L10 (language) Flashcards

1
Q

4 components of language

A
  1. phonology: sounds
  2. morphology/semantics: meaning
  3. syntax: grammar
  4. pragmatics: how to use language to communicate within one’s culture

must distinguish between language production and language comprehension

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2
Q

Phonemes vs morphemes

A
  • smallest units of sound
  • smallest units of meaning

  • “I” is a phoneme and a morpheme
  • “bin” has 3 phonemes and 1 morpheme
  • “bins” has 4 phonemes and 2 morphemes (one meaning container and the other meaning plural)
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3
Q

Critical period in language learning

A

best to experience input before age 5 to achieve fluency

  • newborns are speechless but 5-year-olds are about as good as or even better at language than adults
  • smaller vocabularies and simpler expression but grammar etc. is present
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4
Q

Lateralization of language

A

lateralized to the left hemisphere
* even in newborns and deaf individuals
* mild at first and increases over development

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5
Q

Broca’s vs Wernicke’s aphasia

A
  • difficulty producing speech but comprehension is intact
  • difficulty understanding and producing understandable speech

not specific to modality so deaf (signing) individuals can have the same aphasias

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6
Q

Cues from bilingual brains that suggest a critical period

A

Comparing groups with equal proficiency
* earlier exposed to 2nd language (before age 3) = more lateralized (left)
* learned later = more bilateral activation

with early exposure, the brain treats the 2nd language like the first

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7
Q

“Less is more” hypothesis

Newport’s hypothesis for critical period

A
  • perceptual and memory limitations lead young children to extract smaller bits of language than adults do
  • allows them to ignore complexity and extract regularities

adult brain is distracted by detail and trying to learn too much, resulting in poor syntax

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8
Q

When do babies begin perceiving language?

A
  • hearing infants begin perceiving their native language(s) in the womb
  • hear adult speech and infant directed speech after birth
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9
Q

Infant directed speech (IDS)

A
  • slower, simpler, louder, higher-pitched, repetitive
  • very grammatical
  • accentuates word boundaries and noun phrases
  • recasts child’s utterances

there’s also IDsign!

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10
Q

How does IDS influence language development?

A
  • infants prefer IDS to ADS even in an unfamiliar language and especially in their native language (ManyBabies project)
  • infants (and adults) learn new words better when offered using IDS

but not universal as some cultures don’t speak to infants at all or use IDS
* still show preference for IDS but not required for language-learning

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11
Q

Is speech experience driving preference for speech?

preference continues over infancy!

A
  • hearing babies with no ASL experience prefer ASL over other gestures (e.g. pantomime) only before 10 months (due to perceptual narrowing)
  • non-auditory modality but babies still show a preference for the linguistic stimulus

Krentz & Corrina

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12
Q

Is speech preference of infants specific to human speech?

A
  • not at first but becomes specific by 3 months
  • newborns prefer monkey calls just as much as human speech
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13
Q

Prosody

A
  • characteristic rhythm, tempo, cadence, melody, and intonational patterns with which language is spoken
  • allows newborns to distinguish between languages based on rhythmic properties

e.g. British vs. American accents

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14
Q

Speech sounds

A

phonemic differences that make up a language

e.g. bat vs. pat vs. cat

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15
Q

Perceptual narrowing

A

young babies can learn any language but once they know what they’re learning, they focus efforts only on that language (like synaptic pruning)

  • but loss isn’t equal: 7-month-olds who did worse on discrimination of foreign speech sounds performed better on vocabulary and grammar tests between 14-30 months
  • attunement theory: babies start with broad capacity to learn any language and eventually abilities specific to native language are facilitated and others are lost
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16
Q

How do infants know what’s a word and what isn’t a word?

A
  • distributional probabilities: the likelihood that a second syllable Y follows a first syllable X
  • extracted through statistical learning

pauses between words are not reliable indicators (because there are pauses within words!)

17
Q

6 stages of language production

A
  • reflexive sounds (crying, grunting) at birth
  • social sounds (cooing, laughter) at 6 weeks
  • intentional vocal play (babbling) at 6-10 months (avg 7)
  • first words at 10-15 months (avg 13)
  • vocabulary spurt at 14-25 months (avg 19)
  • simple sentences at 18-32 months (avg 24)

early vowel sounds at 6-8 weeks

18
Q

Reduplicated vs variegated babbling

A
  • repeat same speech sound (“ba-ba-ba”) by 6-10 months
  • combine multiple speech sounds (“ba-goo-ba-goo”) by 11 months

  • variegated babbling sounds more and more like native language
  • deaf infants babble but limited and delayed
  • infants exposed to ASL babble in sign
19
Q

What are babies’ typical first words?

10-15 months

A
  • nouns (usually basic level categories)
  • requests (e.g. more)
  • actions (e.g. up)
  • routines (e.g. hi, bye bye)
20
Q

Babies first words are never…

A
  • closed-class words (e.g. the, of, in)
  • quantifiers (e.g. most, some, 3)
  • abstract concepts (e.g. justice, mortgage)
  • psychological terms (e.g. like, know, think)
21
Q

What does it mean to be bilingual?

gradient of definitions

A
  • ability to speak without accent in 2 languages
  • ability to communicate in 2 languages
  • ability to understand 2 languages
22
Q

Bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA)

i.e. crib bilinguals or simultaneous bilinguals

A
  • the learning of 2 languages simultaneously from birth
  • usually consider minimum 25% exposure to each language from multiple sources

dominant language: language of higher proficiency

23
Q

How are bilingual and monolingual development similar?

A
  • similar milestones (e.g. babbling, first word, first two-word utterances)
  • both groups have the same goal: to become communicators
24
Q

Why do bilingual infants mix their languages?

produce utterances with words from both languages

A
  • they don’t know the right word in the other language
  • people around them mix the languages