language development Flashcards
phonemes
smallest units of sound recognizable as speech rather than random noise
morphemes
smallest meaningful units of language
syntax
rules of governing how words are combined to meaningful phrases and sentences
chomsky’s view on syntax
all languages share some features in common but differ in terms of word order
pragmatics
do not consist of spoken words, but can change meaning
include: context, intonation, facial configuration, body lang.
pragmatic development
early infancy, continues throughout lifespan
phonological development
- before birth to adolescence
- learn to differentiate sounds of native lang.
- learn to produce sounds of native lang.
- much perceptual phonological development complete by 10 months
semantic development
- birth throughout lifespan
- high rate of acquisition after 1- months through early school age
- requires segmenting speech
- mostly nouns
syntactic development
- pronouns in third year
- development slows by 5-6 years
evidence for critical period
- comparing adult 2nd lang. learners to child 2nd lang. learning
quinean reference problem
Hearing a label doesn’t immediately tell you what it is - doesn’t tell you if it’s the name of the object, a feature of the object, etc..
word learning constraints
- whole object bias: when we hear a novel word, we assume it’s referring to entire object
- mutual exclusivity: each label applies to one and only one object; each object has one and only one label
basic level bias
Superordinate: (Mammal)
Basic: (Rabbit)
Subordinate: (Arctic Hare)
pragmatic cues
pointing- orienting children toward what is being referenced
4 hypotheses for language development
behaviorist (watson), nativist (chomsky), connectionist, statistical learning
behaviorist account
All about reinforcement - kids learn language through reinforcement
Caregivers support language learning through reinforcement
Parents correct children when they make mistakes
Parents reward children when they are correct
nativist account
Modularity hypothesis -specific part of the brain to learn language)
- A dedicated language module has evolved in humans (modularity hypothesis)
- Specific brain areas are used for language
- Universal grammar
- All (typically developing) children acquire language
Nicaraguan Sign Language
reinforces idea of universal grammar - kids who made up their own grammatical structures without being exposed to another system/language
connectionist acocunt
We have. The ability to process information like computer - on multiple levels
- Opposite of nativism
- Children learn language the same way that they learn everything (general-purpose associative learning mechanisms)
- Computer simulations show that some features of language can be learned with repetitive input
Parallel processing
allows for a lot of information to be processed at once (e.g, processing word form, meaning and grammar)
statistical learning account
Children sensitive to the statistical probabilities of the input
- Not language specific (i.e., not evolved specifically for language learning), but used in service of learning language (conditional probabilities
- Can learn rules as well as sound (phoneme patterns)
- Don’t think learning language is reason why we have this ability - but (same as connectionist and behaviouralist)
fast mapping
How much input we need to learn the meaning of a word - expose a child to a word once, or twice and they learn it - very fast learning
syntactic bootstrapping
Using syntax to figure out meaning - using syntactical cues
collective monologues
Seen in early childhood - engage in turn taking conversation, but no shared meaning. Children are talking to each other, taking turns, but each about their own individual topic
three critical parts of human language
symbols, generativity, recursion
symbols
Arbitrary pairings between the words we speak and the things we refer to
Consensus - sounds that map out (represent) objects in the world
System of symbols
Generativity
Where you get structure in grammar
Allow you to combine words you’ve never heard together before, and make sense of it
We have a structure that allows us to take words that we know, and combine them in unique ways to express ideas
e.g., Green rabbits hop through the night on their way to school
recursion
Meaning is not lost from change in utterance
Our grammar allows us to retain meaning even if the order in which we express words changes
e.g., “Sally met 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
