The Development of Morphology and Syntax Flashcards
True or False: Newborns prefer listening to their FATHER’S voice and sounds of
OTHER languages.
False: Newborns prefer listening to their mother’s voice and sounds of their native language
True or False: by the SECOND trimester the fetus can hear mother’s speech
False: By the third trimester the fetus can hear mother’s speech
Prelinguistic communication is …
Foundation for later language skills!
True or False: Infants can distinguish different
speech sounds AFTER they
produce them
False: Infants can distinguish different
speech sounds before they
produce them
Infants’ preferences begin to
narrow towards the_______ of
age
first year of age
Skill babies use to acquire language:
• Fluent speech does not have clear breaks
• Infants need to recognize where each word starts and ends à word segmentation
• Speech segmentation à Around 8-months of age (Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995)
• Identification of word boundaries is a prerequisite for language acquisition
Speech Segmentation
Skill babies use to acquire language:
• Infants identify statistical patterns to learn grammatical and lexical patterns of their language
ex: PABIKUgulaponaPABIKUbanoni
• At 8-months of age infants segmented words from fluent speech after 2 minutes of exposure
Statistical Learning
Age of typical order of emerge of prelinguistic skills:
Shows recognition of own name and first words in a laboratory
setting
4 - 6 months
Age of typical order of emerge of prelinguistic skills: - Begins to lose the ability to discriminate non-native sounds
- Starts responding to own name and familiar routines (e.g., waves to
“bye-bye”)
- Shows clear recognition of first words
8 - 10 months
Age of typical order of emerge of prelinguistic skills:
- Turns head to look in the direction of sound
- Prefers listening to native language
- Prefers mother’s voice to a stranger’s
- Discriminates many of the sounds used in speech
Newborn
Age of typical order of emerge of prelinguistic skills:
- Is able to segment words from fluent speech
6 - 8 months
True or False: Early babbling sounds are SIMILAR across languages, but these
changes towards the end of the first year
True
Communication goes beyond the ____________ and ____________ of
sounds
perception and production
Infants are___________ interactional partners and their actions affect
the subsequent behavior of their ____________
active , caregivers
Complete: 4 ways infants use to communicate with their care givers:
1. _______________________________________________
2. Give an object to the caregiver
3. ______________________________________________________
4. Look towards an object indicated by a caregiver (around 9 to 12 months)
- Show an object to the caregiver while vocalizing
- Point to direct attention to an object (around 6 to 10 months)
What is Joint Attention?
Person purposefully coordinates his or her focus of attention with that of another person.
Give (3) characteristics of joint attention.
- Eye gaze alternation – pointing – showing
- Emerge around 12 months of age
- Very important communicative skill
Intentional communication is key for …
Key for language development!
Assessment of Communicative Intent:
- Caregiver plays with the child in a
natural way
- Trained observer scores the child
behavior
(Low-structured, Structured observation, MBCDI or Rossetti Language scale )
Low-structured Observation
Assessment of Communicative Intent:
Manipulation of the situation to
increase the likelihood of observing
the behavior of interest (e.g.,
Communicative temptation task)
(Low-structured, Structured observation, MBCDI or Rossetti Language scale )
Structured observation
Assessment of Communicative Intent:
- Assesses communication skills from
birth to 3 years of age
- Areas: Interaction-Attachment,
pragmatics, gesture, play, language
comprehension and expression.
(Low-structured, Structured observation, MBCDI or Rossetti Language scale )
Rossetti Infant-Toddler Language
Scale
Assessment of Communicative Intent:
- Parent questionnaire
- Words and gestures à 8 to 18
months
- Words and sentences à 16 to 30
months
- Norms available for communicative
behaviours
(Low-structured, Structured observation, MBCDI or Rossetti Language scale )
MacArthur-Bates Communicative
Development Inventories – CDI
Vocalizations
with consistent sound patterns
used across situations but
unique to the child
Protowords
Speech directed to babies is typically different to that directed to adults
Infant-directed speech
Characteristics features of IDS:
- Higher pitch
- Slower rate of speech
- Variable pitch (greater pitch variation)
- Exaggerated stress
- Simplified sentence structure
The emergence of object reference:
- At ___________ , infants show great interest in objects
- Around ___________, infants begin to understand that other people have
thoughts and goals (infants look in the direction of a point)
§ Sensitive interactional style = words are most likely learned if caregiver
focuses on what the child is interested in
- e.g. labelling a toy the child is playing with vs. flashcards or videos
6months
9 months
First words:
__________, infants recognize meanings of a few words
Around ___________, Production of first word
Great variability in children’s early word ___________ and_______________
6 months à infants recognize meanings of a few words Around 12 months à Production of first word
Great variability in children’s early word comprehension and production
Intentional communication seems to
emerge from many factors:
____________for language
__________ given maturation
_______ cognitive development
Child __________ with caregivers
Biological basis for language
Changes given maturation
Social cognitive development
Child experiences with caregivers
Comprehension and Production of
Morphology and Syntax:
At the age of _____ children start putting words together
age of 2
Timing of first word combinations is related to:
– Timing of child first words
– Time at which child understands approx. 50 words
– Mother’s responsiveness to child communication at age 1
True or False:
Grammatical and syntax rules are NOT explicitly
taught by parents
True
True or False:
Children DO NOT comprehend many grammatical rules of
their language before producing words
False: Children comprehend many grammatical rules of
their language before producing words
How can we assess child’s syntax
comprehension?
■ Diary studies
■ Act-out tasks
■ Direction tasks
■ Picture-choice tasks
Early production of syntax:
■ Single-word utterances à ____ to ____months
■ Two-word combination ____ to ____months
■ Longer multi-word utterances ____ to ____ months
■ Single-word utterances à 12 to 24 months
■ Two-word combination à 18 to 24 months
■ Longer multi-word utterances à 24 to 30 months
Experimental method used with prelinguistic
infants that tracks eye movement
Preferential looking paradigm
Experimental method where 2-year-olds were showed different brain responses
to grammatical vs. ungrammatical sentences
Electrophysiological methods (e.g., ERPs)
True or False:
Production is ahead of comprehension
False: Comprehension is ahead of production
What is occurring here at this one-word stage?
■ “Daddy” à “There’s Daddy”
■ “Ball” à “I want the Ball”
■ “Daddy” à “There’s Daddy”
■ “Ball” à “I want the Ball”
True or False:
Most of the child of utterances are TWO WORDS long
True
Characteristics of two-word stage
■ Child’s language is creative (
■ Sentences are simple
■ Early sentences composed of nouns, verbs and adjectives
■ Missing Functions words at this stage
Speech that consist of content words without function words (similar
to a telegram)
■ Examples: Give doggie paper, kitty go home?
Telegraphic Speech
What is MLU?
Mean Length of Utterance
■ Index of syntactic development
■ Based on the average length of a child utterance
■ Length is determined by the number of meaningful morphemes
MLU
True or False:
Some grammatical morphemes are acquired earlier than others: -ing
is acquired before be, and verbal agreement suffix –s is acquired later
True
Definition: predicted order of acquisition
– Semantic: Number of meanings encoded in the morpheme
– Syntactic: Number of rules required for the morpheme
Linguistic complexity
_________ pronouns acquired are I, it and you
__________ and objective pronouns are acquired by age 3
________pronouns are acquired by age 5
■ First pronouns acquired are I, it and you
■ Subjective and objective pronouns are acquired by age 3
■ Possessive pronouns are acquired by age 5
True or False:
At ages 2 to 3 children DO NOT know that tense must be obligatory
marked in main clauses
True
True or False:
Around age 3 or 4 children:
■ DT NOT add the plural –s to nouns (mans, foots)
■ Do NOT Use regular past tense on irregular verbs (goed, falled)
False!
Around age 3 or 4 children:
■ Add the plural –s to nouns (mans, foots)
■ Use regular past tense on irregular verbs (goed, falled)
■ Pioneering study by Jean Berko Gleason (1958)
■ Children were shown novel creatures and actions that were given invented names
■ They had to add plural and possessive inflections to the nouns
■ They had to add progressive, third-person present tense, and past tense to the verbs
■ Good performance for pre-school and first-grade children
The Wug Test
