Week 5 Flashcards
understanding what others say (or sign or
write)
Language comprehension (receptive):
actually speaking (or signing or writing) to others
Language production (productive)
Language _______ must come before Language _________
Comprehension, Production
The Components of Language
- Phonological Development (phonemes)
- Semantic Development (morphemes)
- Syntactic Development (syntax)
- Pragmatic Development (how to use)
Phonological Development: Speech Sounds
Mastering of a language’s
sound system
-Every language has a distinct
set of phonemes (i.e.,
smallest distinguishable
sound units of a language)
- Newborns’ preference for
the sounds of their native
language
smallest distinguishable
sound units of a language
phonemes
Newborns’ preference for
the sounds of ___ ______
language
their native
Phonological Development: Perceiving the Phonemes
Perceiving speech sounds as
belonging to discrete phonemic
categories (e.g., /p/ and /b/).
* The ability diminishes over the
first year of life:
Infants (most languages) >
adults (only native language).
* Perceptual narrowing
Identifying the Phonemes. Statistical learning:
Infants’ ability to
perceive and learn regularities in language,
such as which speech sounds make up
words.
8-month-old: 2 minutes
Test:
tokibu (old)
latipo (new)
Novelty preference: awareness of statistical
likelihoods of syllable co-occurrence
Phonological Development: Producing Sounds
Crying (newborns): “all cries are not equal”
Cooing (~2‐3 months): vowel‐like sounds
“oooohs”; “aaaaahs”.
Babbling/canonical syllables (~6‐7 months):
syllables: consonant‐vowel combinations
(“mamama”; “papapa”)
Conventional “words” / vocables (~12 months):
unique pattern of sounds for objects/events.
2‐3‐year‐olds: trouble pronouncing specific
words (e.g., “pasghetti”)
Semantic Development: Receptive Language
Receptive Language: the
ability to understand
language and the meaning of
words and phrases
Intermodal preferential
looking paradigm
the ability to understand
language and the meaning of
words and phrases
Receptive Language
Intermodal preferential
looking paradigm:
* 6-month: understand first noun (common objects, people)
* 10-13-month: understand non-nouns (e.g., verbs)
using a single word to express a complete thought:_____
Holophrastic language
12‐month: First word, largely nouns/names
(Mandler, 2006; Bornstein et al., 2004)
* 18‐24‐month: Vocabulary spurt / Naming
explosion:
* Common Errors:
– Overextension
– Underextension
Different Language Backgrounds
First Words:
– Children who speak
different languages,
first words tend to
be simple nouns
referring to objects
Children from different language backgrounds show
similar rates of growth in early vocabularies
Semantic Development: Fast Mapping
Rapidly learning a new word simply from the
contrastive use of a familiar and unfamiliar word
(incidental exposures).
– Even 2‐year‐olds can learn new words
through fast mapping (Heibeck & Markman, 1987;
Markson, 1999
Syntactic
Bootstrapping
The duck is gorping the bunny (even when a word is complete giberish, we and infants can tell object words from action words?)
simple 2‐word sentences (e.g., “Daddy cook” “Mommy shoe”)
Telegraphic speech
18‐24 month: multi‐word utterances
Caregiver‐infant give‐and‐take
dialogue, including words, sounds,
and gestures well‐timed and
responsive to each other (a music
duet： co‐creating a melody)
Proto‐conversations
Infants use ________ that
signal the speaker’s
attention and intention to
learn new words
– Gestures (e.g., pointing)
– Eye gaze
social cues
use of the adult as a means to a desired object through gestures
Protoimperatives
“use of an object as the means to obtaining adult attention
Protodeclaratives
a child acquiring language is facing the prob- lem of the INDETERMINENCY of translation when trying to. understand the meaning of a novel word.
Gavagai problem ( Willard V.O. Quine, 1960)
Human brains are ________ to acquire
language (modularity hypothesis
“prewired”
Noam Chomsky’s Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
* Dan Slobin’s Language-Making Capacity (LMC)
Cognitive Bias (fundamental assumptions)
Whole-object assumption: a novel word will refer to a
whole object, not a part.
* Mutual exclusivity assumption: a given entity only has one
name. (e.g., “where is the blicket”?, Markman, 1992)
Deaf children with
limited exposure to
sign language acquire
language milestones
at roughly the __________ as hearing
children
Same-time
What Is Required for
Language Acquisition?
A Human Brain
Species-specific and species-universal
Brain-language
Critical period
A Human Environment
◦ Infant-directed talk
Brain-language relation
Left hemisphere specialization
Broca’s area (speech production)
◦ Wernicke’s area (speech comprehension)
The critical-
period hypothesis
Early deprivation (e.g., Genie)
Brain damage at different ages
Bilingual with different
exposure onset ages
the distinctive mode of speech that
adults adopt when talking to babies and very young children.
Infant-directed talk (IDT):
Characteristics:
* Emotional tone (warm and affectionate)
* Exaggeration: high pitch, extreme intonation, and
slower speech; accompanied by exaggerated facial
expressions
Infants prefer IDT to speech directed to adults
