Lec 25 Language 1 & 2 Flashcards
Critical period evidence 1: Isabelle
critical period case study; hidden away by deranged mother; minimal attention, never spoken to; discovered at 6, had no language; cognitive development
Critical period evidence 1: Genie
critical period case study; discovered at 13; went through 1- and 2-word stages almost immediately; fast/varied verb acquisition, w/ plural and possessives; eventually plurals, possessives; never beyond 2.5 year old level
no ok: too old
Critical period evidence 1: Chelsea
critical period case study; born deaf, mistakenly diagnosed as retarded; raised at home, no exposure to sign language or speech training; otherwise healthy and normal; age 31, test shown merely deaf, can hear well with hearing aids; acquired a sizable vocabulary; no grammar –> day, “breakfast eating girl,” “banana the eat”
not ok: too old
Critical period evidence 2: second language learning
in the first stages: adults are better than children at learning; long-term outcome: children»_space; adults
evidence: Johnson & Newport (1989)
- native Chinese & Korean speakers (came to the US at varying ages)
- immense exposure to English for > 5 years
- judge whether a sentence is grammatical
- -> age of exposure matters, number of years of experience does not
acquistion of language late in life
deaf children’s ASL
- native learners: children of deaf signing parents
- early learners: first exposed to ASL 4-6
- late learners: first exposed to ASL after 12
all fine of basic word order; on subtleties such as inflection, though, natives > earlies > lates
agrammatism
appears in Broca’s aphasia patients; have difficulty using grammatical constructions; also shown in comprehension
e.g., Q: The horse kicks the cow: which image? –> patients performed poorly (at chance); correct answer specified by grammar –> impaired in Broca’s
Wernicke’s aphasia
damage to the temporal cortex; damage to the superior temporal gyrus; first described by Wernicke; poor speech comprehension and production of meaningless speech (speech is fluent and unlabored; appears grammatical: include functional words, complex tense, and subordinate clauses; uses few content words: sentence doesn’t make sense); doesn’t understnad questions, can’t say names of things (make up words/sounds) –> similar to symantic dimensia; comprehension impaired even when assessed with pointing responses; patients appear unaware of their deficit –> unlike Broca’s (bothers them); follow social conversations, remain sensitive to facial expression, tone of voice, pauses between sentences, etc. –> knows when supposed to answer
articulation fluent and production appears grammatical; lost content words; no longer comprehend the meaning of words/sentences
cooing
first basic stage of language development; occurs in the first few months; small range of meaningless sounds; simple “goo” sounds; gurgling
babbling
second basic stage of language development; amount 6-8 months; large range of meaningless sounds; no linguisitic intent: just playing with the apparatus; even deaf children babble, in sign!; gradually becomes more like talking
single words
third basic stage of language development; about 10-12 months; girls first; names (mommy, dada), objects (sppon, doggy), actions (eat, push), greetings (bye-bye) –> concrete words; parents typically know all the words; no “function words” (a, is, to); no inflections (plural, tense)
word utterances
fourth basic stage of language development; about 2 years; e.g., “mommy sock,” “no eat”; consistent word order –> “mommy throw” and “throw ball” BUT never “ball throw” or “throw mommy”
deaf isolates do not go beyond this stage
complex utterances
fifth basic stage of language; after 2 years; vocab takes off –> parents can no longer keep track, a 5 year old know ~10,000 words, between 2 and 5 they average ~ 10 words/day (almost 1/hour); steady growth of grammatical complexity –> 5 years = roughly adult grammar, longer + also more complex (e.g., embedding)
specific language impairment
a syndrome in which individuals seem to have normal intelligence but problems in learning the rules of language; general intelligence ok; hereditary; can hear, no motor apparatus impairment, not autistic
e. g., the “wug” test:
- This is a wug. Oh, look, here are two of them; there are two ____.
- typical 4 year olds blurt out “wugs!”
- individual with SLI responds “wug… wugness, isn’t it? No. I see. You want to pair… pair it up. [Next is “zat”.] Zackle?”
evidence for the domain specificity of language acquisition
double dissociation
-dissociation between language and general intelligence: impaired language ability, preserved intelligence –> SLI, aphasia
-preserved language ability, impaired intelligence –> Spina Bifida, William’s syndrome
-language separate from other cognition
acquistion of language late in life
deaf children’s ASL
- native learners: children of deaf signing parents
- early learners: first exposed to ASL 4-6
- late learners: first exposed to ASL after 12
all fine of basic word order; on subtleties such as inflection, though, natives > earlies > lates
