willful. The voice quality directed to them is loud and sharp, and the language is not simplified. Speech, then, is being directed at the child and is not used to engage the child in conversation.
in somoan society, When a child starts to ask for things
they learn to direct their requests to the highest ranking caregiver around (generally the mother) but not to expect a response from the caregiver. The caregiver will then instruct a lower ranking caregiver to attend to the needs of the child and to respond to the child. So, again we do not see the dyadic conversations we find in the U.S., but multiple party conversations.
samoan children are taught at a very young age to orientation themselves towards others.
They are taught to meet the needs of the situation by noticing others, listening to them, and adapting their own speech to the status and needs of those around them.
Again, unintelligible utterances are not interpreted, and are in fact considered to be utterances in another language. It is up to the child to be understood by those who are of higher rank then themselves.
somoan children by the age of 3, children are expected to deliver verbatim messages on behalf of more mature members of the family.
early on, children are instructed in the ways they should speak to other individuals, and are often called upon to deliver messages.
“The capacity to express intentions [through language] is human but which intentions can be expressed by whom, when, and how is subject to local expectations concerning the social behavior of members.”
This means that societies will differ in their expectations of what children can and should communicate, and how they should learn to communication. Language development always involves a simultaneous enculturation into a community’s distinctive way-of-being in the world.
Moreover, there is no “right” way to teach language. In fact, language does not need to be taught at all, although most cultures believe this and will develop ways of interacting with infants that reflect their beliefs.
Children just need to be exposed to language in an interactive environment to become fluent in language.
When we learn a second language later in live, after we have achieved native competence in a language,
the process of acquiring this second language is quite distinct from what was outlined above.
how is language acquisition different with bilingual learners?
In this case, language learning is more deliberate and conscious, and is not learned with the same ease as first-language acquisition.
with the exception of some individuals who have a special talent for languages, second-language learners, especially as an adult often do not achieve the same kind of native competence as they do with their first language.
They generally speak with a non-native accent and may make grammatical errors more frequently.
unlike first-language acquisition, which seems so natural and is universally successfu
second-language acquisition varies considerably depending on the individual and the age at which they attempt to learn a second language. Some people may never be able to acquire a second language!
