Chapter 10: Language development Flashcards
What is the difference between nativism and empiricism?
Nativism: many skills are hard-wired in the brain at birth
Empiricism: no built-in core knowledge, all knowledge from learning and experience
What are 4 important aspects of language?
- Symbolic system: meaningful
- Rule-governed system: regularities/grammar
- Productivity: finite number of units can yield infinite possible combinations
- Communication system
What is meant when said that language is a pragmatic system?
The abilities to communicate effectively and appropriately in a social context
What are 5 points Steven Pinker makes?
- Language is universal
- Languages conform a universal design
- Children pass through universal series of stages in acquiring language
- If children don’t have a common language, they’ll develop one of their own
- Language and intelligence are doubly separable in disorders
What are 4 abilities that develop in the pragmatic system?
- Turn taking (mother-infant interaction, imitation)
- Initiating interactions
- Maintaining conversations
- Repairing faulty conversations
What are proto-conversations?
What is the difference between proto-imperatives and proto-declaratives?
Proto-conversations = interactions between adults and infants in which the adults vocalize when the infants are not vocalizing
Imperative: infant points to object and alternate gaze between object and adult until they obtain the object
Declarative: infant uses pointing or looking to direct an adult’s attention toward an object –> desire shared experience
What is a mirror neuron?
Neurons that fire when an individual executes a motor act and when they see another individual performing the same motor act
What are 3 important aspects of maintaining conversations?
- Adding relevant info
- gain listener’s attention
- knowing when it’s your turn to speak
What is meant with repairing faulty conversations?
Repairing miscommunications by revising the original message in a clear and effective way
What is phonology?
Part of language concerned with perception and production of sounds in language
What is speech stream?
Undifferentiated series of words that are produced when we communicate
What is the function of motherese/infant-directed speech?
Motherese has higher pitch and more exaggerated pitch contours and is more rhythmic.
Children learn how to divide or segment speech stream into meaningful units
What is a phoneme?
Smallest unit of speech that can affect meaning
What is categorical perception and is this already there in young infants?
Perceptually discriminable stimuli are treated as belonging to the same category.
–> Innate mechanism for interpretation of sounds (from 1 month infants measurable)
What is the development direction of the ability to discriminate possible phonemes?
It diminishes with age. After 6 months, an infant can’t discriminate non-native phonemes
On what two things does children’s acquisition of phonemes of native language depend?
- Innate predisposition for categorical perception of sounds
- Experience with native language
What are the 5 phases of maturation of speech production?
- Reflexive vocalizations (birth-2m)
- Cooing/laughing (2-4m)
- Babbling/vocal play (4-6m)
- Canonical babbling (6-10m)
- Modulated babbling (>10m)
What are reflexive vocalizations?
First sounds produced by infants, such as cries, coughs, burps and sneezes
What happens in the phase of cooing and laughing?
Start of laughing and combining sounds with one another
Reciprocal cooing between infant and parent helps infant to learn that communication involves taking turns
What happens in the phase of babbling and vocal play?
Controlled vocalizations, control of vocal cords, lips, tongue and mouth
What happens in the canonical babbling phase? What is the alternative name of this babbling in deaf children?
Vowels and consonants are combined in a way they resemble words
In deaf children: manual babbling: learning to sign
What happens in the modulated babbling phase?
Intonation patterns and variety of sound combinations.
Learning in acquisition of intonation patterns of native language
On which 3 things does the capacity to produce language depend?
- Hereditary/environmental factors
- Maturation
- Experience
What is syntax? Explain the difference between the s- and d-structure (Chomsky)?
Syntax = knowing how words and morphemes combine to form larger units (phrases, sentences)
s = surface structure: actual spoken sentence (different in all languages)
d = deep structure: abstract representation of a sentence (universal in all languages)
What is the difference between a phoneme and a morpheme?
Phoneme = smallest meaningful part of a sound
Morpheme = smallest meaningful part of a word
What are the 5 points of Chomsky’s arguments for innate language knowledge?
Poverty of stimulus argument =
- Requirement ability to connect d- to s-structures
- Children hear s-structure, d-structure is innate
- Language input is complex
- Children receive little feedback about grammar
- Children acquire language quickly
What is universal grammar?
Human languages share fundamental similarities and these are attributable to innate principles
–> Deep down there’s only 1 language
–> D-structure is innate! Experience provides info about s-structure
What is overregularization? Up to what age does this occur? For what claim is this evidence?
When a previously learned rule is applied to the wrong situation (e.g. thinked)
–> Up to age 7
–> Evidence that language learning isn’t based on conditioning
What is the balance between comprehension and production of speech in children’s development?
Comprehension begins in early infancy
Production begins later
What’s the difference between overextension and underextension?
Overextension = extending word meaning too broadly (e.g. bird for everything that flies)
Underextension = extending word meaning too little (e.g. forgetting duck in bath is the same word for the birds in the park)
What is overgeneralization? What is the difference with overregularization?
Overgeneralization = creating new verb by treating a noun as a verb (ballereening)
Overregularization: learned rule is applied in the wrong way
Which scientist provided a lot of evidence for Steven Pinker’s claim: languages conform to a universal design?
Chomsky with his poverty of the stimulus argument, d-/s-structures and universal grammar
What are 3 criticisms on the universal design of language point of view?
- Languages are too diverse and don’t show universal design
- Parents are language role models –> sophisticated words have influence on children’s later vocabulary
- Constructivists don’t agree on the innate knowledge/predisposition for learning a language
What is the whole object constraint? Name an example
Assumption that children believe that words refere to whole objects rather than parts
E.g. pointing at an elephant ‘that’s an elephant’ –> child understands you point to the entire animal
What are the 4 systems of language development?
- Pragmatic system (social)
- Phonological system (sound)
- Syntactic system (grammar)
- Semantic system (meaning)
What are transitional probabilities? What is it used for in infants and what type of learning is this?
The probability that a syllable is followed by another specific syllable
Co - ver (high probability)
Co - lo (low probability)
Infants use it to distinguish between different strings of syllables
This is statistical learning, which is a general learning mechanism non-specific to language
What is the role of the semantic system?
It categorizes words in relation to their meaning. Semantic relations help to organize the semantic system and grow vocabulary
What is the mutual exclusivity constraint? Give an example
Assumption that children believe that there is a one-to-one correspondence between words and meanings
The animals that are dogs have no other name, and dogs can’t be other animals
When do the one-word and two-word phases start and what are they? What happens after this?
One-word: 10-18m
–> Single word utterances often starting with people based words
Two-word: 18-24m
–> Use of 2 words that convey the most meaning
–> The kid knows which 2 words, because they are most stressed in adult speech
After 24m the syntactic knowledge develops quickly
What is MLU and how does it develop after 24m?
Mean length of utterances –> increases from 24m onward
Do parents correct bad grammar of a child?
No, they often ignore it or reinforce it
On which 4 aspects does a child’s interpretation of a new word depend on?
- Existing semantic system
- Existing world knowledge
- Level of cognitive skills
- Selective attention
What are, according to Kuczaj, the two strategies children use when faced with gaps in semantic or conceptual system?
Reflecting interrelationship of language and cognitive development:
- Acquiring a new word: construct new scheme
- Acquiring a new concept: attempt to attach a known word to a new concept, if nothing matches, find a new word
What are two aspects concerning language of Williams syndrome? What is the biological basis of Williams syndrome?
- Low IQ (mean=56)
- Good at language, impaired spatial/number cognition
Microdeletion on chromosome 7
What is SLI?
Specific language impairment
- Normal/high IQ
- Impaired language
What do SLI and Williams syndrome tell you about the relationship between language and intelligence?
There is double dissociation. You can have high intelligence and poor language, and also other way around
Why will dogs and cats never speak?
- Lack of cognitive ability to recombine and decompose sounds
- Different FOXP2 gene
