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
true or false: only adults posses categorical speech perception
false, adults and infants
VOT
voice onset time - the time it takes between air passing through the lips and the vocal chords vibrating (b and p are formed in the same way but have different VOT’s)
the time it takes between air passing through the lips and the vocal chords vibrating
VOT voice onset time
difference in categorisation of speech sounds in adults and babies
babies distinguish more sounds e.g. japanese babies distinguish r and l but lose this ability at around 10-12 months
phonemic distinction experiment
eimas et al 1971
eimas et al 1971
phonemic distinction experiment
How old are infants when they start producing sounds
6-8 weeks when producing vowel sounds and become aware that their vocalisation elicits responses from others
what happens at around 6-8 weeks
infants start making vowel sounds or vowel consonant sounds
at 6 to 10 months
babies begin babbling - they’re babbling becomes more refined and starts to take on sounds and intonation of their native language - this includes silent babbling for babies with deaf parents
what age does babbling begin
6-10 months
who did experiments on silent babbling?
petitto and marentette 1991
petitto and marentette 1991
silent babbling
concepts infants are exposed to that prepare them for speech:
- Turn taking
- Intersubjectivity (sharing of common focus of attention)
- Joint attention (established when the baby and the parent are looking at the same thing)
- Pointing (helps establish joint attention or direct another attention there)
by 5 months
infants can pick their own name out of background conversation
at 7- 8 months
infants can recognise new words and and remember them for weeks
problem of reference
the associating of words with meaning. once they recognise recurrent units from speech
what age are infants associating highly familiar words?
6 months
US children have a vocab of how many words at how many months
10 months
11-154 words
what age do most infants produce their first words?
-typically include….
10-15 months
…names, objects, events from everyday life
holophrastic period
the period of one word utterances when a child expresses whole phrases with one word such as ‘up’ or ‘juice’
the time of one word utterances when a child expresses whole phrases with one word such as ‘up’ or ‘juice’
holophrastic period
overextension
when what children want to express outstrips their vocabulary e.g. using ‘dog’ for any 4 legged animal
when what children want to express outstrips their vocabulary e.g. using ‘dog’ for any 4 legged animal
Overextension
On average children say their first word at
13 months (though much variability)
on average children have a vocab spurt at
19 months (though much variability)
on average children form their first sentences at
24 months (though much variability)
Adult influences on word learning:
- quantity of talk, repetition
- place stress on the objects name
- name the object as the last word of the sentence
- name objects that are already the focus of attention to reduce confusion
- playing naming games e.g. wheres you’re tummy
Childrens contribution to word learning:
fast mapping whole object assumption mutual exclusivity pragamatic cues -social context -intentionality linguistic context
fast mapping
‘the process of learning a new word through the contrastive use of a familiar and unfamiliar word’ get me the chromium tray,
well theres a blue tray and a mystery colour tray so that must be chromium
whole object assumption
children assume a new word refers to a novel object rather than a part of that object or action of it
e.g. will assume bunny refers to the animal not the tail or the nose twitching
mutual exclusivity
if they see an object they know and one they don’t and are presented with a word they don’t know they will assume the unknown word refers to the unknown object because how could an object be two things? (but could be e.g. chair/furniture)
pragmatic cues
- learning words from context e.g. what an adult is looking at when they say the name
- if the adult says they are going to dax the doll and then performs one ‘accidental’ action and one ‘purposeful’ action the child will thin purposeful = dax
linguistic context
children use the words place in the sentence to figure out what they mean
using grammatical context of a word:
this is a dax - refers ti the object
this is a dax one - refers to the colour – tend to have a shape bias over colour or material
grammatical structure of whole sentence:
-syntactic bootstrapping
syntactic bootstrapping
children use the grammatical structure of a sentence to infer the meaning
2-year olds hear an adult describe the scene as “The duck is kradding the rabbit,” or “the duck and the rabbit are kradding”.
telegraphic speech
two word sentences missing non essential elements e.g. read me
at around 2.5 years….
children producing 4 word sentences start using more than one clause e.g. i’ll do that when we get home
when do children start using more than one clause
2.5 years
evidence that children understand grammar
- word endings
- overregularisation
overregularisation
applying regular grammar rules to irregular concepts
e.g. my foots/feets growed/grewed
how do children learn - nativist view:
- chomsky claims that humansare born with an innate lingustic knowledge
- a set of highly abstract, unconscious rules common to all languages
- believe there is a specific language ‘module’in the brain
modularity hypothesis
-the brain contains an innate self-contained language module that is separate from other aspects of cognitive functioning
Evidence for the nativist view on learning language:
- deaf children imposed grammatical rules similar to the norms into their sign language with no adult influence-utterances are not generally corrected grammatically, more for factuality
- children won’t hear every structure of their target language (generativity)
- universals and species specific nature of language
critiques of the nativist view:
- the idea of universal grammar
- focuses on syntax and ignore communicative role of language
how do children learn - interactionist view:
-virtually everything about language is influenced by its communicative function
-children are motivated to communicate their wants/desires/goals
-babbling rate is influenced by parental reinforcement
-knowledge of the formal properties of language (that chomsky thought where innate) are learned through interacting with other people
-
evidence for the interactionist view
- remarkable sensitivity of young children for pragmatic cues
- ability to use even quite subtle aspects of social context to interpret utterances
Evidence for the nativist view on learning language:
- deaf children imposed grammatical rules similar to the norms into their sign language with no adult influence-utterances are not generally corrected grammatically, more for factuality
- children won’t hear every structure of their target language (generativity)
- universals and species specific nature of language
critiques of the nativist view:
- the idea of universal grammar
- focuses on syntax and ignore communicative role of language
how do children learn - interactionist view:
-virtually everything about language is influenced by its communicative function
-children are motivated to communicate their wants/desires/goals
-babbling rate is influenced by parental reinforcement
-knowledge of the formal properties of language (that chomsky thought where innate) are learned through interacting with other people
-
evidence for the interactionist view
- remarkable sensitivity of young children for pragmatic cues
- ability to use even quite subtle aspects of social context to interpret utterances
- children just as readily accept gestures and signs as labels for objects as words
evidence agaisnt
- even after diligent concentration to a language could never reveal its complex grammatical principles
- criticised for ignoring syntactic development
