development of language and signal use Flashcards
purpose of language
communication! – semantics and pragmatics
what is language?
symbols + rules
symbols
systems for representing our thoughts, feelings, and knowledge, and for communicating them to othersa
when do children master the basic structure of their language?
around age 5
comprehension
understanding of what others say/sign/write
production
process of speaking/signing/writing
generative
using a finite set of words to generate an infinite number of sentences
phonemes
smallest units of a meaningful word (sounds)
English uses 45/200 worldwide
morphemes
the smallest units of meaning in language
ex. dogs - 2
syntax
rules specifying how words from different categories can be combined
pragmatics
knowledge about how a language us used (context)
what is required to learn language?
- a human brain (other animals cannot acquire language like humans)
- a human environment - exposure to others using language (those deprived of this environment do not learn language to the same degree)
brain-language lateralization
90% of right handers language represented in the left hemisphere
language acquisition sensitive period
ends somewhere between 5-puberty
bilingualism
fluency in two languages
- does not cause language/developmental delay
- can begin in the womb
language mixing
when children learning two or more languages mix certain vocab, grammar, etc.
infant-directed speech
distinctive mode of speech used when speaking to infants/toddlers, pitch variability, slower speech, more word repetition and questions
receptive language
comprehension
expressive language
production
vocabulary burst
latter half of second year, burst from knowing 100s of words to 1000s
nominal insight
realization that objects have names
when do children lose the ability to discriminate between all language sounds?
10-12 months
what are the language learning stages?
pre-stage: producing sounds (3 months)
1. babbling (6-8 months)
2. first words (10-15 months) – holophrastic (12-15 months)
3. vocabulary burst (18-19 months)
4. telegraphic (24 months)
5. word sentences (30 months)
additional grammatical morphemes (about 3 years)
what are the mechanisms of learning language?
- perceptual narrowing/phoneme discrimination
- statistical learning/word segmentation/distributional properties
- biases - whole object, mutual exclusivity, syntactic bootstrapping, pragmatic cues
- external help - environment/caregivers
prosody
characteristic rhythm and intonational patterns with which language is spoken
categorical perception
perception of phonemes belonging to specific categories
voice onset time (VOT)
length of time between air passing though the lips and when vocal chords start vibrating (ba and pa)
how many sounds can infants distinguish?
600 consonants and 20 vowels
lose this ability around 12 months
experience-independent process
word segmentation
discovering where words begin and end in speech, develops in second half of first year
distributional properties
certain sounds are more likely to occur together than others (appears days after birth)
can recognize their name at about 4.5 months
babbling
repetitive consonant-vowel sequences or hand movements, emerges between 6-10 months, signals that baby is ready to learn!
when do babies typically produce their first word?
10-15 months, culturally dependent
overextension
using a word in a broader context than is appropriate (ex. a dog is all four-legged animals)
underextension
using a word in a more limited context than appropriate (ex. only their dog is a doggie)
mutual exclusivity
assumption that an entity will have only one name (not applicable to multi-lingual infants)
whole object assumption
except a novel word to refer to a whole object rather than a part
pragmatic cues
aspects of the social context used for word learning (emotion, position, etc.)
cross situational word learning
determining meaning by tracking correlations over multiple scenes/contexts
syntactic bootstrapping
using grammatical structure to infer the meaning of a new word
when does simple sentence usage begin?
the end of the second year
telegraphic speech
short utterances, leave out non-essential words ex. milk please!
overregularization
speech errors in which children treat irregular forms as if they were regular (ex. I goed to the park)
collective monologues
conversational between children that involves a series of non-sequiturs
narratives
descriptions of the past that have the form of a story, emerges at about 5 years old, often aided by parents scaffolding
how many words does an average fifth grader know?
40,000
B.F Skinner theory
language is the result of experience and operant conditioning, reinforcement/punishment
Chomsky theory
nativism, language is an innate developmental process, supported by creole languages, overregularization, critical developmental periods
Universal Grammar
proposed set of highly abstract structures common to all languages (ex. complete invention of NSL)
conncetionism
computational modeling approach that emphasizes simultaneous activity of numerous interconnected processing units
dual representation
treating a symbolic artifact as both a real object and as a symbol for something other than itself, develops through social/cultural experiences
broca’s area
named after French neurologist Paul Broca
left interior frontal region
Broca’s aphasia: production aphasia, severely impaired language production, poor articulation
wernicke’s area
German neurologist Carl Wernicke
left superior temporal area
Wernicke’s aphasia: word deafness, word blindness, difficulty finding words (anomia), fluent speech that makes no sense
hemispherectomy
the removal of one brain hemisphere
