Language Development Flashcards
photo-conversation
a caregiver smiles and speaks to an attentive infant , who smiles and vocalize back to the caregiver
Language Development: Required
Competencies for Learning Language
-phonological development
-semantic development
-syntactic development
-pragmetic development
Phonological
development
- Acquisition of knowledge
about phonemes, the elementary
units of sound that distinguish
meaning
ex; lake and rake
morphemes
the smallest unit of meaning
ex:dog,chairs,unkind
Semantic
development
Learning the system for expressing meaning in a language, beginning
with morphemes, the smallest unit of meaning in a language
Syntactic
development
Learning the
syntax or
rules for
combining
words
Pragmatic
development
Acquiring knowledge of how language is used, which includes understanding
a variety of conversational conventions
ex: irony and metaphors
Language requires biological preparedness
Critical Periods
Evidence of critical
period for language
development
Difficulties feral children
(such as Genie) have in
acquiring language in
adolescence - vocabulary dosnt have critical period)
Comparisons of the effects of
brain damage suffered at
different ages on language
Language capabilities of
bilingual adults who acquired
their second language at
different ages
Test of Critical-period Hypothesis:
Performance on a test of English
grammar by adults originally from
Korea and China was directly related
to the age at which they came to the
United States and were first exposed
to English. What do you see?
as they get older their scores become lower
Acquiring the Native Language
Major Production Milestones
Reduplicated babbling by 8 mos
First words by 10-12 mos
Combining words by 18 mos
Complex clauses and sentences by 2-3 yrs
Comprehension begins much earlier
Respond to name by 4 mos
Recognize common words by 6 mos ex: understand what hand is
** Perceptual Attunement provides the first step**
Phonological Development:
Speech perception: Perceptual attunement
Phonology: Prosody
Prosody
- Includes spoken language characteristics above the phoneme:
rhythm, tempo, cadence, melody, intonational patterns - Accounts for much variation in sound of language within and between cultures (including accents)
- Prosody correlated with word order
- Language specific cues facilitate word and phrase segmentation
- And may support acquisition of grammar
Language
Development:
Comprehension and
Production
Children master basic structure of their native language, whether spoken
or manually signed by age five.
- Language requires comprehension and production.
- Comprehension precedes production.
By the age of 5, children are capable of
generating totally novel sentences that
are correct in terms of the phonology,
semantics, and syntax of their native
language.
They are also able to make
appropriate pragmatic inferences
regarding the content of their
partner’s utterances.
What Is Required for
Language?
A human environment
- Infant-directed talk (IDT)
- Distinctive mode of speech
that adults adopt when talking
to babies and very young
children - Common throughout the world,
but not universal - Includes warm and affectionate
tone, high pitch, extreme
intonation, and slower speech
accompanied by exaggerated
facial expressions - Preferred by infants
But – the imperative to communicate is so strong
- If no language models to learn from
- Hearing children, just like the deaf children, will nvent a language
- But only if there is someone to communicate with!
The Process of Language Acquisition:
Early Word Learning
Early word segmentation & recognition > Infants first recognize words > Then comprehend > them Then begin to produce them
The Process of Language Acquisition:
Word Segmentation
Infants become increasingly sensitive to many of the numerous regularities in that language.
- Word segmentation: process of discovering where words
begin and end starts during second half of first year - Distributional (or statistical) properties: certain sounds are
more likely to appear together than are others
Such a pretty baby. Hi pretty girl. How is my baby, pretty Liza?
The Process of Language Acquisition:
Word Segmentation
Statistical Learning
Transitional probabilities
Language specific cues
Word Stress initial in Eng
ex: BabySuzielikescookies
Phonotactics: sound combos
at beg & end of words
Break, Burst, Strong
Early Word Recognition & Comprehension
Early word recognition is rapid.
- Recognize many word forms they cannot understand
- Infants know more words than they can produce; they understand more words than realized by caregivers
. - Respond to name by 4 months; start recognizing common words by 6 mos; Recognition grows rapidly after 10-12 mos
- Looking while listening paradigm indicates older infants (18 mos
+) recognize familiar words more quickly than younger, &
eventually even when mispronunciation occurs.
Understanding first
Words
The problem of reference
- A classic problem posed by
philosopher Willard Quine
was how someone who
does not know the word
“rabbit” could figure out
exactly what it refers to rather then its part ? - This is the first step in
acquiring word meaning.
Word Learning: Constraints/Biases
Whole Object assumption
Expectation that the word will refer to the whole object.
-
Categorical Scope
Expectation that the word will refer to the whole category of objects
Constraints/Biases
-
Fast mapping Rapidly learning a new word simply from the
contrastive use of a familiar and unfamiliar word (dogs can do it too!) -
Mutual exclusivity
assumption Novel name–nameless
category principle: leads
children to expect that a
given entity will have only
one name
Cues for Word Learning: Mutual
exclusivity: Because this
child already knows the name of the
familiar object on the table, she will
pick up the novel object when the
adult asks her to “show me the
blicket.”
The Process of Language Acquisition:
Early Word Production
Most infants produce their first words between 10–15 months of age.
Early productive vocabularies of U.S. children include names for people, objects, and events from everyday life.
Important modifiers are also used
In middle-class families, mothers often use nouns in object-labeling
Holophrastic period involves one-word utterances
Overextension facilitates conversation with limited
vocabulary
Overextensions of
Word Meaning
ex: they say balls for ballons,marbles,apple,eggs
Language
Achievement
On average, American
children say their first word
at around 13 months,
experience a vocabulary
spurt at around 19 months,
and begin to produce
simple sentences at around
24 months.
- However, **there is great
variability **when different
children achieve each of
these milestones.
The Process of
Language Acquisition:
Production
Adult influences on word learning
- A spurt in vocabulary
growth typically occurs
at around 19 months,
although there is great
variability. - The rate of vocabulary
development is influenced by the sheer amount and kind of talk
that they hear.
The Role of Family and School Context in Early Language Development: Individual Differences
Socioeconomic status of parents is key determinant in the language children hear.
- After 4 years, there is a vast difference in accumulated experience with words among children from upper middle class, working-class, and families on welfare.
- For a variety of reasons, parents’ SES affects the way they talk to
their children. - Those individual differences have a substantial influence on the
way their children talk.
The role of pragmatics
Early interactions
- Even before infants start
learning words, they
develop interactive routines
similar to those required in
the use of language for
communication.
Turn taking
Intersubjectivity
Joint attention
Pointing
Word Learning:
Meaning from
Context
Pragmatic cues
- Children use pragmatic
cues —aspects of the
social context used for
word learning. -
These include the adult’s
focus of attention and
intentionality.
Word Learning: Meaning from Context
Pragmatic cues
Having announced her intention to find a “gazzer,” this adult
appears displeased when looking in one bucket, but happy
when looking in another. The child will infer that the object that
elicited the smile is a “gazzer.”
Word Learning:
Meaning from Context
- Children also use the linguistic context in which novel words
appear to help infer their meaning.
Syntactic bootstrapping:
children use grammatical
structure of whole sentences
to figure out meaning
ex: “The duck is kradding the
rabbit,” they used the syntactic
structure of the sentence to
infer that kradding is what the
duck is doing to the rabbit.
(Considered more like a built
in bias than a social-
pragmatic process)
Putting Words Together
First sentences
- End of second year: most children begin to combine words
into simple sentences - Telegraphic speech: children’s first sentences in which
nonessential elements are missing - Around 2½ years of age: four-word sentences which often
contain more than one clause
This graph shows the
relation between age
and the mean length of
utterance for the three
children—Adam, Eve,
and Sarah—studied by
Roger Brown. (Brown,
What else do you see?
individual difference
theories of languague development: Behaviorist views
languague is learn through experiences,specifically through positive or negative reinforcements - correct speach and grammar)
behaviorits argue that the same mechanisms we use to learn languague we use for other behaviours (domain general, nonspecifc,nurture))
theories of languague development: Naturalists
Chomsky
children are born with grammatical knowledge such as languague aquasition device that allows them to easily acquire lanuguae
poverty of stimulus: not enougth information from the enviroment for children to learn languague
this theory is :
* domain specific
* universal
* nature
theories of languague development: Intercationist view
they recognize that human infants are prepared in some ways to learn languague but their languague development is also shaped by their experince . they use other skills to perfect languague
Intercationist view: connectionism
according to connectionism,the infant is born with powerful learning mechanisms and a simple brain structure,experience with languague allows the system to strenghen
statistical learning
infants have a learning mechanism that help them require languague (just like chomsky). unlike his this sensitivity to regularitis is not specific to languague
ex:pretty baby
babies know that in the english languague pre follows ty but that sound is not often by ba so they use statistics to know what is most or less likely to be used
social interaction
languague is communicative and social thus children use social interactions to aid their languague learning(languague learning builds into social skills)
both nature and nurture
