Language Development

Question 1

what is language?

Answer 1

Language is the core property that basically defines human beings

A communication system in which words and their written symbols combine in rule-governed ways to enable speakers to produce infinite numbers of messages

Question 2

What is communication?

Answer 2

A two way process; we send messages to theirs and receive messages from them.

Thus using productive language we produce commincations, using receptive language, we receive communication from others

Question 3

What is the difference between expressive and recpeptive language?

Answer 3

Productive language: production of speech

Receptive language: Understanding the speech of others.

Question 4

what is phonology

What is semantics?

Answer 4

phonology- Sounds and the rules by which they are combined, prosody, intonation, tone, stress, rhythm

Semantics- Word meanings and word combinations, vocabulary and beyond

Question 5

What is Grammar??

What is pragmatics?

Answer 5

Grammar- • Morphology – root words, prefixes and suffixes e.g., grammatical markers –ed
• Syntax – rules that govern how words are combined to make sentences

pragmatics- Appropriate and effective communication, social use of language, using language in contextually appropriate ways, nonliteral meaning

Question 6

Outline influential thoeries of language development

Answer 6

Theories should be able to: describe, explain and predict
Empiricism (or behaviourism)
• Nativism – Language is innately specified (rather than learned) – Main proponent Chomsky (see also Pinker and others) • Information processing: Statistical learning (others too) • Social interactionist

Question 7

Outline empericalism as a theroy of language deelopment

Answer 7

• Key proponents: Skinner, Bandura
• Language is learned
• Imitation and reinforcement (and generalisation)
• BUT: – Children don’t hear all of the language that they produce – Reinforcement for incorrect as well as correct utterances (Pinker, 1994) – Doesn’t explain consistency in developmental trajectories, not all children hear the same language

Question 8

Outline nativism as a theory of language development

Answer 8

Nativism:
Language acquisition device: Chomsky’s proposed mental structure in the human nervous system that incorporates an innate concept of language.

The arguments (do they hold?):
• Children learn language quickly and well
• Children learn language even when input is limited – Deaf children
• There is a time when children are biologically predisposed to learn language – Critical period evidence genie- 13 year old- kept in room by mentally ill father from 18 mnths – Genie could communicate but never aquired normal language suggesting critical period
• The brain – The brain is specialised for language – Younger children recover better from brain damage • Evidence against nativism (species specific): animals can learn language

Evidence for nativism: Deaf children
• In the absence of systematic sign language input, children spontaneously develop communication systems with vocabulary and syntax
• Drive to create language
• Susan Goldin-Meadow and colleagues: ‘homesign’
• Establishment of a special educational needs school in Nicaragua brought together deaf children and adolescents
• Senghas & Coppola (2001) – Over a couple of decades: Homesign → Nicaraguan sign language

• Pidgins → Creoles parents to children (Bickerton, 2008) – Pidgin = simplified language, mixture of two or more simplified languages – Creole = stable natural language, develops from a pidgin and becomes a first language for children
• BUT could the environment play a role (e.g., Tomasello, 1995)? • Creole languages developed a long time ago – we don’t really know what happened (Hoff, 2005) • Both nature and nurture explain this?

Question 9

are children or adults better at learning languages?

Answer 9

Children? Adults?
• Proficiency determined by age acquisition/exposure begins
– ASL learners (Singleton & Newport, 2004)
– Foreign language learners (Hakuta et al., 2003)
– ERP and fMRI indicate second-language processing less lateralised in older than younger learners (Neville & Bruer, 2001)

Question 10

Outline what evidence exists for nativism in the critical period

Answer 10

Genie never acquired normal language – Discovered age 13 in 1970 – Had been confined to one room – Neglected in every way – Minimal exposure to language but did learn language
• Genie used as evidence for the critical period hypothesis
• Critical vs. sensitive periods

Question 11

ouyltline what nativism evidence exists wit hthe brain

Answer 11

• Early studies of aphasia suggested that there are dedicated brain areas for language
• Broca: Grammatical processing and speech production
• Wernicke: Lexical comprehension
• BUT Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas not solely or mainly responsible for specific language functions
• Language functions more associated with left than right hemisphere
• Younger children recover better from damage than older
• BUT brain is plastic and develops/changes – especially young brains (sensitive period)
• Left-localisation is associated with effective language processing but it is not necessary

Question 12

Give some evidence against nativism

Answer 12

Evidence against nativism? Comparative research
• Not species specific?
• With training in sign language or artificial language (visual symbols) animals can acquire vocabulary: Chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, parrots, dolphins…
• Kanzi (Sue Savage-Rumbaugh et al.): – Observed researchers training his mother in the use of symbols to communicate (youtube) – Seemingly remarkable comprehension –

Motivation: Conversation (Greenspan & Shanker, 2004) or getting what he wants (Seidenberg & Petitto, 1987) – Mastery of grammar ≤ 2 year old

• Could language still be species-specific? Little evidence of language use that is complex and novel
• Einstein

Question 13

Outline Chomskys theory

Answer 13

Chomsky says, normal children everywhere are born with a kind of hard-wired syntax that enables them to grasp the basic workings of language. The child then chooses the particular grammar and language of the environment from the available options in the brain.

Chomsky advanced his “government-binding” theory in a 1981 book, in which he says a child’s native knowledge of syntax consists of a group of linguistic principles that define the form of any language. These principles are connected with parameters, or “switches,” triggered by the child’s language environment.

Chomsky emphasizes the importance of the child’s genetic inheritance of the syntax imprint. For Chomsky, the “growth” of language is analogous to the growth of internal organs and arms and legs – determined by internal mechanisms, but nourished by the environment – whether verbal or nutritional.

Chomsky sees language development in the child as a separate aspect of knowledge, apart from the rest of cognition, or mental functioning.

Question 14

give some critisisms of CHomsky and Nativism

Answer 14

What constitutes the universal grammar?
• Grammar innately determined? This is inconsistent with the learning and experimentation that we see as children develop e.g., errors that children make suggest that learning occurs and is gradual, not just ‘switched on’
• Ignores the quality of the language input
• Doesn’t consider pragmatics or social influences on language development
• Is language development the result of interactions between the child’s innate capacities and experience of language/learning?

Question 15

Outline basic principles of chomsky

Answer 15

A nativist approach: Language is innate, species specific
• Focus on grammar
• Language acquisition device (LAD): Innate system that allows child to produce and comprehend grammatically consistent sentences
• LAD contains universal grammar, rules common to all languages
• Children acquire grammar spontaneously and with limited exposure to language

Question 16

outline the statistical learning of information processing

Answer 16

Child processes statistical regularities in the input → language learning (e.g., Saffran et al., 1996)
• Implicit learning, not the result of direct instruction
Jenny Saffran

Information processing: Statistical learning
• E.g., How do children know which parts of the seemingly continuous stream of sounds are words (word segmentation)?
“pretty baby” pretty baby
“tyba” doesn’t occur frequently in English language, therefore indicates these are parts of different words
• BUT do findings generalise to natural settings?

Question 17

Outline the social interactionist approach

Answer 17

Drive to understand/communicate and rich language environment combine to → language learning

• Therefore, social competency and language experiences shape development
Michael Tomasello

Recoginze language is learned in the context of spoken language but assuming well that humans are in some way biologically prepped for learning to speak.
Facilitating childrens language development:
Bruner (1983) proposed that the environment provides the language-learning child with a language acquisition support system or LASS
LASS: a collection of strategies and tactics that environmental inlfuences initially, a child parent or caregiver- provide to the language-learning child.

Question 18

outline language in infants before words Outline t

Answer 18

Infant methods (head turn, novelty, familiarity)
• Sensitive to stress patterns, role in parsing words animal (Jurczyk, 2001)
• Phoneme = smallest sound unit that can signal a change in meaning e.g. “pa” vs. “ba”
• Phonemes are different across different languages
• Infants quickly become specialists in their own language…

Before words: Production
• Cooing – 2 months – Vowel sounds
• Babbling – 6 months – Consonant–vowel – Universal timing – Range expands
babbling
• Joint attention: – Child and adult attending to the same object, often with labels/language – Important for language and social development

• Preverbal gestures: – Protodeclarative = bring object to others’ attention – Protoimperative = getting someone else to do something (e.g., give me that)
• Occur before words but continue…

Question 19

outline phonolgical development in infants

Answer 19

First words limited by sounds that can be pronounced • Related to semantic (meaning) development
• Understand more than can say – 14m look longer at baby when pronounced correctly (Swingley & Aslin, 2002)
correct pronouncation resulted in longer looking time than slight pronounciation or extrememe mis pronounciation

Question 20

Outlijne Phonoloigcal strategies

Answer 20

– Minimal words (stressed syllable)
– Add ending consonant
– Adjust vowel length
– Add unstressed syllables
– Produce full word, correct stress pattern
– May still need to refine sounds
– Mostly complete by age 5 (onset of reading)
• Later development: Refine syllable stress patterns – related to meaning

Question 21

Outline early semantic development

Answer 21

Comprehension before production – Five-month lag (Menyuk et al., 1995)
• Vocabulary spurt: – E.g., Caselli et al. (1995) – 18 to 24 mths – More pronounced for comprehension
• Is it a spurt? Steady, slow increase (Ganger & Brent, 2004)
• Fast-mapping → partial word knowledge, which is enhanced over repeated exposures (Swingley, 2010)
• Form networks of related concepts → further word learning

Question 22

Outline later semantic development

Answer 22

Later semantic development
• Big vocabulary increase 
– Fast-mapping continues
 – Analyze word structure 
– Collocations e.g., cup of tea 
– Abstract terms e.g., philosophy 
– Learning through the process of reading (e.g., Nagy & Scott, 2000) 

• Use of words is increasingly: 
– Precise 
– Flexible
 - understand multiple meanings, metaphors, puns
 – Context-independent

Question 23

OUTLINE SOME FACTORS INVOLVED IN VOCABULARY LEARNINGOutli

Answer 23

Adult feedback
• Quality of interactions/input (Weizman & Snow, 2001)
• SES and shared book reading (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2006)
• Ability to understand intentions (cf. theory of mind)
• Nature of the language to be learned: English has a very large vocabulary with lots of similar words (cf. learning to read)

Cognitive processing
– Working memory
– phonological store (Baddeley et al., 1998)
– BUT evidence mixed (Melby-Lervag et al., 2012) • Strategies
– Mutual exclusivity bias: words refer to non-overlapping categories
– Shape bias: initial sensitivity to shape
– Syntactic bootst`rapping: use syntax to learn new words – Social information

Question 24

Outline early gramatical development

Answer 24

Comprehension>production
• Starts with telegraphic speech at 1.5 to 2 years
• (economical: telegram were charged by the word)
• 2-word combinations, high content words
• Mostly nouns and verbs e.g., eat cake

Question 25

Outline developemtn of gramatical morphemes

Answer 25

Morpheme = small markers that change the meaning of sentences e.g., – Suffix: -ing, -ed – Prepositions: “on”, “in”… – Articles: “a”, “the”
• Structural complexity affects order acquired
• Overregularisation errors (e.g., Marcus et al., 1992) – Applying rules without appropriate exceptions – E.g., past tense “breaked”, plural “foots”

Question 26

outline pragamtic development

Answer 26

Using language effectively in social contexts
• Conversational skills develop dramatically:
– Eye contact
– Turn taking
– Developing the conversation e.g., turnabout (requesting more information)
– Shading: Initiating change in topic gradually
– Understanding of speaker intention (cf. theory of mind)