Language Development

Question 1

What defines human language?

Answer 1

Language is species specific and species universal, unique to humans and all typically developed humans are capable of it.

Question 2

What defines human language, 3 parts?

Answer 2

Symblos
- Arbitrary parings between sound and thing, different sounds map on to the same concept Dog/Perro

Generativity
- Using a relatively small number of basic linguistic components and rules, we can create a boundless variety of unique expressions.
- “Green rabbits hop though the night on their way to school”

Recursion
- Ability to express the same thing in a variety or ways
- “Sally may Joey.” “Joey was walking to school.” “Joey’s school is on the other side of the field.” “The field belongs to Mr. Smith.”
- “Sally met Joey while he was walking to school on the other side of Mr. Smith’s field.”

Question 3

A natural language?

Answer 3

Any language spoken on a daily basis by a community.

Question 4

Parts of language?

Answer 4

• Phonemes
• Morphemes
• Semantics
• Syntax
• Pragmatics
• Metalinguistics

Question 5

Phonemes?

Answer 5

The smallest units of sound recognisable as speech rather than random noise (banging on the table) / The smallest units of sound that create differences in meaning.
- Helps is distinguish words from one another
- Consonants and vowels
- Each of the world’s languages have a unique set of phonemes
- Not all languages use all phonemes

Question 6

Phonology?

Answer 6

The sound patterns of a language and the rules for combing sounds into words.

Question 7

Morphemes?

Answer 7

The smallest meaningful units of language / The smallest unit of meaning, can ve individual words or parts of words that carry distinct meanings, like prefixes or suffixes.
- What is the smallest number of phonemes needed to make a morpheme? Only one I, a, s. It needs to have only one linguistic meaning
- Texting has multiple morphemes “text” and “ing” indicating two different meanings
- s and cat is a morpheme but not k

Question 8

Syntax?

Answer 8

The rules governing how words are combined to form meaningful phrases and sentences
- Syntactical rules differ across languages
- Enligsh: I went to the beach yesterday. Spanish (translation): Yesterday went to the beach.

Question 9

Semantics?

Answer 9

Tells us not only the meaning of individual words but also how words combine to convey larger meanings.

Question 10

Lexicon?

Answer 10

The set of words a person knows.

Question 11

Grammer?

Answer 11

Refers to knowledge of other rules beyond those governing relations between words.

Question 12

Pragmatics?

Answer 12

Pragmatics are a part of language that do not consist of sounds or words, but can nonetheless change meaning.
Can include elements such as…
- Context
- Intonation “Oh, that’s great…” “ Oh that’s great!”
- Facial configuration
- Body language

Question 13

Pragmatics? (text book definition)

Answer 13

How we use language to convey our intended meaning within a particular social context and how we figure outs others’ intended meanings. Take into account the inferred goals and motivations of a speaker, the status of those involved in the speech act, and other non-linguistic cues to intuited meaning like situational constrains, gestures, and tone of voice.

Question 14

Pragmatic development?

Answer 14

• Children develop an understanding of pragmatics from early infancy (e.g., point to communicate meaning, speakers gaze), and it continues throughout the lifespan.

Example, fell “You ar ok, up again”

Question 15

Using the speaker’s gaze?

Answer 15

Children younger than 18 moths know that the direction in which a speaker is looking provides information about that she is speaking about.

Question 16

Phonological development?

Answer 16

• Before birth to adolescence
• Learn to differentiate (perceive) sounds of native language
• Learn to produce sounds of native language
• Much perceptual phonological development complete by 10 month

Question 17

Semantic development?

Answer 17

• Birth thought lifespan
• Very high rates of acquisition after 10 months though errant school age
• Requires segmenting of speech
• Mostly nouns

Question 18

Syntactic development?

Answer 18

• “Telegraphic speech” - often two-word utterances example “more milk”, “eat cookie”
• Pronouns in the third year (24-36 months)
• Development slows by 5-6 years of age, learning of grammar slows down

Question 19

Telegraphic speech?

Answer 19

When children first start to combine words into phrases, they usually drop out words that are less important to convey meaning, only using the words need to communicate the gist of what they mean.

Question 20

Early two-word utterances?

Answer 20

Even though young children rarely produce utterances longer than two words, they still honour words orders that conform to those that adults normally use in their language.

Question 21

Holophrases?

Answer 21

Predominant one-word utterances intending to stand for a whole sentence that the child has in mind but cannot produce. “Up!”

Question 22

Riddle of reference?

Answer 22

The dilemma of knowing whether a word refers to a whole object, a set of its parts, or an event or action associated with the object. We assume it means the whole object because we share with the other speaker a common way of carving up the world into manful units.

Question 23

Quinean Reference Problem?

Answer 23

• How do they figure out the meaning of words?
• Quinean Reference Problem: All labelling inherently ambiguous
  ->
  Constrains on word meanings

Question 24

Constrains on word meanings?

Answer 24

Ways of limiting the number of possible meanings that could be assigned to a given word.

Question 25

Whole-object bias?

Answer 25

A conceptual constraint, preference for labelling whole, bounded objects -> rather than objects parts or their relationship to other things.

Question 26

Mutual exclusivity?

Answer 26

A pragmatic constraint, the assumption that each object in a language has only one label.

Question 27

Shape bias?

Answer 27

A perceptual constraint which objects of roughly the same shape are assumed to have the same name.

Question 28

Basic level bias?

Answer 28

Superordinare (mammal)
Basic level (rabbit) -> what they will use
Subordinate (artic hare)

Question 29

Syntactic bootstrapping?

Answer 29

Quinean reference problem: Pragmatic cues
Like pointing.

Question 30

Collective monologues?

Answer 30

When two children are communicating, they are taking turns but they are not engaging in the same conversation.
“I like cats”
“My mum is a firefighter”
“Yesterday I saw a black cat”
“My mum work all the time”

Question 31

Prelinguistic vocalisation?

Answer 31

Infants in their first few months, tangoing from lip smacking to cooing and squealing.

Question 32

Babbling?

Answer 32

Consonant-like sounds appear after the fourth month of life.

Question 33

Overregularization?

Answer 33

Grammatical errors that usually start in the early stages of a child’s language development where language rules are applied too generally. “He goed to the store”

Question 34

Child-directed speech?

Answer 34

When talking to younger children, parents tend to enunciate their words very clearly and to speak more slowly and at a higher pitch. (Do not effect how quickly the child will learn a language)

Question 35

Behaviourist account Hypothes for Language Development

Answer 35

• Caregivers support language learning though reinforcement
• Parents correct children when they make mistakes
• Parents reward children when they are correct
  -> Parents are not actually doing this

Question 36

Recasting?

Answer 36

Behaviourist approach.
Repeat and expand on the child’s previous utterance. Unlikely to directly correct a child’s utterance by saying its wrong, but will use the correct form of the verb or noun in their response.

Question 37

Nativist account Hypothes for Language Development

Answer 37

• A dedicated language module has evolved in humans (modularity hypothesis)
• Specific brain areas are used for language
• Universal grammar ->

Question 38

Universal connotations?

Answer 38

Nativist approach
Consistent use patterns across all languages, which result in specific structural features that all languages share. Everyone follows them unconsciously.
- All (typically developing) children acquire linage, species specific and species universal.

Question 39

Connectionist account Hypothes for Language Development?

Answer 39

• Opposite of nativism
• Children learn language the same way that they learn everything else (general-purpose learning mechanisms)
• Computer simulation show that language can be learned with repetitive input

Question 40

Connectionism?

Answer 40

A way of representing networks of associations based in computer stimulations with multiple levels of associations.

Question 41

Language acquisition device?

Answer 41

System with abstract principles that guide learning about the structural patterns common to all language.

Question 42

Poverty of the stimulus argument>

Answer 42

The language children hear on a daily basis (interruptions and unfinished sentences) is not sufficient basis for learning language. Therefore there children must already have some innate knowledge of the language’s structure.

Question 43

Interactionist account Hypothes for Language Development?

Answer 43

• There is some initial basis to learn language at birth
• This initial basis is elaborated by experience
• Social communication drives language development
• Focuses on word learning (less on grammar)

Question 44

Semantic development?

Answer 44

The emerging understanding of word meaning and their interrelationships, requires linking words to concepts, which in turn often correspond to real-world phenomena.

Question 45

Vocabulary growth?

Answer 45

• The child’s vocabulary initially grows at a slow rate, but then rapidly accelerates in later years. Gradually increase with age with no sharp spurts.

Question 46

Fast mapping?

Answer 46

The extraordinary speed with which young children seem to map words onto the correct concepts, sometimes as fast as 500 new words a month. They do not require a lot of repetition for the child to learn.

Question 47

Overextension?

Answer 47

Applying a word too broadly. Example, calling any large animal with four legs “cows”.

Question 48

Underextension?

Answer 48

Apple’s a word too narrowly. Only using the level “dog” to dogs that look similar to the family dog but not other dogs.

Question 49

Feral children?

Answer 49

“Wild” children who spent infancy and childhood out of contact with other humans.

Question 50

Quinean reference problem: Linguistic context

Answer 50

Grammatical/syntatic cues
- This is a gavagi - noun -> what is he?
- He is gavayng - verb -> what is he doing?