Language and Development Flashcards
LANGUAGE COMPONENTS
PRAGMATICS
PHONOLOGY & MORPHOLOGY
SYNTAX
SEMANTICS
LANGUAGE ORIGINS
- 7000+ worldwide languages
- ROUSSEAU; emotional
- KANT; rational
- WITTENGENSTEIN; philosophy as language study
- DARWIN; music (ie. monkeys howling in harmony); continuity VS discontinuity hypotheses
HUMAN LANGUAGE FACTORS
COMMUNICATION SYSTEM
SYMBOLIC RULE-GOVERNED SYSTEM
PRODUCTIVE
COMMUNICATIOM SYSTEM
- primary
- not unique to humans (ie. bees/lions/dolphins)
SYMBOLIC RULE-GOVERNED SYSTEM
- abstract/productive
- enable speakers to produce/comprehend wide range of utterances
- parts of language represent meaning (ie. “ed” suffix implies past tense)
- “bird” = arbitrary BUT refers to avian creatures
- each language is constrained by unique rules
PRODUCTIVE
- finite units (sounds/words) produce infinite utterances
- not all possibilities are useful; some are abstract/hypotheticals (ie. “why does the amused jelly win the iron?”)
PRAGMATICS
- cognitive/social skills enabling effective communication (ie. turn taking/convo initiation/dialogue maintenance/faulty communication repair)
- essential: ie. DO TAKE A SEAT
LITERAL M: Take a chair somewhere.
LITERAL R: Remove chair.
PRAG M: Please sit down.
PRAG R: Sit on the indicated chair.
PHONOLOGY & MORPHOLOGY
- speech sounds/combinations to words/utterances
- basic units:
MORPHEME (MEANING) = language
PHONEME (NON-MEANING) - speech (“ba” “ba” = habituation; “pa” = attention)
- 1m babies discriminate; 12m discriminate own language but not others (become native listener)
- adults struggle
- babies cannot tell difference between “ba” & “ba”
FACILITATING SEGMENTATION
- infant-directed speech (motherese/parentese) from primary caregiver
- higher/exaggerated pitch
- rhythmic/slower
- short, perfectly grammatical sentences
- concrete NOT abstract
- here/now; running commentary for the present
- careful attention paid to child’s actions
FLUENT SPEECH EXTRACTION
- difficult to tell where one word ends and another begins as natives don’t include pauses
- children are language detectives
- cues include:
SOUND ORGANISATION
STATISTICAL LEARNING
SOUND ORGANISATION
- 7.5m english infants
- stressed syllables = new words (ie. candle VS intend)
- sensitive to rhyme/alliteration
STATISTICAL LEARNING
- 4.5m; pick up patterns/regularities; respond to name sound pattern opposed to other names
- 6m = mummy/daddy response
- words heard in several dif contexts recognised (ie. Jodie, Jodie’s sock, etc.)
PRESPEECH DEVELOPMENT PERIOD (B-1Y)
- 1y (some earlier; some 1.5) = 1st meaningful word
JUSCZYK (2002) - infants acquire huge knowledge about nature/organisation of native tongue well before 1st meaningful word
TRANSNATAL LEARNING
PRENATAL SPEECH DETECTION
- newborn infants show preferences based on fetal heard sounds (ie. heartbeat)
EARLY INFANCY LANGUAGE PREFERENCE
- first few days after birth infants prefer to listen to mother tongue
- MAY et al (2011)
5 STAGES OF BABBLING
- 0-2M
- reflexive vocalisations (ie. crying/sneezing/burping)
- directly related to physical state - 2-4M
- cooing/laughing
- combining sounds
- happy state
- reciprocal w/parent - 6-10M
- canonical babbling
- combos sound like words
- no evidenced meaning
- uniformity of age period/range of sounds (ROTHENGANGER (2003))
- deaf/hearing kids of deaf parents babble - +10M
- modulated babbling
- final period overlapping meaningful speech
LC: SYNTAX
- the way words are put together for meaningful utterances
- in English, word order = important grammatical component
- acquisition follows predictable pattern (10-18M = first words)
THE 1-WORD STAGE
- 10-18M
- holophrastic/syncretic speech period
- thoughts represented via one word
- ie. “doggie” = “I want my dog”
CULTURAL SYNTAX DIFFERENCES (EXAMPLES)
TARDIF et al (2008)
- early words:
ENGLISH = people based; object nouns; animals/sounds
CANTONESE = people based; verbs; rare animals
THE 2-WORD STAGE
- 18-24M
- non-random pairs (ie. “kick” ball)
- salient/high-meaning; verbs/adjectives
- mixed order regardless of reality (ie. “lick doggie” = “doggie lick”)
CHARACTERISTICS OF EARLY SPEECH
- telegraphic speech = semantically rich but grammatically sparse
- named by ROGER BROWN; early child language investigator
- utterances express essential meaning but ignore unnecessary grammar; compared to texting?
24-36M: WHAT’S DEVELOPED?
- utterances = longer/more complex
- use of verb endings (ie. “ed” signifying past)
- model auxiliary (“will”)
- conjunctions (“and”/”so”)
OVERREGULARISATION ERRORS
PAST TENSE - "thinked" not thought - "goed" not went PLURAL - "mans"/"mouses"
CREATIVE OVERGENERALISATIONS
- nouns = verbs (ie. “why is it weathering?”)
- used w/novel words; follow known rules strictly
SEMANTICS
- words/aspects of them represent meanings
- these units are symbolic as they refer to things other than themselves
COMPREHENSION
- meaning is attached to words early on
TICOFF & JUSZCZYK (1999) - 6ms given video of parents; looked more at correct parent depending on word heard (ie. “mummy” = mother)
SEMANTIC ERRORS
KUCZAJ (2003)
- due to huge possible interpretations that children may make of a word’s meaning, it’s unsurprising that some initial guesses are incorrect
- can be:
OVEREXTENSION = bird/plane/kites/falling leaves
UNDEREXTENTION = ONLY rubber ducks, no others
VOCAB DEVELOPMENT SPEED
- kids construct vocab of 14k words by 6y despite its complexity, meaning aprox. 9 words p/d
SEMANTIC CONSTRAINT
- whole object constraint
- “elephant” = whole animal, not parts
- mutual exclusivity; nothing else is an elephant/elephant is not known as anything else
FOUR THEORETICAL STANCES
BARRETT (1999)
- NATIVISIM (NATURE)
- innateness hypothesis
- innate info processing dispositions
- EMPIRICISIM (NURTURE)
- learned language
- develops much as other cognitive abilities do
NATIVISIM (NATURE)
MARATOS (1999)
- product of evolution/natural selection and pure endogenous processes internal to organism
- species-specific; universal in humans
- inherited from parents; present in newborns
- results from genome/typical species environment interaction
NATIVIST 1
- some aspects of development are dependent on innate capacities/knowledge (ie. CHOMSKY/PINKER)
- most extreme nativism; info processing skills specific to language acquisition and knowledge of language aspects are generational via genes
NATIVIST 2
- language development is strongly influenced by innate info processing dispositions (KUCZAJ) BUT doesn’t assume birth w/innate language knowledge (ie. innate discrimination of phenomes specific to learned language)
- rather, a number of innate processing dispositions/abilities (also applicable for non-linguistic development) = important to acquisition
EMPIRICISM (NURTURE)
- language experience is vital
2. development via experience in similar cognitive ability fashion; nothing special about language
EMPIRICIAL 1
- children acquire language specific concepts/representations due to language experience rather than innate specification
EMPIRICAL 2
- children acquire language due to general abilities that play role in general cognitive development (ie. ToM)
CHOMSKY - universal grammar; s/d structures
- language needs to relate s/d structures
- environment = only s, so d = innate
- kids hear complex/ungrammatical sentences (poverty of stimulus/Plato’s problem) w/little grammatical feedback yet acquisition is quick/easy
NATIVISM: +
- phonemic discrimination
- over-regularisations
- creative over-regularisations
- applied rules
MODI EXPERIMENT
AKHTAR, CARPENTER & TOMASELLO (1996)
- objects given to kids but not named; experimenter leaves; objects in box and one added; experimenter returns and acts excited about a “modi”
- when asked to hand over the modi, kids are more likely to give the new item
- kids guess people’s intentions to understand the meaning of a new word; you need a ToM
MODI EXPERIMENT (EXPLAINED)
- in order to see new item = modi, kids must know:
- the experimenter was referring to it
- people get excited about new things
- modi = new item despite none of the other items being named
- OVERALL, guess experimenter’s intentions
META-ANALYSIS OF HERITABILITY ESTIMATES
ANDREOLA et al (2020)
- focussed on neurocognitive components: general reading (comprehension); letter-word knowledge; rapid automatized naming; phonological decoding/awareness; spelling/language
- 49 articles; 23 cohorts; 38, 670 pps; 15, 990 MZ; 22, 680 DZ; 4.1y-18.5y
- genetic/non-shared environmental factors explained most variance in domains
THE TWIN MODEL
- MZ/DZ twins used; difs used to parse phenotypic trait variance into genetic/environmental components
- genetic influences implied if MZ correlation > DZ
META-ANALYSIS OF PARENTING/LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
MADIGAN et al (2019)
- does sensitive-responsive parenting/warmth affect child language?
- 32 studies; sample size 9-1026; median = 142; 33.5m (range = 12-71m); mean boys = 51.1%
- parental warmth/sensitive responsiveness to child language association = STATSIG
- language development is fundamental for school readiness/comprehension/academic achievement/occupational outcomes
- parental behaviour influences child language development; modifiable factor targeted for interventions
- limits = observational only, so findings = correlational only; needs controls (RCTs)
