Symbols
Systems for
a) representing our thoughts/feelings/knowledge
b) communicating them to other people
–> this ability expands our cognitive + communicative power
What is required for language acquisition ?
a) comprehension
- -> understanding what other say
b) production
- ->speaking
c) human brain
- -> only the human brain acquires a communicative system of this complexity
d) experience with human language
Hierarchy of speech/language development
- Sounds –> words
- Words –> sentences
- Sentences –> stories / conversations
Generativity
Through the use of the finite set of words and morphemes in the vocabulary, one can put together an infinite number of sentences
Phonological development
Acquisition of knowledge about the sound system of a language
Phonemes
Units of sound in speech
- -> have no meaning
- -> a change in phoneme changes the meaning of the word
ex.: hip –> lip ( h+ l change the meaning )
Semantic development
Learning the system for expressing meaning in a language, including word learning
Morphemes
Smallest units of meaning in a language
–> composed of one ore more phonemes
ex.: dogs –> 2 morphemes (implies 2 or more dogs)
Syntactic development
Learning how words + morphemes are combined
Syntax
Rules in a language that specify how words from different categories can be combined
ex.: lila ate the lobster vs the lobster ate lila
Pragmatic development
Acquiring an understanding of how language is typically used to communicate
–> crucial aspect of becoming a good conversational partner
Metalinguistic Knowledge
Knowledge about language and its properties
Critical period
Time ( 5 y/o - puberty ) during which language develops readily + after which language acquisition is much more difficult
ex.: “Genie” was able to make progress, but never exceeded toddler level
Infant directed speech
IDS
Distinctive mode of speech that adults adopt when talking to babies
- -> draws the infants attention to the speech itself
- -> recognition and learning of words is better
Characteristics of IDS
- Emotional tone
- -> a lot of affection - Exaggeration
a) slower speech
b) higher voice
c) clearer vowels
d) facial expressions
Prosody
The characteristic rhythmic + intonation patterns with which language is spoken
–> explains why languages sound so different
Categorical perception
Process that allows us to distinguish sounds between categories ( phonemes )
6-8months: infants can discriminate between different languages
10-12months: can’t perceive the difference anymore
- -> retain their sensitivity to sounds in the native language
- -> become less sensitive to nonnative speech sounds
Word segmentation
The process of discovering where words begin + end in fluent speech
–> emerges after 7-8months
Distributional properties
Certain sounds are more likely to appear together than others
–> infants use recurrent sound patterns to fish words out of the passing stream of speech
ex.: own name
Babbling
Repetitive consonant - vowel sequences
(after 7 months)
–> key component of this development is the exposure to their native language
Reference
Associating words with a meaning
–> First step in acquiring the meaning of words
Productive vocabulary
Refers to the words a child can say
- children are limited by their ability to produce words clearly enough for recognition
–> this is why they adopt simplification strategies
ex. : brother –> “bubba”
2. first things they say is limited to their immediate environment
ex. : siblings, pets
!! Infants understand more words than they can produce !!
Holophrastic phase
Expressing a whole phrase with a single word
Overextension
Using a word in a broader context than is appropriate
ex.: dog –> every four legged animal
–> represents an effort to communicate, rather than lack of knowledge
How can adults influence the learning of speech of infants ?
- IDS
- highlighting new words
- Repetition of words
- naming games
ex. : “ich sehe was was du nicht siehst”
Fast mapping
Process of rapidly learning a new word from hearing the contrastive use of a familiar word + unfamiliar word
ex.: “bring me the chromium tray, not the red one”
Mutual exclusivity assumption
Children will expect a given entity will only have one name
–> bilingual children will not follow this assumption
Whole object assumption
Children expect a novel word to refer to a whole object rather than to a part/ property/ action
Pragmatic cues
Aspects of the social context are used for word learning
ex. : adults focusing of attention
- -> relation between eye gaze + labeling
ex.: emotional Response of adults
Syntactic bootstrapping
Strategy of using the grammatical structure of whole sentences to figure out meaning
Telegraphic Speech
Term describing children’s first sentences that are 2 - word utterances
–> function words + auxiliary verbs are missing
Overregularization
Speech errors in which children treat irregular forms of words as if they were regular
ex.: instead of go –> went
they will say “goed”
–> parents will more likely correct factual errors than grammatical errors
Private speech
Children talk to themselves as a strategy to organize their actions
–> this is then internalized into thought
Collective monologue
Conversation in which the content of each childs turn has nothing or little to do what the other child said
Behaviorist theory of language development
Skinner
Parents teach children to speak by means of the same reinforcement techniques that are used to train animals
Universal Grammar
Chomsky’s nativist theory
Refers to a hard wired set of principles + rules that are common to all languages
- -> every human is born with
- -> explains why most children learn language with such rapidity
Modularity hypothesis
The human brains contains an innate, self contained language module that is separate from other aspects of cognitive functioning
Speech stream
Undifferentiated series of speech sounds
–> must separate speech stream into individual sounds to learn the relevant sounds of their language
ex.: wheredidyougowithgrandpa ?
Discrimination of different sounds in adults
a) can distinguish sounds from different categories
ex. : “ba” vs “pa”
b) can’t distinguish sounds from the same category
ex. : different “ba” sounds
–> suggests that infants engage in categorical perception of sounds
Ability to discriminate between phonemes in infancy
< 6 months : Ability to discriminate between a wide range of phones
> 12 months: Experience diminishes this ability
–> infants are unable to discriminate between phonemes of other languages, just native one
What does a childs acquisition of the phonemes of its native language depend on ?
a) innate predisposition for categorical perception
b) experience
- -> necessary for the infant to learn which phonemes are most important to the language
The development of speech production
0-2 months: REFLEXIVE VOCALIZATIONS
- -> cries, burps, coughs
- -> different types of cries might have different meanings
2-4 months: COOING + LAUGHING
- -> is produced while child is in a happy state
- -> reciprocal cooing might teach turn taking in conversations
4-6 months: BABBLING + VOCAL PLAY
- -> gaining control over vocal cords, lips, mouth, tongue
- -> infants produce a wide range of sounds
6-10 months: CANONICAL BABBLING
- -> production of sound combinations that sound like words
ex. : “mamama”
10 months +: MODULATED BABBLING
- -> Overlaps with the beginning of meaningful speech
- -> acquisition of the intonation patterns important for the native language (knowing difference between statement + question)
2 years: ability to combine words into simple sentences
S structure (Surface structure)
Sentence that can have more than one meaning
–> its meaning is determined by the d-structure
“There was a shooting in the mall yesterday”
–> may refer to an armed shooting or photo shooting
D structure (Deep structure)
More abstract representation of a sentence
Creative overgeneralizations
Creating new verbs by treating a noun as if it were a verb
ex.: “why is it weathering ?”
Voice onset time
VOT
The time delay between when a sound begins and when the vocal cords begin vibrating
Initial perceptual bias
Initially infants have a bias towards familiar sounds they picked up in the womb
–> mothers voice, songs etc
