Language Flashcards
Definitions of language
Language is species-specific only humans acquire it although other animals can communicate
Language is species-universal - all humans acquire language
Using the finite set of words in our vocabulary, we can put together an infinite number of sentences
Limitations to acquiring language
Critical period
Cognitive impairment
Highly abnormal environmental conditions
Two main components of language
Language comprehension: understanding what others say
Language production: Refers to actually speaking (or writing) to others
Language requires four competencies
phonological development
semantic development
syntactic development
pragmatic development
Phoneme definition
The individual elements of sound that make up words
Number of phonemes in English language
40
Phonological development definition
the acquisition of the sound system of the language the child is exposed to
Prosody
the particular rhythm, melody and intonation pattern used when speaking a language
Morpheme definition
the smallest part of a word with meaning
Morphological rules
a set of rules that specifies how morphemes combine to form words
Semantic development
the acquisition of meaning in a language, including lexical development (word learning)
Syntax definition
A set of rules that specifies how words can be combined to form sentences
In English word order also determines meaning
Syntactic development
the acquisition of the grammar of a language
Pragmatic definition
• Sarcasms, irony, commands, voice change, etc
Pragmatic development
the acquisition of how a language is used in society
Characteristics of motherese
o Emotional tone: warm and affectionate. o Exaggeration. o Higher voice. o Extreme changes in intonation o Slow talk and longer pauses o Exaggerate facial expressions
Motherese purpose
emphasises word and phrase boundaries making it easier for the baby to segment words from the continuous speech
keeping the child’s attention
word identification
Motherese real name
Infant-Directed Talk/Speech (IDT/IDS)
Fernald & Mazzie (1991): Kelly’s New Clothes
• Mothers of 14 months old babies used prosodic emphasis to teach new words.
Words (clothes) received primary stress 76% to babies and 42% to another adult.
- When the same clothing was mentioned again it was highly stressed 70% to babies but 20% to adults.
- The clothes located at the end of a sentence 75% for babies, 53% for adults.
Werker, Pegg & McLeod (1994)
• Infants prefer IDT/IDS than other type of speech.
Chinese and American infants listened to a Chinese mother when talking to a baby (motherese) or to an adult
Results: all babies prefer to listen to mother talking to a baby (even in their non-native language) than talking to an adult.
Golinkoff, Alioto, & Hirsh-Pasek (1996)
Infants learn more new words in a foreign language when they are presented in IDT/IDS than in normal speech
Thiessen, Hill & Saffran (2005)
Infant-directed speech facilitates word segmentation
Participants: 50 infants aged 7.5 to 8.5 months
Material: 4 non-word sentences
Exposed to either IDS or normal speech
Results: Infants exposed to IDS were able to segment the speech and the control group couldn’t
Development of babbling
- 0-2 month - comfort sounds (aaaa)
- 2-3 month - cooing (gaaagaa)
- 4-6 month - squalls, growls, whispers (called marginal babbling)
- 6-10 month - infant babble. consonant-vowel sounds (mamama)
Kuhl, Tsao, and Liu (2003)
9mo American infants with Mandarin adult.
Group 1: play sessions with adult, experienced 5 hours of Mandarin
Group 2: video of session received identical exposure to Mandarin
Group 3: exposure to only audio information.
Results: exposure to auditory information isn’t sufficient for learning of phonology - need social interaction
Advantages of social interaction
Joint attention - baby follows gaze of adult towards object
Focusing on same object provides referential information
Adults provides cues to attract attention and motivate learning
Social interaction has the purpose of communication
Silent babbling
Imitation is crucial – deaf babies don’t babble sound.
Babies exposed to signing of deaf parents engage in ‘silent babbling’
Their movements differ from infants exposed to spoken language - slower rhythm corresponds to the rhythmic patterning of adult sign
Fast mapping
the process of rapidly learning a new word simply from the contrastive use of a familiar and unfamiliar word
Assumptions that guide infants in learning new words
The whole-object assumption - leads children to expect a new word to refer to a whole object, not part
The mutual exclusivity assumption (novel name–nameless category principle) - leads children to expect that a given entity will have only one name.
Overextension
Using a single label for many referents
e.g. daddy for any man
Found before 2.5 years of age.
Fremgen & Fay (1980) - overextension
Participants: children 1-2 years
Task: Name and choose a picture
Results: Words overextended in naming were not confused when choosing e.g. child asked for dog didn’t pick lion.
Conclusion: children aren’t semantically confused
Pragmatic cues in learning
If an adult pretends to find a ‘gazzer’ and smiles at one bucket and looks sad at the other, a child will infer that the object that elicited the smile is a “gazzer.”
Prof Deb Roy (MIT) - role of input
Put cameras around house. Found child went back and forth on the production of correct words.
Said water then ‘gaaaaa’ and took 6 months to finally produce the word consistently.
Shows that children are very slow in learning new words as they learn to produce the correct sounds with their mouth etc.
Cameron-Faulkner et al. (2003) - role of input
Studied mother-infant interactions (middle-class sample of 12 English-speaking mother-child dyads).
Results:
• Babies hear an average of 5,000-7,000 utterances a day
• 1/3 of the utterances are questions
• More than half of the utterances began with one of 52 highly frequent constructions e.g ‘look at x’
Hart & Risley (1995) - role of input
Showed that socioeconomic background provided different experience to the babies.
Results:
• High SES families: 487 utterances per hour
• Lower SES families: 178 utterances per hour
4yo:
• High SES families: 44 million utterances
• Lower SES families: 12 million utterances
High SES children had been exposed to more language and were more fluent and able to express themselves.
They had more capacity to learn new words and were more social.
Usage based theory of language acquisition
Lieven, Pine and Baldwin (1997) and Tomasello (1998)
Children innately born with the predisposition and capacity to learn language (but disagree with Chomsky innate knowledge’
Children learn grammar as they learn everything else - perceptual and cognitive skills:
- Memorise words and phrases, e.g. where daddy? – see it as just one word not two.
- Use memorised phrases in specific situations.
- Progressively builds a set of similar phrases e.g. where dog
- From this they derives the template “Where X” and realise it is more than one word and begin to generalise it.
Rote-memory proposal (related to usage based)
Early speech is constructed around verb forms, e.g. “drinking”; ”doggy drinking”
- This allows the child to form longer, more complex sentences.
- Adults language also constructed from these building blocks
- Learning is through the same pattern-finding mechanisms of statistical probability, categorisation and inductive learning.
Evaluation of rote proposal
Strengths:
• Good account of actual child’s language
• Integrates development of language with cognitive processes
• Social aspects of language are important
• Shows how child can develop language without innate mechanisms
Weaknesses:
• Not fully tested empirically
