topic 3 discussion

Production: Refers to speaking (or signing or writing)

Comprehension: Required to develop language skills; refers to understanding what others say (or sign or write)

Symbols: Systems of representing our thoughts, feelings, and knowledge, and for communicating them to other people

Language Development

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Generativity: The idea that, through the use of the finite set of words and morphemes in humans’ vocabulary, we can put together an infinite number of sentences and express an infinite number of ideas

Phonemes: Units of sound in speech; a change in a phoneme changes the meaning of a word (e.g., rake vs. lake)

Phonological development: The acquisition of knowledge about the sound system of a language

Morphemes: The smallest units of meaning in a language, composed of one or more phonemes

The Components of Language

Semantic development: The learning of the system for expressing meaning in a language, including work learning

Syntax: Rules in a language that specify how words from different categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on) can be combined

Syntactic development: The learning of the syntax of a language

Pragmatic development: The acquisition of knowledge about how language is used

Metalinguistic knowledge: An understanding of the properties and function of language—an understanding of language as language

The Components of Language (cont.)

Language is species-specific, meaning that only humans acquire language in the normal course of development, and species-universal, meaning that language learning is achieved by typically developing infants across the globe.

Critical period: The time during which language develops readily and after which (sometime between age 5 and puberty) language acquisition is much more difficult and ultimately less successful

Infant-directed speech: The distinctive mode of speech that adults adopt when talking to babies and very young children; used by virtually all cultures; not the same as “baby talk”

What Is Required for Language?

Können Sie sprechen?

Se puede hablar?

Potete parlare?

你能说话吗？

Вы можете говорить?

Can you speak?

Pouvez – vous parler?

あなたは話すことができる？

Você pode falar?

Bilingualism: The ability to use two languages

Research shows that bilingualism puts children at an advantage.

Two Languages Are Better Than One

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Infants pay attention to what other people say or sign.

Producing intelligible speech (or signs)

Comprehending what other people communicate

Language is acquired by listening and speaking (or watching and signing).

The Process of Language Acquisition

Acquiring language involves listening and speaking (or watching and signing) and requires both comprehension and producing speech (or signs).

Speech Perception

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Word segmentation: The process of discovering where words begin and end in fluent speech

This process begins during the second half of the first year.

Distributional properties: The phenomenon that, in any language, certain sounds are more likely to appear together than others

Infants can identify patterns in the speech surrounding them.

They then focus on sound patterns that make a difference in their native language.

This lays the groundwork for becoming native listeners and native speakers.

Word Segmentation

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Produced as sounds (or hand movements for learners of sign language)

Produced during early phases of language development

Babbling: producing syllables made up of a consonant followed by a vowel (“pa,” “ba,” “ma”) that are repeated in strings (“mamama”)

Preparation for Production

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Holophrastic Period

The period when children begin using the words in their small productive vocabulary one word at a time

Overextension

The use of a given word in a broader context than is appropriate (e.g., referring to all 4-legged animals as dogs

Reference

In language and speech, the association of words and meaning

First Words

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Word Learning

Children have a vocabulary of about 50 words at around 18 months of age.

A “vocabulary spurt” occurs due to:

Adult influences on word learning

Amount and quality of speech that is heard

Contexts in which words are used by talking adults

Consistency between visual environment and spoken words

First Words (cont.d)

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Fast mapping: The process of rapidly learning a new word simply from hearing the contrastive use of a familiar and an unfamiliar word

Syntactic bootstrapping: The strategy of using the grammatical structure of whole sentences to figure out meaning

Pragmatic cues: Aspects of the social context used for word learning

First Words (cont.d)

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Most children combine words into simple sentences by the end of the second year (18-24 months).

Comprehension precedes production.

Telegraphic speech: Children’s first sentences

Generally two-word utterances (e.g., “drink juice,” “read me”) that convey entire meaning

Overregularization: Speech errors in which children treat irregular forms of words as if they were regular (e.g., “men” becomes “mans,” “went” becomes “goed”)

Putting Words Together

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How do children make nouns plural?

Putting Words Together (cont.d)

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Collective monologues: Conversation between children that involves a series of non sequiturs, the content of each child’s turn having little or nothing to do with what the other child has just said

Narratives: Descriptions of past events that have the basic structure of a story that can be produced by 5 years of age

Universal grammar: A hard-wired set of principles and rules that governs grammar in all languages

Conversational skills increase with cognitive and social development

This development also allows for the ability to take other people’s perspectives.

Conversational Skills

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Development of language skills beyond ages 5 or 6 years

Foundations for language in place by that age

Accomplishments in sustaining a conversation

Complex grammar mastered by school-age children

Appreciation of multiple meanings of words

Better comprehension of words

Approximate vocabulary achieved:

6-year-olds – 10,000 words

5th-graders – 40,000 words

College students – 150,000 words

Later Language Development

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Prerequisites for language acquisition are:

A human brain (nature)

Experience with a human language (nurture)

Nature and nurture interact.

Theoretical Issues in Language Development

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Noam Chomsky proposed humans are born with:

Universal grammar: A proposed set of highly abstract, unconscious rules that are common to all languages

Hard-wired set of rules governing grammar in all languages

Many surface differences in languages but similar underlying structures in all languages

Suggests that language learning has an innate basis

Chomsky and the Nativist View

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Skinner (and behaviorists) favored nurture.

Infant sounds (babbling) develop later to language because of reinforcement from parents.

Modularity hypothesis: The idea that the human brain contains an innate, self-contained language module that is separate from other aspects of cognitive functioning

Connectionism: A type of information-processing approach that emphasizes the simultaneous activity of numerous interconnected processing units

Ongoing Debates in Language Development

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The range of symbols we encounter daily is large and varied.

A crucial developmental task for children is mastering the symbol systems important in their culture.

The two most important symbolic activities are:

Mathematics

Reading

Nonlinguistic Symbols and Development

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