Lecture 8 - Language and Development Flashcards
What is language?
systems for representing thoughts, feelings, knowledge and communicating them to others
creative and flexible use of symbols is what sets humans apart form other animals
What age can children speak as well as uni 1st year
5…but not quite at adult like competence
mastering a language consists of two components
- language comprehension
- language production
Components of language (5)
phonemes morphemes syntax semantics pragmatics
phoneme
smallest unit of sound - rake and lake differ by just one phoneme (rrr and lll)
morpheme
smallest unit of meaning (happy)
syntax
rules governing word order and resulting meaning (man bites dog vs dog bites man). govern how words from different categories e.g verbs and nouns can be combined
semantics
the meanings of words and sentences
generativity
the idea that through the finite number of words we know we can put together an infinite number of sentences and express an infinite number of ideas
the first stage in a babies language learning is
Phonological development - the mastery of the sound system of their language (which letters can go together)
full fledged language is only achieved by ____ if _____
Humans and only if they have experience with other humans.
Chimpanzees can be taught to sign but lack proper syntax
Which hemisphere shows specialisation for language?
left - and specialisation increases with age
Damage to which are of the brain causes difficulties with producing speech
broca’s - near the motor cortex
Damage to which are of the brain causes difficulties with meaning
wernicke’s - near the auditory cortex
What is associated with damage to Wernicke’s area
Difficulties with meaning
What is associated with damage to broca’s area?
Difficulties producing speech
Adults use Infant directed speech (IDS) when talking to children. What is different?
- Warm and affectionate tone
- high pitch
- slower
- extreme intonation
- more expressive/expressions
- kiddies prefer it to ADS
What happens between age 5 and puberty with regard to language?
As shown by genie the feral child language acquisition can become much more difficult
Genie
- born 1957
- severe child abuse, discovered age 13
- very malnourished, little stimulation
- never acquired language
- gestures and drawings only
- some vocab, no syntax
critical language theory support:
- kiddywinks that suffer brain damage are much more likely to recover language abilities than adults, presumably coz other areas of the brain can take over (johnson 1998)
- work also done in bilinguals
johnson 1998
kids recover after language impairment and adults don’t
bilingual learning 2nd language from different ages grammar test results
3-7 same as native, after this begins to decline and decline
(johnson and newport 1989)
johnson and newport 1989
bilingual learning 2nd language from different ages grammar test results
phonological development is
the aquisition of knowledge about phonemes
semantic development
learning the system for expressing meaning in a language, starting with learning morphemes
syntactic development
learning the syntax or rules for combining words - learning how to organise words to express specific meanings
Pragamatic development
aquiring knowledge of how language is used, including understanding a variety of conversational conventions
e.g in some places its very rude to address a stranger or use informal ‘you’
metalinguistic knowledge
an understanding of the properties and functions of language - e.g. adults know when they here a foreign language that it is a language made up of words etc
how is sign language learnt?
very similarly to vocal language
Prosody
the characteristic rhythm tempo cadence melody and intonational patterns within a language - fetuses respond to this
Beyond prosody what does speech perception consist of
distinguishing between speech sounds (phonemes)
Categorical speech perception
- both adults and infants perceive sounds as belonging to discrete categories
- with ba and pa as the vot is gradually lengthened adults don’t hear a gradual chnage they have a cut of point at whic it becomes ba or pa - discontinuous categories
true or false: only infants posses categorical speech perception
false, adults and infants