Early language acquisition

Question 1

First focus, second, third focus

Answer 1

phonology, semantics, syntax

Question 2

Prelinguistic communication. How long? Examples? When does intentional communication start and how can you tell - rules for intentional communication

Answer 2

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

Question 3

Input (in-utero, child-directed speech)

Answer 3

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

Question 4

CDS importance

Answer 4

New word exposure, linked to morphological and semantic development. Not “baby talk”, dramatically correct, don’t change words

Question 5

Methodologies for studying input in children (3)

Answer 5

habituation (high-amplitude sucking, HAS)

conditioned head turn

cardiac deceleration

Question 6

HAS

Answer 6

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

Question 7

Conditioned head turn

Answer 7

conditioned when they turn their head, sound stops playing. Can see how long they want to listen to something (graph, curved not linear)

Question 8

Universal theory of development

Answer 8

we are born with full sound contrast (some infants can’t get sh, s, or f, th differences though)

Question 9

The development of speech perception (4 days, 2 months or older, Werker and Tees (1984), ~4.5 months)

Answer 9

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)

Question 10

Linguistic perception

Answer 10

involves isolating, storing, and accessing sound patterns that represent words in a language.

Question 11

Prosody

Answer 11

stress, pauses, intonation (we learn perceptual cues to word boundaries)

Question 12

Phonotactic probability (CDS and repetition help to lear this)

Answer 12

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)

Question 13

Perceptual research has demonstrated a sensitivity to phonotactic probabilities in 8-9 month olds. What has this skill been attributed to?

Answer 13

A sophisticated skill to derive statistical properties

Question 14

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?

Answer 14

Babbling is reduplicated clearly identifiable phoneme consonants. Babies babble more alone to practice and because they find it pleasurable

Question 15

What are first words typically?

Answer 15

Names for things seen and interacted with (nouns). Idiomorphs are common.

Question 16

How many words by 20-24 months?

Answer 16

50

Question 17

Idiomorph

Answer 17

A name a child makes up for an item in early development

Question 18

Fodor’s constraints

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Brown’s syntactic bootstrapping

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Fast-mapping or quick incidental learning (QUIL)

Answer 20

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)

Question 21

Semantic networks and evidence for them

Answer 21

meaning and organization change over time (errors of word use show semantic refinement over time)

Question 22

Types of errors of word use (2)

Answer 22

overextensions, under extensions

Question 23

Overextensions

Answer 23

too man items included in word class

Question 24

Under extensions

Answer 24

Word used in too restrictive manner

Question 25

Aspects of language that dominate first year

Answer 25

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.

Question 26

When do word combinations start? How do they start?

Answer 26

By 2 years, may start with 2 unrelated words, sometimes reflecting 2 utterances

Question 27

True early word combinations denote specific meaning from combination. Give three examples of types of first word combinations

Answer 27

Negation: adding “no” to something (no go, no bed)

Recurrence: to ask for more of something (more juice)

Nonexistence: denoting disappearance (all gone)

Question 28

Second set of word combinations (3) – other types of meaning emerge. Described as telegraphic, missing morphology

Answer 28

actor and action (mommy go)

modification of a noun (big dog)

possession (mommy shoe)

Question 29

What aspect of language dominates preschool language development

Answer 29

morphology. The emergence of bound morphemes marks time of morphological growth; a rapid increase in MLU

Question 30

MLU

Answer 30

Mean length of utterance (a measure of complexity, the average number of morphemes per utterance)

Question 31

Bound morpheme

Answer 31

Morpheme that cannot stand alone as a word (usually a prefix or a suffix)

Question 32

At what MLU do we start to see the addition of bound morphemes?

Answer 32

> /= 2.00 (cross-linguistic evidence)

Question 33

What is the maximum MLU that is still considered to be the best indicator of language complexity?

Answer 33

Up to 4.0-4.5. After this, just adding more words, not really increasing in complexity

Question 34

Research found that morphological growth had a predictable order, but why?

Answer 34

Complexity. Linguistic complexity = number of meanings and/or number of rules. Perceptual saliency: assessing what’s coming in based on expectancy

Question 35

Order of morphological acquisition (1-14)

Answer 35

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

Question 36

Over-regularization/morphology

Answer 36

Use of a regular morpheme in an irregular word (goed, dated, breaded)

Question 37

Stages of development for irregular past tense verbs (3)

Answer 37

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

Question 38

“Later” language aquisition (late preschool years and beyond) focuses (5)

Answer 38

phonology (precision plus later sounds), grammatical morphemes (consistency), continued vocabulary growth, pragmatics, syntax, metalinguistics

Question 39

Syntax in late preschool years – learning to say “no” stages

Answer 39

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)

Question 40

Syntax in late preschool years – learning to ask questions (4-5 years) - how they start + first questions asked

Answer 40

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?)

Question 41

Syntax in late preschool years – learning to ask questions, second type of questions

Answer 41

Declarative —> Interrogative (move the auxiliary to the left of the subject) – The boy will leave to “will the boy leave?”

Question 42

Syntax in late preschool years – learning to ask questions, third type of questions

Answer 42

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”

Question 43

Syntax in late preschool years – passives pattern

Answer 43

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)

Question 44

Pragmatics: discourse skills. Things to learn in preschool/school (2)

Answer 44

Taking turns, topic maintenance/shared reference

Question 45

How is topic maintenance defined and measured?

Answer 45

Contingency - utterances that share the topic of the preceding one (and add to it). Count how many utterances relate to previous utterances (on topic).

Question 46

% contingent utterances by age

Answer 46

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

Question 47

How can we look at how phonology, semantics, morphology/syntax all work together?

Answer 47

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.

Question 48

Supporting oral language development in a language-rich environment (video)

Answer 48

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

Question 49

Metalinguistics + importance

Answer 49

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)

Question 50

Phonemic awareness

Answer 50

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)

Question 51

Phonemic awareness acquisition (9)

Answer 51

1) Recite and produce rhymes, alliteration
2) Clap out syllables in a word
3) recognize like beginning sounds