Language development

Question 1

Symbolism: conventional and arbitrary?

Answer 1

• Languages are symbolic systems.
• Symbols are conventional – they are used by all speakers in the same way.
• Symbols are arbitrary – there is no inherent relation between the word form and its meaning
• Different languages use different word forms:

Question 2

Rules vs creativity?

Answer 2

• Learning language involves rule learning but also productivity.
• Children have to learn the rules of their language to communicate successfully.
  
  • Tom chased Jerry
  • not: Jerry chased Tom or chased Jerry Tom
• To express new ideas, children have to learn how to combine sounds, words and phrases creatively, i.e., in new ways.

Question 3

Comprehension vs production?

Answer 3

• Children tend to understand more than they can say themselves
• Production tends to lag behind comprehension
  
  • Possibly because of difficulty of articulation
  • Possibly because of memory difficulties
• Why is this important?
  
  • Links to competence vs performance

Question 4

Identifying sounds – categorisation?

Answer 4

• Units of sound are phonemes – sounds which are meaningfully distinct
• Compare these words:
  
  • bat, cat, hat, rat, (g)nat, vat, Pat
• Infants perceive (native and non-native) sounds categorically at 4 and 1 month of age (Eimas et al., 1971)

Question 5

what did Werker & Tees 1984 study?

Answer 5

• Cross-language speech perception…
• Tested 6-12 month olds’ discrimination of different sounds – English, Hindi, and Salish
• Conditioned head-turn procedure (habituation and discrimination)
• Results
  
  • Sensitivity to non-native sounds declines with age
  • Fewer 12-month-olds discriminate non-English sounds than do 6-month-olds.
  • Older children have ‘tuned in’ to their native sound system.

Question 6

what are the stages of Speech production?

Answer 6

• 0-2 months: Reflexive vocalisation
  
  • crying, fussing, coughing, burping, grunts, sighs
• 2-4 months: Cooing and laughter
• 4-7 months: Vocal play and onset of babbling
  
  • squeals, growls, yells, raspberries
• 7+ months: Canonical babbling
  
  • reduplicated syllables: ba-ba-ba ma-ma-ma-ma-ma
• 7+ months: Variegated babbling
  
  • mixed syllables: no-ba-bu-ma
• 12-18 months: First word
• 7-8 years: all sounds/sound clusters acquired

Question 7

how do we Acquire words?

Answer 7

• Reference problem
  
  • Children have to realise that words represent / refer to objects – words can be used to label things and events
• Extension problem
  
  • Children have to learn the limits of that mapping - what do words mean (semantics)?

Question 8

what is the reference problem?

Answer 8

• Reference problem: words refer to things, have meaning
• Children start solving this very early: 6-9 month olds recognise familiar words (Bergelson & Swingely, 2012)
• Typically solved by second year of life – children experience the naming insight.
• Once they solve this problem, vocabulary rapidly grows – the vocabulary spurt.

Question 9

Constraining word meanings?

Answer 9

• Extension problem: words can refer to individuals/ instances and also to categories
  
  • ‘dog’ refers to: your dog, any real dog, cartoon dog, toy dog
  • ‘dog’ does not refer to: cats, rabbits, horses, tables, chairs, vehicles etc.
• Typical errors:
  
  • underextension errors → child says ‘dog’ to refer to ‘Spot’, the pet.
  • overextension errors → child says ‘dog’ to refer to all dogs, other 4-legged animals, all soft toys, pictures of animals.
  • overlap errors → child says ‘dog’ to refer to pet dogs, cats, cows, and bears but not toy dogs.
  • mismatch errors → child says ‘dog’ to refer to their teddy bear.

Question 10

How do children learn action words?

Answer 10

• English-speaking children’s first words tend to be nouns – names for concrete objects.
• What about other words, e.g. action words (verbs)?
  
  • Verbs do not represent concrete things, verbs represent events which are momentary and complex
• Syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis
• Children use their knowledge of language to learn language
  
  • There is a direct correspondence between the structure of events and syntactic structure that expresses events

Question 11

what did Messenger, Yuan & Fisher 2015 study?

Answer 11

• Learning verb syntax via listening: New evidence from 22-month-olds.
• Dialogue training followed by preferential-looking test
• Jane blicked the baby!
• She blicked the baby?
• Bill was blicking the duck.
• He was blicking the duck.
• Consistent with syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis: children can use language to learn basic meanings for new words.
• Further implication: by 2 years, children must be able to make sense of basic syntax (how words are combined in sentences).

Question 12

Combining words in sentences?

Answer 12

• 12-24 months: One-word stage
  
  • One-word utterances = holophrases – mean more than one word
• 24 months+: Two-word stage
  
  • Telegraphic speech – function words and morphemes omitted
• ~ 30 months+: Three-four word + stage
  
  • Children beginning to use morphology to signal number and tense
  • Children make overregularization errors
• 3-4 years+: Increasingly long and complex sentences
  
  • Are these rule-based or experience-based?