Application Assignment 1

M2 Building Blocks of Language

Part 2: Semantics & Pragmatics

Outline

Semantics - The meaning of words

What is Semantic development?

· Learning of words and their meanings

· Acquisition of lexicon

· Forming a mental representation of a word that draws upon multiple sources of information

· Linguistic sources include:

· Phonological information

· Grammatical information

· Conceptual information

· Receptive Lexicon

· Expressive Lexicon

How do we learn a word?

· By developing a phonological representation of the word

· By experiencing the word in useful contexts

· By forming semantic networks with other related words already in the lexicon

· Repeated exposure

Characteristics that make words easier to learn

· Concreteness

· Accessibility

· Imaginability

Lexicon Growth

· Occurs over the lifespan

· Rapid growth in first several years of life

· First spoken words typically emerge between 10-14 m

· Ave expressive lexicon at 12 m contains only a few words

· Children may acquire up to 60k words by early adulthood

Factors that influence Semantic development

· Gender

· Environment/Exposure

· Impairment

Pragmatics - The social use of language

What is pragmatic development?

· Acquiring the rules that govern how language is used as a social tool

· Communication Function

· Conversational Skill

· Extralinguistic Devices

Function of communication

· The intention behind a message

· We communicate differently based on the situation and our communication goals

· Our development in the other four areas of language can help or hinder these efforts

Rules of Conversation

· Initiation of a conversation or topic

· Turn-taking behaviors

· Topic maintenance or shift

· Closure

· Familiarity with a situation helps us to participate in it more effectively

Joint attention

· Earliest pre-conversational skill to develop

· Very conversation-like in structure

· In young children, this involves the child and adult maintaining attention on an object

· Leads into early conversation skills

Extralinguistic devices

· Aids to communication

· Covey additional meaning beyond the actual linguistic message

· Non-linguistic cues

· Gaze direction

· Facial expression

· Eye contact

· Posture

· Gestures

· Paralinguistic cues

Prosody, which is superimposed over linguistic messages

· Pitch

· Volume

· Rate

· Pausing