Lecture 15 - Language development in later childhood

Question 1

things that happen in language development in later childhood

Answer 1

• start mastering that last few sounds in production
• it’s a long time before some syntactic constructions are understood (ask vs. promise)
  • distinguishing between: I asked him to clean his room vs. I promised him to clean his room
• peer interactions start happening more and more often, and these things shape their language and they get better at interacting with peers
• developing narrative skills
• developing literacy

Question 2

Peer Interactions

Answer 2

• they are a trial-by-fire form of communicative competence
• learn things fast cause you get a lot of feedback (maybe negative)
• in-group language: adolescent register
• playing with language (humor, sound play)

Question 3

adolescent register

Answer 3

• particular mode of speech that adolescents use with each other
• “like”, “y’know”
• Various slang terms
• either get abandoned or absorbed into general use

Question 4

Fun with language

Ely & McCabe (1994)

Answer 4

• about 25% of kindergarteners’ speech involved language play
• playing with sound
• Riddles:
  
  • word games capitalizing on ambiguity (phonological, morphological, semantic, lexical)
  • “Knock knock. Who’s there? Lettuce. Lettuce who? Lettuce in!”
  • solving riddles correlates with reading ability

Question 5

Verbal Humor

Answer 5

• Part of socializaion into community
• Develops with age
– Young: scatalogical (potty humor)
– Mid-childhood: more complex, e.g. puns/jokes
– Adolescence: as sarcastic and ironic as adults

• Varies from culture to culture
– Teasing
– AA: ‘your mama’ statements (ritualized verbal game)

Question 6

Gendered Speech

Answer 6

• Starts differentiating around age 2, 3
• The only biological components:
  • voice deepening (adolescence)
  • higher incidence of dyslexia in men (maybe socially conditioned: boys think reading is “girly”)
• everything else socially conditioned

Question 7

Gendered Speech in Adults: Males

Answer 7

• males have larger vocal cords = larger surfaces vibrate more slowly = low PITCH
• Males have longer vocal tracts = low FORMANTS (resonances that make vowels)

Question 8

fundamental frequency of U.S. adults

Answer 8

males 120Hz; females: 200Hz

***This discrepancy differs by culture: suggests that certain aspects of gendered speech are learned

Question 9

Gendered Speech in Children

Answer 9

• until ~ 13 years, no difference in PITCH
• as early as 4, differences in FORMANTS
• adult listeners can identify child gender about change at 4 years old (because they appear to be using formants)

Question 10

why are formants different?

Answer 10

the bigger the instrument the lower the pitch (differences in vocal tract size)

children are selectively imitating gendered speech patterns

Question 11

Gendered speech/language within social constructs

Answer 11

• unwittingly enforced by teachers, parents
- behavior X is okay for boy, not girl (or vice versa)

• identify with same-gender peers

- girls seek affiliation, boys seek power and autonomy (in suburbia)
- AA city girls show more balanced pattern - compete (allegedly male_ as well as cooperate 

• in narratives, girls are more likey to quote others

- a lot of attention to language, more literacy later 
- gender variability in attudes toward literacy (reading is 'girly')

Question 12

extended discourse

Answer 12

talking about stuff that is not just in “the here and now”

early on, lots of language is about immediate context

in school years, more need to have decontextualized language ( the “tell” part of “show and tell”)

key development in literacy skills (written language is always decontextualized)

explanations, descriptions, encouraged in the classroom

Question 13

paradigmatic extended discourse

Answer 13

logical writing

classroom writing

Question 14

narrative discourse

Answer 14

more natural, in social settings

story telling

focus on human intentions within the story

• story (usually about past events)
• at least two clauses about a single event

Question 15

things that change with age about narratives

Answer 15

• changes in length (become longer with age)
• changes in structure
  • age 4: “leapfrog” narratives (no train of thought)
  • between 4 and 8: chronological narratives (and then….and then…)
  • Age 8+: more classic narrative (high point analysis)
    • build up to high point/climax
    • also, lots of evaluation (how narrator feels about events)

Question 16

Narratives across cultures

Answer 16

• amount of evaluation in african american communities

Question 17

topic focused narratives

Answer 17

white kids use this

single person/event

beginning, middle, end

Question 18

topic associated narratives

Answer 18

one form AA (african American) kids use

kids who use this in classroom are discouraged by teachers: “stick with the topic!”

feel angry that teacher wasn’t interested

Question 19

explanations

Answer 19

parents can convey info about how the world works

“well santa comes over night and leaves presents…ect…”

Question 20

in the classroom

Answer 20

teachers try to elicit extended discourse

must be clear about reference (he, she, it): clarity

want them to take into account listener’s knowledge

Question 21

Cameron and Wang 1999

do kids take listener’s knowledge into account?

Answer 21

“tell a story to an adult using a picture book”

either in person or on the phone

if kids take listeners knowledge into account they should use more verbal cues when talking on the phone

“referential communication” experiment

on the phone, kids told longer stories, more corrections (for listener comprehension) than in person

Question 22

metalinguistic awareness

Answer 22

• conscious awareness of language structure
• influenced by: cognitive development and exposure to literacy and language instruction

-

Question 23

phonological awareness

Answer 23

the conscious understanding that words are made up of smaller units (syllables, phonemes)

• ages 3-8
• age 5: knowing that cat and hat rhyme
• age 8: knowing that giant and jail are spelled differently
• seen in verbal play (pig Latin, rhyming)

Question 24

achievements in Phonological awareness

Answer 24

• compare sounds in diff words
• separate out first sounds
• segment out word elements

Question 25

achievements in phonological awareness varies with language being learned, literacy, writing system

Answer 25

big doll –> dog bill

bed farm —> fed barm

lone fish

dog bed&raquo_space; bog ded is easer than dog bed&raquo_space; beg-dod

figuring out d | og in English (onset rime structure) is an achievement

what’s harder is figuring out that d | o | g (3 phonemes)
- may be less linguistically “natural” for English speakers than onset-rime

Question 26

metasemantic awareness

Answer 26

develops by about age 10

know what “word” means

can provide definitions for words: part of standard operating procedure for classrooms

Question 27

metasyntactic awareness

Answer 27

know correct syntax

know subj/obj/verb categories

does anyone really have it?

kids can correct errors, but usually focus on semantics over syntax:

- "The baby eated the typewriter"
    - Noo the baby eated the banana!

at age 5, they can often name the subject

may require explicit instruction

even all that instruction might not be giving your the right awareness: adults sometimes hypercorrect: “The answer is obvious to you and I”

Question 28

referential indadequcy

Answer 28

was that sufficient to pick out which referent? (“put the cell phone in my hand” and holds out both hands)

5 and under: blame listener

by age 8 they assign fault (correctly) to the speaker

Question 29

comprehensibility

Answer 29

was that understandable given the ppl that i’m talking to

Question 30

social/politeness rules

Answer 30

what are explicitly the rules for a given situation?

get it by late childhood/early adolescence

adolescents sometimes violate deliberately