Task 6: Development of Language Flashcards
Siegler, articles
Generativity
Idea that through the use of finite set of words and morphemes in humans’ vocabulary, we can put together an infinite number of sentences and express an infinite number of ideas.
Phonemes
Elementary units of meaningful sound used to produce languages. A change in phoneme changes the meaning of a word.
Morphemes
Smallest units of meaning in a language, composed of one or more phonemes e.g. ban and pan
Syntax
Rules in language that specify how words from different categories can be combined e.g. man is not mans it is mens
Name the 4 types of development
- phonological
- semantic
- syntactic
- pragmatic
Phonological development
First step in language learning, characterized by the acquisition of knowledge about the sound system of a language.
Semantic development
Second component of language acquisition, characterized by learning about expressing meaning.
Syntactic development
Third component in language learning, characterized by learning rules for combining words.
Pragmatic development
Acquisition of knowledge about how language is used
Metalinguistic knowledge
Understanding of properties and function of language – that is, understanding of language as language.
Discuss the behaviourist approach to language development
believes that development is a function of learning through reinforcement and punishment of overt behavior.
Skinner – Parents teach children to speak by means of same kinds of reinforcement techniques that are used to train animals.
Discuss the nativist approach to language development
Suggests that language is an innate faculty, so we are born with a universal grammar in our brain.
Chomsky – Countered Skinner by pointing that we can understand and produce sentences that we have never heard before (= generativity).
Universal grammar
Proposed set of highly abstract, unconscious rules that are common to all language.
Name the 3 steps of the development of the phonological system
- speech perception
- speech production
- articulation
Speech segmentation
To learn relevant sounds of their language, infants must separate speech streams (= undifferentiated series of speech sounds) into individual sounds and combinations. This is facilitated by IDT (infant-directed speech). By age of 7 months, they are able to recognize familiar words in speech stream.
Categorical perception of speech sounds
- when?
Phonemes are sound categories in human speech and depending on the language, we use and discriminate different sets of phonemes. The process that allows us to discriminate different phonemes while making it difficult to discriminate phonemes within same category is called categorical perception
- 0 to 4 months
Becoming a native listener
Between 6 – 12 months, infants lose ability to discriminate sounds from non-native languages, while becoming experts at distinguishing sounds from native language (perceptual narrowing). This ability depends on experience.
Name the 5 steps of speech production
- reflexive vocalizations (birth to 2 months)
- cooing and laughing (2-4 months)
- babbling and vocal play (4-6 months)
- canonical babbling (6-10 months)
- modulated babbling (10 months +)
- reflexive vocalizations (birth to 2 months)
characterized by cries, coughs, burps and sneezes. Infant has different types of cries, which suggests that each has a different meaning.
- cooing and laughing (2-4 months)
Infants begins laughing and combining sounds with one another. Reciprocal cooing between infant and parent helps infant to learn that communication involves taking turns.
- babbling and vocal play (4-6 months)
Infants gain control over vocal cords, lips, tongue and mouth, and produce wide range of sounds and combinations, called babbling
- canonical babbling (6-10 months)
Sound combinations produced that sound like words. There is no evidence that infants understand it. Neither hearing human speech or having others respond to infant vocalizations is necessary for early babbling to occur, evidence of this lies on fact that deaf (parents) children also babble. Beyond age of 6 months, hearing speech plays role in continuation of babbling (deaf infants stop babbling).
- modulated babbling (10 months +)
Infants produce variety of sound combinations, stress and intonation patterns. They also begin to have meaningful speech. Modulated babbling plays role in acquisition of intonation patterns.
Development of articulation
Children know when they pronounce something wrong and thus, are more likely to use words that they can pronounce. As they learn to produce pronunciations, they make phonological distinctions that sometimes adults cannot perceive. This is done by saying the same word slightly different (‘gwass’ for grass and glass).
Syntax
a set of rules dealing with the manner in which words and parts of words are related to one another to produce grammatical sentences.
Surface structure (s-structure)
Level of syntax that corresponds to spoken sentences, like noun – verb - adjective. It can have more than one meaning
Deep structure (d-structure)
Level of syntax that is a more abstract representation of a sentence and determines its meaning.
One word period (syntactic development)
Acquisition of syntax follow predictable pattern during first two years of life.
- > 10 to 18 mts
- > produce single word utterances
Two word period (syntactic development)
Between 18- and 24-months age, most children begin to produce two words at a time.
-> agent and action e.g. mummy go
Later syntactic development
After two-word period, children’s syntactic knowledge increases dramatically.
-> Skills between 24 and 36-month-old child are very different. At 36 months they can use past forms and language exceptions.
Overregularization errors
Occur when children apply a rule to an exception to the rule. These mistakes are understandable because they do not know yet about certain exceptions to the rules they are learning.
How do children make overregularization errors in relation to
a) plurals
b) past tense
a) Plurals – Infants are unlikely to attach ‘-s’ to mass nouns (= cannot be counted) but they do so for count nouns (= can be counted).
b) Past tense – Overregularize use of suffix ‘-ed’ for many years.
Creative overregularization
occurs when children generalize rules they are learning to produce novel words they have never heard of. They basically create new forms of words based on regularities in language they hear.
Overextension
using words in a broader context than they should be e.g. a cow is a dog because it has 4 legs
Mutual exclusivity
a word learning constraint that involves the tendency to assign one label/name, and in turn avoid assigning a second label, to a single object.
Bootstrapping
Using existing knowledge to facilitate the acquisition of novel abilities.
Syntactic bootstrapping
using the context of a word to understand its meaning
What tunes neonatal auditory perception
prenatal auditory experiences hence mother’s voice preference
Initial biases in infants
Preference for speech over acoustically matched non-speech, discrimination of lexical versus grammatical words and sensitivity to phonetic cues that indicate word boundaries.
Neural organisation
- when is it further refined with adult-likee hemisphere dominance for speech
It has some specificity for speech signals but requires further experience to establish adult-like organization.
- 10 to 12 months
Functional reorganization
Term referring to changes in perceptual sensitivity occurring in first year of life. It describes developing patterns of discrimination in accordance with functional categories in native language.
Transitional probability
Infants are sensitive to fact that syllables within one word are more
Categorical perception
Characterized by the enhanced capacity to perceive exemplars belonging to different categories and difficulty in perception of different tokens belonging to same category.
Fast-mapping
child’s ability to learn a new word or concept with minimal exposure to it
Name the 3 stages of the development of the syntactic system
- one-word period
- two-word period
- later syntactic development
Fact: native language input further refines perceptual sensitivities for speech, eventually helping infants attend to, segment and remember words. Discuss this in relation to the following 3 times frames:
a) beginnning of life
b) 6 to 12 months
c) 9 to 10 months
a) beginnning of life
- > discriminate native and non-native phonetic contrasts
b) 6 to 12 months
- > decline in discrimination of many non-native distinctions + enhancement of sensitivity to native ones
c) 9 to 10 months
- > preference to well-formed words that correspond to frequent patterns of input
Name the 3 steps of the perceptual basis of word learning
- word segmentation
- word forms
- pairing words and objects
Discuss the 2nd step of the perceptual basis of word learning i.e. word forms
- > by 9-10 months infants show an increasing preference for word forms conforming to phonological characteristics of native language
- > by 10-11 months infants recognize word forms across indexical and syllabic stress changes
Discuss the 3rd step of the perceptual basis of word learning i.e. pairing words and objects
- > by 6 months infants associate highly frequent words like “mummy” and their referents
- > 6-14 months= development of cognitive + perceptual abilities that allow learning of new associations more quickly and increasingly unconstrained situations
- > 8 months: infants link new words to new object only after a few repetitions
- > 14 months: when phonetically similar words are linked to objects infants how confusion but not when not linked
When do infants lose perceptual sensitivity to non-native sounds?
declines sometime between 6-12 months
Discuss the head turn procedure and its results in relation to categorical perception
Japanese infants: at 6-8 months turn heads 50% of time toward novel stimuli, at 10-12 months decreased discrimination
American infants: at 6-8 months turn heads 50% of the time toward novel stimuli, at 10-12 months increased discrimination
Evidence supporting hypothesis of head turn procedure x2
- there are important developmental changes in maturation of central auditory system in first 2 years of life
- infants were asked to look at attractive toy and this attentional network matures during this period (10-12 months)
