Early language acquisition Flashcards
First focus, second, third focus
phonology, semantics, syntax
Prelinguistic communication. How long? Examples? When does intentional communication start and how can you tell - rules for intentional communication
About 1 year until communication is verbal. Unintentional - smiling, crying, gestures. Intentional communication begins around 8 months. Indicated by reliable pointing – waiting and persistence as well as having alternative plans
Input (in-utero, child-directed speech)
in-utero hearing (hearing ready/developed already when we’re born, other senses not as much). CDS is higher in pitch, more variations, exaggerated intonation, slower rate, shorter utterances, repetition
CDS importance
New word exposure, linked to morphological and semantic development. Not “baby talk”, dramatically correct, don’t change words
Methodologies for studying input in children (3)
habituation (high-amplitude sucking, HAS)
conditioned head turn
cardiac deceleration
HAS
High-amplitude sucking: playing “ba” for awhile, they get bored (suck slower when they get bored), then switch to “pa” and see what happens to sucking rate
Conditioned head turn
conditioned when they turn their head, sound stops playing. Can see how long they want to listen to something (graph, curved not linear)
Universal theory of development
we are born with full sound contrast (some infants can’t get sh, s, or f, th differences though)
The development of speech perception (4 days, 2 months or older, Werker and Tees (1984), ~4.5 months)
by 4 days of age, we show preference for our mother’s voice, prefer our native language (probably just the earliest they could study without the kid falling asleep)
At 2 months, distinguish difficult contrasts form many languages (not all?)
Werker And Tees - non native distinctions decline in latter part of first year (attunement)
recognize own name (4.5 months)
Linguistic perception
involves isolating, storing, and accessing sound patterns that represent words in a language.
Prosody
stress, pauses, intonation (we learn perceptual cues to word boundaries)
Phonotactic probability (CDS and repetition help to lear this)
The probability that sounds occur in sequence at a given word position (versus the probability that two sounds occur across a word boundary. This isn’t always helpful (big dog is helpful, but it trains is probably not)
Perceptual research has demonstrated a sensitivity to phonotactic probabilities in 8-9 month olds. What has this skill been attributed to?
A sophisticated skill to derive statistical properties
At the same time perception is developing, production is developing. Towards the first words (1-1.5 years), babies babble. Define babbling, and why do babies babble?
Babbling is reduplicated clearly identifiable phoneme consonants. Babies babble more alone to practice and because they find it pleasurable
What are first words typically?
Names for things seen and interacted with (nouns). Idiomorphs are common.
How many words by 20-24 months?
50
Idiomorph
A name a child makes up for an item in early development
Fodor’s constraints
whole object (we assume a word refers to the whole object rather than part of one).
Reference: assume words refer to objection and actions
Novel name to nameless category (someone says ball, a ball is there, assume the name of it is ball)
Extendibility
Brown’s syntactic bootstrapping
Children learn word meanings through their position in a sentence (recognizing syntactic categories) - eg a noun goes in a certain position in a sentence. Syntax helps to match words used by others to their meaning
Fast-mapping or quick incidental learning (QUIL)
lexical entries are added rapidly from ages about 2-5 (sound and meaning converge). Vocabulary “growth spurt”. Meaning is refined long after a word is added to the lexicon (semantic networks)
Semantic networks and evidence for them
meaning and organization change over time (errors of word use show semantic refinement over time)
Types of errors of word use (2)
overextensions, under extensions
Overextensions
too man items included in word class
Under extensions
Word used in too restrictive manner
Aspects of language that dominate first year
phonology and semantics (phonology (speech perception and babbling)), this leads to lexical perception and storage and production of words. Meaning and lexical organization are crucial too.
When do word combinations start? How do they start?
By 2 years, may start with 2 unrelated words, sometimes reflecting 2 utterances
True early word combinations denote specific meaning from combination. Give three examples of types of first word combinations
Negation: adding “no” to something (no go, no bed)
Recurrence: to ask for more of something (more juice)
Nonexistence: denoting disappearance (all gone)
Second set of word combinations (3) – other types of meaning emerge. Described as telegraphic, missing morphology
actor and action (mommy go)
modification of a noun (big dog)
possession (mommy shoe)
What aspect of language dominates preschool language development
morphology. The emergence of bound morphemes marks time of morphological growth; a rapid increase in MLU
MLU
Mean length of utterance (a measure of complexity, the average number of morphemes per utterance)
Bound morpheme
Morpheme that cannot stand alone as a word (usually a prefix or a suffix)
At what MLU do we start to see the addition of bound morphemes?
> /= 2.00 (cross-linguistic evidence)
What is the maximum MLU that is still considered to be the best indicator of language complexity?
Up to 4.0-4.5. After this, just adding more words, not really increasing in complexity
Research found that morphological growth had a predictable order, but why?
Complexity. Linguistic complexity = number of meanings and/or number of rules. Perceptual saliency: assessing what’s coming in based on expectancy
Order of morphological acquisition (1-14)
1) ing
2) in
3) on
4) /s/ marking a plural
5) some irregular past tense verbs
6) /s/ marking possession
7) uncontracted copula of to be (is are, was , were)
8) articles “a” and “the”
9) /ed/ endings marking past tense
10) /s/ ending on third person regular verb forms (he moves)
11) Third person irregular verb forms (has/does)
12) uncontractable auxiliary verbs (he is going)
13) contractable copula (it’s my book)
14) contractable auxiliary verbs (he’s reading)
Standing in mud on leaves that fell. The tree’s leaves. They were on the tree, but they changed colour. Each leaf dies, it has to. They are going to grow back. When it’s spring and it’s getting warm
Over-regularization/morphology
Use of a regular morpheme in an irregular word (goed, dated, breaded)
Stages of development for irregular past tense verbs (3)
1) used correctly (e.g. “ate”) – learn as a lexical item
2) overregularization (e.g. “eated”) – learn the rule, apply to everything
3) correct again (e.d. “ate”) – learn irregularities to the rule
“Later” language aquisition (late preschool years and beyond) focuses (5)
phonology (precision plus later sounds), grammatical morphemes (consistency), continued vocabulary growth, pragmatics, syntax, metalinguistics
Syntax in late preschool years – learning to say “no” stages
1) negatives (no, not) precode the utterance (no mom read)
2) negatives go with the main verb (mom no read)
3) coordinated with auxiliary/verb (mom, don’t read)
Syntax in late preschool years – learning to ask questions (4-5 years) - how they start + first questions asked
Start with just inflection (no morphology change). Yes/no questions: must invert subject/NP and auxiliary verb (the boy is eating —-> is the boy eating?)
Syntax in late preschool years – learning to ask questions, second type of questions
Declarative —> Interrogative (move the auxiliary to the left of the subject) – The boy will leave to “will the boy leave?”
Syntax in late preschool years – learning to ask questions, third type of questions
Wh- questions. Add wh- word to start of sentence (+ rising intonation), invert the subject and the auxiliary. What, where, who typically emerge first. When, why, how are more difficult)
- like song “who what where when why how”
Syntax in late preschool years – passives pattern
Understood between 3.5-4 years but not when slightly older. Transition when learning how to produce passives: understood but not produced, then a period of confusion, then understood and produced. Most confusing if the subject and the object can be switched and the sentence will still make sense (The girl was kicked by the boy is more confusing than the ball was kicked by the boy)
Pragmatics: discourse skills. Things to learn in preschool/school (2)
Taking turns, topic maintenance/shared reference
How is topic maintenance defined and measured?
Contingency - utterances that share the topic of the preceding one (and add to it). Count how many utterances relate to previous utterances (on topic).
% contingent utterances by age
Before 2 years, very few
By 3, about half are contingent, 16% are off topic completely, rest just stop the conversation in some way
Contingency gradually increases with age/experience
How can we look at how phonology, semantics, morphology/syntax all work together?
Telling a story:
- narrative production is studied by children through personal stories and picture books. Integrates multiple language “modules’ and oral language development in general.
Supporting oral language development in a language-rich environment (video)
syntax and reading are not related, but morphology is. Vocabulary, morphology and phonology are all proportional to reading, expressive language/receptive language/listening comprehension/rare words
Metalinguistics + importance
Explicit awareness of language; the ability to attend and analyze language forms
- directly asking children about language, phonological awareness, allophones, isolate phonemes in speech (important for reading)
Phonemic awareness
the ability to notice, hear, think about, and manipulate phonemes in spoken words. Linked to literacy, correlational and experimental data develops on a continuum: unit size and complexity of task (box, 3 letters, 4 phonemes. Wheat - 5 letters, 3 phonemes)
Phonemic awareness acquisition (9)
1) Recite and produce rhymes, alliteration
2) Clap out syllables in a word
3) recognize like beginning sounds
