Lecture 5 - Language development

Question 1

Language

Answer 1

Using words to convey messages, communication system with words as the unit combined to a message

Question 2

Communication

Answer 2

Using language, facial expression and other methods to convery a message

Question 3

Phanology

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Semantics

Answer 4

Word meanings and word combinations, vocabulary and beyond

Question 5

Grammar

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Pragmatics

Answer 6

Appropriate and effective communication, social use of language, using language in contextually appropriate ways, nonliteral meaning
Sounds of your language
Word meanings combined to make sense

Question 7

What should theories be able to do?

Answer 7

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 8

Empiricism
Keep proponents
Beliefs

Answer 8

Key proponents: Skinner, Bandura
Language is learned
Imitation and reinforcement
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 9

Chomsky - basic principles

Answer 9

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
Stongly nativist

Question 10

Evidence for nativism

Answer 10

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
The brain
– The brain is specialised for language
– Younger children recover better from brain damage
Evidence against nativism (species specific): animals can learn language

Question 11

Evidence for nativism - deaf children

Answer 11

Absence of systematic sign language input, children spontaneously develop communication systems with vocabulary and syntax
Drive to create language
Homesign -> child object shown then gesture -> develop to more established sign (initial method of communication without sign language input)
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

Cospeech gesture -> parents gesture with speech

Question 12

Pidgins to Creoles

Answer 12

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
Creole languages developed a long time ago – we don’t really know what happened (Hoff, 2005)
Both nature and nurture explain this?

Developed through parents with different language through slavery needing to come together to develop communications -> passed on to children that they develop more complex version

Enviroment -> when children came together and had to produce and interpret language
Difficult to be sure of Creole language development because didnt track this a long time ago how it developed

Question 13

Are children or adults better at learning languages

Answer 13

Proficiency determind by age acquisisition/ 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 14

Evidence for nativism- Critical period

Answer 14

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

Have to learn language in this point or impossible to learn afterwards

Never recovered from lack of language -> suggest critical period
Also examples in feral children
Without input -> little development

Now think more of sensitive -> more susceptible to learning at this time

Question 15

Evidence for nativism- Brain

Answer 15

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

Brain damage
Areas of brain for language -> suggest prewiring to proccess

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

Younger children recruit other parts of brain to aid the development and interpretation of language
Not deterministic -> dont have the area that is best for a purpose -> recruit other parts

Question 16

Evidence against nativism - comparative research

Answer 16

Not species specific?
With training in sign language or artificial language (visual symbols) animals can acquire vocabulary: Chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, parrots, dolphins…

If its only our brain set up like that -> how can some animals develop language
Parrot (Einstein) -> used some degree of language

Kanzi
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)
Learnt symbolic relationship between words and symbol/ images
Can’t really go beyond what a child can do -> cannot use grammer to begin to string the individual units together
Mastery of grammar ≤ 2 year old

Question 17

Nativism/ Chomsky- Critique

Answer 17

Universal grammar
Grammar could be 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 18

Information processing - statistical learning - Jenny Saffran

Answer 18

Learn through irregularities in environment
Keeping track of patterns in environment -> what things come together or what leads to what (cry -> parent comes)
Babies looking for causal relationships
Implicit way -> dont actively seek this
Child processes statistical regularities in the input → language learning (e.g., Saffran et al., 1996)
Implicit learning, not the result of direct instruction

Question 19

Social interactionist approach

Answer 19

Drive to understand/communicate and rich language environment combine to → language learning
Therefore, social competency and language experiences shape development

Question 20

Speech perception before words

Answer 20

Methods of understanding
Infant methods (head turn, novelty, familiarity)
Sensitive to stress patterns, role in parsing words animal (Jusczyk, 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…

Infants specialise
Compared English 6-8m, 8-10m, 10-12m on discrimination of non-English contrasts (Hindi Ta/ta and Salish ki/qi)
Sounds not relevant to English: performance declines with age (vs. Hindi/Salish infants)

6 months -> can hear the difference between words in all languages
10 months -> tuned to perceive language in native language, can no longer tell difference between words in other languages-> becoming specailist in own language

Question 21

Production before words

Answer 21

Cooing - 2 months
Vowel sounds

Babbling - 6 months
Consonant–vowel
Universal timing
Range expands babbling

Question 22

Proverbal gestures

Answer 22

Protodeclarative = bring object to others’ attention 
Protoimperative = getting someone else to do something (e.g., give me that)

Question 23

Phonological development

Answer 23

First words limited by sounds that can be pronounced
Related to semantic (meaning) development
Understand more than can say

Phonological strategies
 – 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

Realtion between words
Meaning of sentences
Mapping phonoligical form to meaning
Association

Question 24

Semantic development

Answer 24

Vocabulary acquisition enables phonology (sound) semantics (meaning)

Very wide normal variation
About 12 months is average spurt -> inmitially keywords then spurt to more sentences
Though if you look very closely it is very rapid but is still gradual not a jump
Fast mapping -> point at the object and say word -> adding to words you know -> instrimental in improving language
How words fit together in categories -> network

Question 25

Early semantic development

Answer 25

Vocabulary spurt:
– 18 to 24 mths
– More pronounced for comprehension
Is it a spurt? Steady, slow increase
Fast-mapping → partial word knowledge, which is enhanced over repeated exposures
Form networks of related concepts → further word learning

Units of phrases -> sets of words together used so often become like one word (collocations)
Building up landscape of information
Increasingly precise -> words meaning technically the same but generally when using word expertly you would use one over the other in context

Question 26

Later semantic development

Answer 26

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) Anglin (1993) 

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

Impacts of other factors -> socio-economic, theory of mind (others beliefs), reading
Complexity of words (some words long phonologically complex) or complexity of grammer-> charictoristics of different languages making them easier or more difficult to learn

Question 27

Factors that influence vocabularly learning

Answer 27

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 bootstrapping: use syntax to learn new words
– Social information

Question 28

Early gramatical development

Answer 28

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 29

Development of Grammatical Morphemes

Answer 29

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 30

Pragmatic development

Answer 30

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