Language Development Flashcards
What are the main areas of language?
- Phonology
- Semantics
- Syntax
- Pragmatics
What is phonology?
“phonemes” or sound segments
What are semantics?
System of meaning (“morphemes”)
What is syntax?
Rules by which words/phrases are arranged
(Jane hit Sue vs. Sue hit Jane)
What are pragmatics?
How language is useful in different contexts or genres
What are the sequences in language development?
- Speech Perception
- Production
Explain speech perception before birth
- Fetal reactions to sounds from 20 weeks
- Ability to distinguish male & female voices near term (measured by perceived movement, ultrasound or changes in heart rate)
- Preference for “uterine” version of mother’s voice after birth
Explain speech perception in neonates
- Prefer speech over non-speech
- Prefer native language
- Prefer sounds produced by mother
- Discriminate word types (content vs function)
How was speech perception tested in neonates?
HAS procedure
What part of speech production can we see in babies of 1-2 months?
Cooing and laughing
Explain the canonical babbling that occurs in babies of 6-10 months old
- Include more vowels and consonants, in ways that start to sound like words
- Scream for attention or out of anger
- Specific gestures/sounds reserved for primary care-giver or other familiar individuals
Explain the modulated babbling that occurs in babies of 10+ months old
- Add stress and intonation patterns
- Overlaps with meaningful speech period
When do babies’ first words typically come?
9-12 months old
- Act as labels consistently
- “holophrases” condenses meaning
Explain the word explosion that typically occurs several months after a baby’s first words
- Roughly 20 words at 18m
- Roughly 200 words at 24m
- Mainly nouns (labels of objects, people)
- Some action, state, function words
Explain the stage of multi-word speech in babies at 18 months
18 months -> 2 word utterances
- Telegraphic speech
- Importance of scaffolding
Explain the stage of multi-word speech at babies of 24-27 months
24-27 months -> 3-4 word utterances
- Start to see evidence of grammatical rules
Explain the stage of multi-word speech of babies at 3 years old
Speech understandable to even unfamiliar adults
- Vocabulary at around 1000 words
- Complex sentences with relative clauses
- Still perfecting some linguistic systems
Explain the stage of multi-word speech of babies at 5 years old
Language similar to that of an adult
- Still perfecting some tenses and constructions
How do pragmatics develop as a baby grows up?
2yo
- Adjust to different contexts
- Differences in communication to different listeners (ex. informal or formal)
3yo: Master convention of different genres (ex. “Once upon a time” to tell a story)
4-5yo: Take account of listener’s perspective
What are the word learning biases?
- Whole object constraint
- Shape bias
Explain whole object constraint
Words refer to whole object rather than parts of object
Explain shape bias
- Generalise to other objects that are the same shape rather than other attributes (texture, color, materials, etc.)
- Aids early noun learning
What are the two example models to explain word acquisition
- Barrett’s multi-route model
- Gleitman’s syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis
How do children acquire language?
- Shape bias
- Word learning biases
- Word acquisition
- General theories of language development
Explain Barrett’s Multi-Route Model
- Referential words used in variety of contexts
*ex. ‘more’
*Mapped on to mental representations of objects or actions - Context-bound words used only in specific contexts
*ex. ‘duck’
*Mapped on to global construction of the event
*Gradually analysed into individual categories
Explain Gleitman’s Syntactic Bootstrapping Hypothesis
- Sensitive to syntactic and semantic correspondences from early age
- Extract meanings of new words from syntactic clues
How do we test language acquisition?
- Observational studies of spontaneous speech
- Artificial language in experiments
Name the three theories of language development
- Nativist Theories
-> Chomsky’s “Innate Language Acquisition Device (LAD)” - Constructivist or Cognitive Theories
-> Piaget and the “Cognition-hypothesis” - Cognitive-Functional Linguistics
Explain the Nativist Theories
- Born with basic language production/comprehension capacity
- Chomsky’s LAD (Language Acquisition Device)
Explain Chomsky’s Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
- Human languages have universal features (phonology, syntax, “deep structures”)
- Innate knowledge of basic grammar rules
- LAD perceives regularities in heard utterances (LAD generates hypotheses about regularities, and these hypotheses are tested against new utterances)
What is the support for Nativist Theories/LAD?
- Children learn quickly, and learning is governed by rules (Sequence of language acquisition similar)
- Systematic mistakes (logical errors)
- Correct order early on
Explain the Constructivist or Cognitive Theories
- Cognitive and language development are interdependent
- Language development reflects stages of cognitive development (Cognitive abilities enable understanding and use of language; Rules come from wider cognitive system, not LAD)
- Similarities in language driven by similarities in experience and development
What is the support for Constructivist/Cognitive Theories?
- First words about familiar objects and activities
- First words appear around the same time as object permanence (Also around the time symbolic play emerges)
- Words about present emerge before words about future and past (which appears around the time child understands time concepts)
Explain the theory of Cognitive-Functional Linguistics
- No universal, innate grammar
- Acquire language gradually (Gradual building of grammatical structure)
- Syntax develops out of experience and social interaction
What is the support for Cognitive-Functional theory?
- McDonough et al (2011): Early vocabularies include more nouns and toddlers find nouns easy but struggle with creative use of verbs
- Tomasello et al (1997): Supported this with their study which introduced new verbs and nouns. Children 18-23m could produce plurals of nouns but not past tense of verbs
What is the role of adult feedback on language development?
- Infant-directed speech distinctively different than adult-adult speech
- Scaffolding meaning
- Expansion and re-casting
- Parental coaching can impact positively
How does SES impact language development?
- Language processing and vocabulary is lower in children of lower SES (Fernand et al, 2012)
- Children in the top SES have 60% higher scores than those in the lowest quintile
- Possibly due to “The Word Gap” wherein lower SES children hear fewer words per hour than higher SES children
Explain the Genie case study
Extreme deprivation from 20 months to 13yo
- Alone in room
- No communication towards her and she was beaten for any attempt to communicate as well
Explain the recovery process for Genie
- First few months started recognising words
- Then 1 and 2-word utterances, few multi-word
What were the observations found in the Genie case study?
- Never learned to use pronouns
- Never mastered questions
- Never developed complex sentences
- Relied more on gestures
