Language Development Flashcards
What defines human language?
Language is species specific and species universal, unique to humans and all typically developed humans are capable of it.
What defines human language, 3 parts?
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.”
A natural language?
Any language spoken on a daily basis by a community.
Parts of language?
- Phonemes
- Morphemes
- Semantics
- Syntax
- Pragmatics
- Metalinguistics
Phonemes?
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
Phonology?
The sound patterns of a language and the rules for combing sounds into words.
Morphemes?
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
Syntax?
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.
Semantics?
Tells us not only the meaning of individual words but also how words combine to convey larger meanings.
Lexicon?
The set of words a person knows.
Grammer?
Refers to knowledge of other rules beyond those governing relations between words.
Pragmatics?
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
Pragmatics? (text book definition)
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.
Pragmatic development?
- 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”
Using the speaker’s gaze?
Children younger than 18 moths know that the direction in which a speaker is looking provides information about that she is speaking about.
Phonological development?
- 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
Semantic development?
- Birth thought lifespan
- Very high rates of acquisition after 10 months though errant school age
- Requires segmenting of speech
- Mostly nouns
Syntactic development?
- “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
Telegraphic speech?
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.
Early two-word utterances?
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.
Holophrases?
Predominant one-word utterances intending to stand for a whole sentence that the child has in mind but cannot produce. “Up!”
Riddle of reference?
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.
Quinean Reference Problem?
- How do they figure out the meaning of words?
- Quinean Reference Problem: All labelling inherently ambiguous
->
Constrains on word meanings
Constrains on word meanings?
Ways of limiting the number of possible meanings that could be assigned to a given word.
Whole-object bias?
A conceptual constraint, preference for labelling whole, bounded objects -> rather than objects parts or their relationship to other things.
Mutual exclusivity?
A pragmatic constraint, the assumption that each object in a language has only one label.
Shape bias?
A perceptual constraint which objects of roughly the same shape are assumed to have the same name.
Basic level bias?
Superordinare (mammal)
Basic level (rabbit) -> what they will use
Subordinate (artic hare)
Syntactic bootstrapping?
Quinean reference problem: Pragmatic cues
Like pointing.
Collective monologues?
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”
Prelinguistic vocalisation?
Infants in their first few months, tangoing from lip smacking to cooing and squealing.
Babbling?
Consonant-like sounds appear after the fourth month of life.
Overregularization?
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”
Child-directed speech?
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)
Behaviourist account Hypothes for Language Development
- 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
Recasting?
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.
Nativist account Hypothes for Language Development
- A dedicated language module has evolved in humans (modularity hypothesis)
- Specific brain areas are used for language
- Universal grammar ->
Universal connotations?
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.
Connectionist account Hypothes for Language Development?
- 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
Connectionism?
A way of representing networks of associations based in computer stimulations with multiple levels of associations.
Language acquisition device?
System with abstract principles that guide learning about the structural patterns common to all language.
Poverty of the stimulus argument>
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.
Interactionist account Hypothes for Language Development?
- 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)
Semantic development?
The emerging understanding of word meaning and their interrelationships, requires linking words to concepts, which in turn often correspond to real-world phenomena.
Vocabulary growth?
- 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.
Fast mapping?
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.
Overextension?
Applying a word too broadly. Example, calling any large animal with four legs “cows”.
Underextension?
Apple’s a word too narrowly. Only using the level “dog” to dogs that look similar to the family dog but not other dogs.
Feral children?
“Wild” children who spent infancy and childhood out of contact with other humans.
Quinean reference problem: Linguistic context
Grammatical/syntatic cues
- This is a gavagi - noun -> what is he?
- He is gavayng - verb -> what is he doing?