Language Acquisition Flashcards
Can babies can hear in the womb?
Abrams et al., 1995; Jardini et al., 2008
True
According to Bertoncini et al (1989), which hemisphere do infants respond to for speech and music?
Infants respond to speech in left hemisphere, music in right.
What are Phonemes?
The smallest speech sound
Abstractions of physical segments
Written as… /x/
What Phoneme are babies of 1 - 4 months fixated on?
/pa/
Eimas et al (1971) acoustically altered what sound to show that babies over 4 months couldn’t hear he difference?
/ba/ and /pa/
According to Werker et al (1981), at what age are infants at adult level of phonemic distinction?
1 year.
Kuhl & Millar (1978) – chinchillas & synthetic phonemes showed what?
Ability to perceive speech may have developed from a more basic auditory perceptual ability
But difference is that distinction becomes language specific in humans
Stark (1980)’s 3 stage phonetic development model:
Which months do the following stages happen:
Reflexive crying and vegetative sounds Cooing and Laughter Vocal Play Reduplicated Babble Non-reduplicated babble and expressive Jargon
0- 2 months - Reflexive crying and vegetative sounds
2 - 5 months Cooing and Laughter
5 - 7 months Vocal Play
6 - 12 months Reduplicated Babble
9 - 12 months Non-reduplicated babble and expressive Jargon
Oller’s 5 stage phonetic development model:
Which months do the following stages happen:
Phonation
GOO stage
Expansion
Canonical Babble
Variegated babble
0 - 2 Phonation 2 - 4 GOO stage 4 - 6 Expansion 6 - 9 Canonical Babble 9 - 12 Variegated babble
What age does laughing occur?
4 months
What age do infants first start using sounds for communication?
2 months ( - 4 months)
What age do infants gain control of making sounds?
4 - 7 months
What age to infants undergo important neural maturation which allows for greater motor control?
between 3 – 9 months
How many months old do children make their first recognisable speech sounds? e.g. /da/ /ba/
6 months
How many months old do children make their first phoneme repetitions, and then non repetitions?
repetitions ‘da-da’ – 8 months
‘da-ba’ - 11 months
Oller – variegated babbling
Stark – non-reduplicated babbling
Vihman (1992) points to how many commonly occurring syllables independent of parents language?
6 - “da”. “ba”, “wa”, “de”, “ha” and “he”
According to Oller & Eilers (1988), if born with profound hearing loss, what do children not develop within first year?
Canonical babbling
True or False: Infants show understanding of words before they can say them
True
What are infants typical first words?
First words are typically their own name, mummy, daddy, sibling’s & pet’s names and familiar objects
What is the CDI – MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories?
Parent report instruments which capture important information about children’s developing abilities in early language, including vocabulary comprehension, production, gestures, and grammar.
Nelson (1973) identified 2 styles in early language development, Referential style and expressive language.
If a child knew more object names than action words, which style would they have used?
Referential style - More object names in lexicon
Expressive language - More action words and people’s names, less object names.
According to Bates, which early language development style is faster at building vocabulary?
referential style = faster building vocabulary, tend to be girls
Why does Bruner report that games and social exchange help babies understand and use language?
helps babies to build insights into the meaning of language
Define Morphology
Rules of language e.g.. How past tenses are derived or verbs declined
Define Syntax
How words are combined to make phrases - the rules for putting words together.
Define Morpheme
smallest unit of speech with semantic meaning
3 Influences on Language Development unique to humans?
Joint attention between mother and child
Reference – understanding what the mother is referring to
Pointing – often an indicator of reference
What does MLU stand for and what does it measure?
mean length of utterance measures Morphological Development
What does the progression of MLU and Morphological Development show?
shows awareness of syntactic regularities
What is an alternative to the MLU (mean length of utterance) in revealing how understanding of syntax is developing?
Maximum Sentence Length
What is a core assumption of inside-out theories? e.g. Chomsky, Pinker
Language develops through innate mechanisms – domain specific.
Minimum contribution of experience - Distinction between acquiring English or Japanese
What is Syntactic bootstrapping?
children learn word meanings by recognizing syntactic categories (such as nouns, adjectives, etc.) and the structure of their language.
‘Chases’ always has noun before & after
‘Run’ always has noun before & NEVER after
2 features of outside in theories?
Language develops through learning mechanisms – domain general
Emphasises the role of experience
Bates & MacWhinney (1989)
Competition model
Language learning as constructive, data-driven processes that rely not on universals of linguistic structure, but on universals of cognitive structure. The Competition Model presents a functionalist and connectionist view of language learning that attributes development to learning and transfer, rather than to the principles and parameters of Universal Grammar.
Rummelhart & McClelland (1986)
Connectionist model
Aka – Parallel Disputed Programming models
Outside in theories or inside out?
Outside in
Features of inside out theories of language development?
Linguistic, domain-specific, innate.
Chomsky, Hypand, Pinker, Landau
Features of outside in theories of language development?
social or cognitive, domain-general, learning procedure
Bates, Bruner, Nelson, Snow
According to Hart (1991 and Harris (1988) what tends to be children’s first words?
first words tend to be ones used frequently by parents
What is negative evidence?
child incorrect utterance followed by utterance in the correct form:
Child: “ I losed my toy”
Parent “ You lost your toy”
Child “ I lost my toy”
What is negative feedback?
when an adult questions the child’s utterance:
Child: “ The boy hitted him on the head”
Parent “ What?”
Child “ The boy hit him on the head”
According to Saxton et al (1988) – which is better negative evidence or feedback?
Saxton et al (1988) – negative evidence → more learning than only giving the correct form for irregular past tenses
Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff (1996) – Preferential looking paradigm
What can children do by 18 months?
And by 2 years?
18 months – distinguish word order
By 2 yrs – using syntax as a guide to meaning
