Language Development

Question 1

State the properties of a natural language.

Answer 1

Discreteness
Displacement
Arbitrariness
Infinity
Recursion

Question 2

What is discreteness?

Answer 2

Language is composed of discrete units that are used in combination to create meaning.

Question 3

What is displacement?

Answer 3

Language can be used to communicate about things that are not present spatially or temporally.

Question 4

What is infinity?

Answer 4

The finite number of units (words) put together to create an indeterminate number of meaningful sentences.

Question 5

What is arbitrariness?

Answer 5

The relation between the morpheme/words and what they
refer to is not logically deducible (differently from bird songs: they sing one song when in distress, one song when asserting territory, one when courting a mate).

Question 6

What is recursion?

Answer 6

A given unit can be made larger (the book / the book on the
windowsill / the book on the windowsill by the door, …).

Question 7

List the structure of language.

Answer 7

Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics

Question 8

Define phonology.

Answer 8

Governs the sequencing of phonemes.
Phoneme: basic speech sounds that differ in their
distinctive features (e.g., “ba” vs. “pa”)
Languages that use the same alphabet have different
possible words depending on the phonemic system

Question 9

Define syntax.

Answer 9

Ways that words are combined to form
acceptable phrases or sentences:
– “I went to the store” vs. *”I store the to went”

Question 10

Define morphology.

Answer 10

Governs the sequencing of morphemes
– Morpheme: the smallest units of language that carry meaning
(e.g., help vs. helper)

Question 11

Define pragmatics.

Answer 11

Knowledge underlying the use of language in
context
– Implied vs literal meaning
– Turn-taking
– Accounting for others’ knowledge

Question 12

Babbling

Answer 12

6-10 months
Characteristics - This is regarded as a tuning-up of the phonological apparatus, termed “frobbing” by Pinker.

Question 13

One word stage

Answer 13

10-20 months
Characteristics - Words refer to objects, actions, motions, routines, and modifiers

Question 14

Two-word stage

Answer 14

18-24 months
Characteristics - Consists of pairs of content words. Grammatical morphemes are missing.

Question 15

The grammar explosion

Answer 15

24-36 months
Pinker calls this, “All hell breaks
loose” because language
changes so quickly during this
period.

Question 16

What are the theories of language development?

Answer 16

Learning/behaviorist theories
Biological/nativist theories
Interactionist theories

Question 17

What is the behaviourist theory of language?

Answer 17

Empiricist view (the mind as tabula
rasa)
* Humans come into the world with
nothing; all knowledge constructed
from experience
* Emphasize the role of the environment
* Apply learning principles to account for
language learning e.g.,
* Classical conditioning - Word learning based on association.
* Operant Conditioning - Parents reinforce language learning,
particularly grammatical
development.
* Imitation - Children reproduce words and sentences after hearing them used
by parents and peers

Question 18

What are the critiques of behaviourist theories of language development LD?

Answer 18

Association:
– Referential opacity e.g., John was proud of himself
* Imitation:
– Rare
– Comprehension precedes production
* Reinforcement:
– Inconsistent
– Based on truth value of sentence not grammatical value
– Doesn’t explain why verbal responses are reinforcing
* Almost all living things with a nervous system show associative and reinforcement-based learning, and some even show imitation (e.g., parrots).
* Poverty of the stimulus
Children receive limited input:
– Fragmented and incorrect sentence
– Not marked as deviant
– Finite set of sentences
* But create a very complex language system
– Not just reflective of input they receive
– Acquire rules that they have no direct evidence

Question 19

Why is language development a relatively rapid and error-free process?

Answer 19

According to biological theories, Language is not learned like other types of behaviour
* To start, language is not a behaviour –
* IT IS A COGNITIVE ABILITY
* Humans are biologically wired to learn language at a certain time in a particular way.

Question 20

What is the biological theory of LD?

Answer 20

Humans are biologically wired to learn language at a certain time in a particular way
Chomsky
* Babies enter the world with a brain and a mind “ready” to acquire language
* What does that mean?
* That means that babies’ minds are pre-prepared to welcome the linguistic triggers that exist in the community they are born into

Question 21

Define the term language acquisition device (LAD).

Answer 21

Special language-learning mechanism
embodying knowledge about the general nature of grammar.
2 types of knowledge:
– Formal and substantive universals: properties that all
languages share
* E.g., language is hierarchical, language has categories
– Parameters: aspects of language that vary
within specifiable limits across languages
* E.g, pro-drop vs.. non-pro drop languages
* Input:
– “Turns on” LAD
– Sets parameters that are specific to a given language

Question 22

Give evidence for innate grammar.

Answer 22

Goldin-Meadow, Senghas: congenitally
deaf children of hearing parents who are not exposed to ASL:
– Children invented a gestural language termed
homesign (e.g., the Nicaragua case)
– This gestural language is similar in many respects to the language of children with normal hearing (e.g., similar ordering of categories; nouns, verbs, etc.)
– Homesign turns out to be more similar between infants from different countries (e.g., China and
America) than between infants and their parents’ gestures.

Question 23

What is Lenneberg (1967) theory on language acquisition?

Answer 23

Biological theory
Hypothesized that human language
acquisition was an example of biologically
constrained learning, and that it was normally
acquired during a critical period, beginning
early in infancy.

Question 24

What is the critical period for language
acquisition?

Answer 24

According to Lenneberg (1967):
– Beginning early in infancy
– Language is a maturational process
– It starts within the first year up until puberty
– Language acquisition should be easiest
during this time, when the brain is
developing
– Late acquisition of left-hemisphere damage
has a larger impact on language skills (than
early acquisition)

Question 25

Explain a case of severe deprivation in language acquisition.

Answer 25

– Genie
– Severely neglected
– Very limited language input, punished if she
tried to speak
– Discovered at 13
– 3-word utterances, but lacking
grammatical skills
The extent of her isolation prevented her
from being exposed to any significant amount of speech,
and as a result she did not acquire language during her
childhood.

Question 26

Give evidence for second-language learning.

Answer 26

Johnson & Newport (1989)
– 46 Chinese- and Korean-American immigrants
(3 - 39 years of age)
– Strong linear relation between age of
exposure and mastery of grammar
– Significant deficits after puberty
– Not explained by identification with local
culture or motivation to learn
– Also applies to deaf individuals who learn ASL
late in life

Question 27

Give evidence for the biological
basis of language

Answer 27

Brain basis
– Areas in left hemisphere (Broca’s, Wernicke’s)
selectively involved in language production and
processing
– Newborns’ left-hemisphere more sensitive
to speech sounds

Question 28

What are the critiques of biological theories of LD?

Answer 28

Innate grammar:
– Lack of specificity (i.e., what is the scope of
experience?)
– Grammar is limited in deaf children not exposed
to ASL
– Complexity of grammar is related to complexity of
input (e.g., multi-clause sentences)

• Culture influences neural structure and cognition
• Mechanisms unclear

Question 29

What is the interactionist perspective of LD?

Answer 29

Language develops from the interaction of
biological, cognitive and environmental
influences
– Biological predispositions
– Cognitive apparatus (+constraints)
– Social-environmental influences

Question 30

What is infant-directed speech?

Answer 30

Terms used to indicate the particular voice register observed in the majority of parents in interaction with their infants.
– Caregivers and other adults
spontaneously produce rhythmic speech
with accentuated pitch, intonation and
melodic contours, repetitions
– Infants prefer this type of speech over
regular speech and non-speech sounds
– IDS may facilitate language learning (e.g., help
word segmentation)

Question 31

What does IDS consist of?

Answer 31

• reduplicated syllables
• diminutive endings
• sometimes these words are based on old forms (e.g.
  “choo-choo train“)
• parents often use nouns rather than first or second
  person pronouns; e.g., “mummy” instead of “I“
• they base their speech on the here and now
• it is heavily contextualized

Question 32

Define the term fast-mapping.

Answer 32

The ability of children to learn new words very quickly and easily around age two.
New words are learned based on a minimum
of exposure
– 2.5 year old infants learn an average of 10 new
words per day.

Question 33

What are word-learning cognitive mechanism?

Answer 33

Whole object assumption
Taxonomic assumption
– similarity; same label
for like objects
(e.g., real duck, plastic
duck, etc.)
Mutual exclusivity assumption
– objects only have one label
novel object label = novel word
(e.g., if a child learns the word
‘hammer’, she will assume that
unfamiliar objects have different
names)
Bootstrapping

Question 34

What is bootstrapping?

Answer 34

– Using one aspect of language knowledge to
facilitate another aspect of language
knowledge
– Syntactic bootstrapping: use grammar
to determine semantic knowledge

Question 35

Give an example of social attention.

Answer 35

Joint attention.

Question 36

What is joint-attention?

Answer 36

– Focus of attention with that of another person.
Language requires a shared ‘referential framework’
– Early on, infants are sensitive to social stimuli such as eye gaze
– Through gaze-following, joint attention can be established.
– This knowledge is brought to bear in the language learning
context

Question 37

Explain the joint attention at 9 - 12 months.

Answer 37

– Infants will follow the gaze of caregivers
– However, 9-10 month olds will follow when
the caregivers eyes are closed
– By contrast, 11-12 month olds will only follow if
the eyes are open.
– The behaviour precedes social cognition

Question 38

Explain the joint attention at 18 months.

Answer 38

– Infants use an actor’s eye gaze to map objects to their
referents
– Consider intentionality when mapping verbs to actions
– Use another’s emotional expression to infer the target of
her referent
– Much more frequent in urban settings compared to
hunter-gather groups and subsistence farming
communities

Question 39

How is language acquisition possible?

Answer 39

✓ Infants and toddlers acquire language regardless of background, social, economic, linguistic, etc.
✓ Children of deaf parents learn language.
✓ Born deaf children of hearing parent learn language and organise the grammar of that language (Senghas & Coppola 2001).
✓ The process of language acquisition [and learning] is fast and relatively accurate, despite the poor input.
✓ Children try out hypotheses about language, and make predictions; first, decisions on word learning; then, decisions on the use of grammar.
✓ Children do not parrot: their language is original and creative

Question 40

What is the Ape Language Projects

Answer 40

Teaching apes how to communicate with humans and each other using sign language, physical tokens, lexigrams, and imitative human speech.