module 9 Flashcards
language
phonology
deals of sounds
morphology/ semantics
deals with meaning
syntax
grammar
pragmatics
how to use language to communicate with one’s culture
phonemes
smallest unit of sound
morpheme
smallest units of meaning
critical period for language
best to experience input before age 5
language is lateralized to wthat hemisphere?
left
- even in newborns born deaf
- lateralization mild at first; increases over development
broca’s aphasia
difficulty producing words, understands perfectly
wernicke’s aphasia
difficulty understanding and producing understandable speech, but speech is produced fine
why are kids better at learning languages according to newport?
- Perceptual and memory limitations lead young children to extract smaller bits of language than adults do
- Allows children(not adults) to ignore complexity; extract regularities
when does language perception begin?
in the womb
infant direct speech (IDS)
- Slower, simpler, louder, higher-pitched, accentuates word boundaries, accentuates noun phrases
- Very grammatical
- Repetitive
- Recasts child’s utterances
prosody
characteristic rythymn, tempo, cadence, melody, and intonational patterns with which language is spoken
speech sounds
phonemic differences hat make up a language- bat v pat v cat, etc
Perceptual narrowing
Younger infants seem to have more competence (they discriminate more)
- Recall synaptic pruning; use it or lose it
Stages of language production
- Reflexive sounds (crying, grunting)- birth
- Social sounds (cooing, laughter)- 6 wks
- Intentional vocal play (babbling)- 6-10 months
- First words: 10-15 months (Avf 13)
- Vocabulary spurt: 14-25 months
- Simple sentences: 18-32 months
Vocab spurt
- Vocab growth slow at first, gets faster and faster
- Btw 12-18 most they quadruple their vocab
styles of acquisition
- Referential or analytical style: analyze speech stream into individual phonemic elements and words
- Expressive/hollistic style: pay attention to overall sounds, rhythm, intonation
- Wait and see style: acquire speech late but immediately produce complex sentences
when do babies learn words better?
- In the centre of the visual field
- In same context
Perceptual constraints
cognitive bias that young children exhibit when learning new words. It refers to the tendency to categorize objects based on their shape.
For example, if a child learns the word “ball,” they may extend that label to other round objects, such as oranges or balloons
Pragmatic constraints
fast mapping, mutual exclusivity, and intentionality and emotional reactions
fast mapping
Rapidly learning a new words because you hear it contrasted with one you know
- e.g., Give me the chromium tray, not the red one (By age 2)
mutual exclusivity
one object has only one label
- if you hear a new label, must be for a new object (18 most or before)
Syntactic constraints: bootstrapping
- Using structure of a sentence to determine words meaning (19mos)
Telegraphic speech:
tend to leave out unnecessary little words like conjunctions, prepositions, articles
Connectionist/empiricists view on language
babies learn words from little experience, and statistical learning can be applied to lots of stuff
interactionists view on language
language is a social skill- children get it by listening to and interacting with people
bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA)
learning two languages simultaneously from birth (also called crib bilinguals, or simultaneous bilinguals)
monolingual vs. bilingual babies on discriminating sounds
- monolingual babies: discriminate sounds from the world’s languages at 4-6 months
- bilingual babies: discriminate sounds from world’s languages at 4-6 months
- by 10-12 months, discriminate sounds from BOTH their native languages
constraints/ biases on understanding words
- whole object assumption: expectation that the word will refer to the whole object
- categorical scope: expectation that the word will refer to the entire category of objects
- fast mapping: rapidly learning new word simply from contrastive use of a familiar or unfamiliar words
- mutual exclusivity assumption: novel name- nameless category principle: leads children to expect that a given entity will have only one name
assumptions and expectations of bilinguals vs. monolinguals
- monolingual toddlers assume each object has only one basic category label
- bilinguals rely less on this assumption
- frequently encounter multiple labels for a single object- one label in each of their languages
