Language Development

Question 1

photo-conversation

Answer 1

a caregiver smiles and speaks to an attentive infant , who smiles and vocalize back to the caregiver

Question 2

Language Development: Required
Competencies for Learning Language

Answer 2

-phonological development

-semantic development

-syntactic development

-pragmetic development

Question 3

Phonological
development

Answer 3

• Acquisition of knowledge
  about phonemes, the elementary
  units of sound that distinguish
  meaning

ex; lake and rake

Question 4

morphemes

Answer 4

the smallest unit of meaning

ex:dog,chairs,unkind

Question 5

Semantic
development

Answer 5

Learning the system for expressing meaning in a language, beginning
with morphemes, the smallest unit of meaning in a language

Question 6

Syntactic
development

Answer 6

Learning the
syntax or
rules for
combining
words

Question 7

Pragmatic
development

Answer 7

Acquiring knowledge of how language is used, which includes understanding
a variety of conversational conventions

ex: irony and metaphors

Question 8

Language requires biological preparedness

Question 9

Critical Periods

Answer 9

 Evidence of critical
period for language
development

 Difficulties feral children
(such as Genie) have in
acquiring language in
adolescence - vocabulary dosnt have critical period)

 Comparisons of the effects of
brain damage suffered at
different ages on language

 Language capabilities of
bilingual adults who acquired
their second language at
different ages

Test of Critical-period Hypothesis:
Performance on a test of English
grammar by adults originally from
Korea and China was directly related
to the age at which they came to the
United States and were first exposed
to English. What do you see?

as they get older their scores become lower

Question 10

Acquiring the Native Language

Answer 10

Major Production Milestones
 Reduplicated babbling by 8 mos
 First words by 10-12 mos
 Combining words by 18 mos
 Complex clauses and sentences by 2-3 yrs

Comprehension begins much earlier
 Respond to name by 4 mos
 Recognize common words by 6 mos ex: understand what hand is

** Perceptual Attunement provides the first step**

Question 11

Phonological Development:
Speech perception: Perceptual attunement

Question 12

Phonology: Prosody

Answer 12

Prosody

• Includes spoken language characteristics above the phoneme:
  rhythm, tempo, cadence, melody, intonational patterns
• Accounts for much variation in sound of language within and between cultures (including accents)
• Prosody correlated with word order
• Language specific cues facilitate word and phrase segmentation
• And may support acquisition of grammar

Question 13

Language
Development:
Comprehension and
Production

Answer 13

Children master basic structure of their native language, whether spoken
or manually signed by age five.

• Language requires comprehension and production.
• Comprehension precedes production.

By the age of 5, children are capable of
generating totally novel sentences that
are correct in terms of the phonology,
semantics, and syntax of their native
language.

They are also able to make
appropriate pragmatic inferences
regarding the content of their
partner’s utterances.

Question 14

What Is Required for
Language?

Answer 14

A human environment

• Infant-directed talk (IDT)
• Distinctive mode of speech
  that adults adopt when talking
  to babies and very young
  children
• Common throughout the world,
  but not universal
• Includes warm and affectionate
  tone, high pitch, extreme
  intonation, and slower speech
  accompanied by exaggerated
  facial expressions
• Preferred by infants

Question 15

But – the imperative to communicate is so strong

Answer 15

• If no language models to learn from
• Hearing children, just like the deaf children, will nvent a language
• But only if there is someone to communicate with!

Question 16

The Process of Language Acquisition:
Early Word Learning

Answer 16

Early word segmentation & recognition > Infants first recognize words > Then comprehend > them Then begin to produce them

Question 17

The Process of Language Acquisition:
Word Segmentation

Answer 17

Infants become increasingly sensitive to many of the numerous regularities in that language.

• Word segmentation: process of discovering where words
  begin and end starts during second half of first year
• Distributional (or statistical) properties: certain sounds are
  more likely to appear together than are others

Such a pretty baby. Hi pretty girl. How is my baby, pretty Liza?

Question 18

The Process of Language Acquisition:
Word Segmentation

Answer 18

Statistical Learning
 Transitional probabilities

Language specific cues
 Word Stress initial in Eng
ex: BabySuzielikescookies
 Phonotactics: sound combos
at beg & end of words
 Break, Burst, Strong

Question 19

Early Word Recognition & Comprehension

Answer 19

Early word recognition is rapid.

• Recognize many word forms they cannot understand
• Infants know more words than they can produce; they understand more words than realized by caregivers
  .
• Respond to name by 4 months; start recognizing common words by 6 mos; Recognition grows rapidly after 10-12 mos
• Looking while listening paradigm indicates older infants (18 mos
  +) recognize familiar words more quickly than younger, &
  eventually even when mispronunciation occurs.

Question 20

Understanding first
Words

Answer 20

The problem of reference

• A classic problem posed by
  philosopher Willard Quine
  was how someone who
  does not know the word
  “rabbit” could figure out
  exactly what it refers to rather then its part ?
• This is the first step in
  acquiring word meaning.

Question 21

Word Learning: Constraints/Biases

Answer 21

Whole Object assumption
Expectation that the word will refer to the whole object.

• Categorical Scope
  Expectation that the word will refer to the whole category of objects

Question 22

Constraints/Biases

Answer 22

• Fast mapping Rapidly learning a new word simply from the
  contrastive use of a familiar and unfamiliar word (dogs can do it too!)
• Mutual exclusivity
  assumption Novel name–nameless
  category principle: leads
  children to expect that a
  given entity will have only
  one name

Cues for Word Learning: Mutual
exclusivity: Because this
child already knows the name of the
familiar object on the table, she will
pick up the novel object when the
adult asks her to “show me the
blicket.”

Question 23

The Process of Language Acquisition:
Early Word Production

Answer 23

Most infants produce their first words between 10–15 months of age.

Early productive vocabularies of U.S. children include names for people, objects, and events from everyday life.

 Important modifiers are also used
 In middle-class families, mothers often use nouns in object-labeling
 Holophrastic period involves one-word utterances
 Overextension facilitates conversation with limited
vocabulary

Question 24

Overextensions of
Word Meaning

Answer 24

ex: they say balls for ballons,marbles,apple,eggs

Question 25

Language Achievement

Answer 25

On average, American children **say their first word at around 13 months,** experience a vocabulary **spurt at around 19 months**, and begin to produce **simple sentences at around 24 months**. * However, **there is great variability **when different children achieve each of these milestones.

Question 26

The Process of Language Acquisition: Production

Answer 26

**Adult influences on word learning** * A spurt in vocabulary growth typically occurs at around 19 months, although there is great variability. * The rate of vocabulary development is **influenced by the sheer amount and kind of talk that they hear**.

Question 27

The Role of Family and School Context in Early Language Development: Individual Differences

Answer 27

**Socioeconomic status of parents is key determinant in the language children hear**. * **After 4 years,** there is a vast difference in accumulated experience with words among children from upper middle class, working-class, and families on welfare. * For a variety of reasons, parents' SES affects the way they talk to their children. * Those individual differences have a substantial influence on the way their children talk.

Question 28

The role of pragmatics

Answer 28

**Early interactions** * Even before infants start learning words, they develop interactive routines similar to those required in the use of language for communication.  Turn taking  Intersubjectivity  Joint attention  Pointing

Question 29

Word Learning: Meaning from Context

Answer 29

**Pragmatic cues** * Children use pragmatic cues —aspects of the social context used for word learning. * **These include the adult's focus of attention and intentionality**.

Question 30

Word Learning: Meaning from Context

Answer 30

Pragmatic cues Having announced her intention to find a “gazzer,” this adult appears displeased when looking in one bucket, but happy when looking in another. The child will infer that the object that elicited the smile is a “gazzer.”

Question 31

Word Learning: Meaning from Context

Answer 31

* **Children also use the linguistic context in which novel words appear to help infer their meaning.**  **Syntactic bootstrapping:** children use grammatical structure of whole sentences to figure out meaning ex: “The duck is kradding the rabbit,” they used the syntactic structure of the sentence to infer that kradding is what the duck is doing to the rabbit.  (Considered more like a built in bias than a social- pragmatic process)

Question 32

Putting Words Together

Answer 32

**First sentences** * End of second year: most children begin to combine words into simple sentences * Telegraphic speech: children's first sentences in which nonessential elements are missing * Around 2½ years of age: four-word sentences which often contain more than one clause

Answer 33

This graph shows the relation between age and the mean length of utterance for the three children—Adam, Eve, and Sarah—studied by Roger Brown. (Brown,  What else do you see? individual difference

Question 34

theories of languague development: **Behaviorist views**

Answer 34

languague is learn through experiences,specifically through positive or negative reinforcements - correct speach and grammar) behaviorits argue that the same mechanisms we use to learn languague we use for other behaviours (domain general, nonspecifc,nurture))

Question 35

theories of languague development: **Naturalists** | Chomsky

Answer 35

children are born with grammatical knowledge such as **languague aquasition device** that allows them to easily acquire lanuguae **poverty of stimulus**: not enougth information from the enviroment for children to learn languague this theory is : * domain specific * universal * nature

Question 36

theories of languague development: **Intercationist view**

Answer 36

they recognize that human infants are prepared in some ways to learn languague but their languague development is also shaped by their experince . they use other skills to perfect languague

Question 37

Intercationist view: **connectionism**

Answer 37

according to connectionism,the infant is born with powerful learning mechanisms and a simple brain structure,experience with languague allows the system to strenghen

Question 38

**statistical learning**

Answer 38

infants have a learning mechanism that help them require languague (just like chomsky). unlike his this sensitivity to regularitis is not specific to languague ex:pretty baby babies know that in the english languague pre follows ty but that sound is not often by ba so they use statistics to know what is most or less likely to be used

Question 39

**social interaction**

Answer 39

languague is communicative and social thus children use social interactions to aid their languague learning(languague learning builds into social skills) both nature and nurture