deaf language develpment

Chapter Four: Models of Language Development

SPCE 454

McLaughlin (2006)

Chapter 4: Guiding Questions p.124

What is the study of language development based on?

What are the basic goals of science?

What are the basic attitudes of science?

What are the basic questions that science has attempted to answer regarding language development?

What models have been proposed to explain language development?

What impact has each model had on our understanding of language development?

How are these models different and how are they similar?

How can the individual contributions of each model be integrated into a comprehensive understanding of language development?

Central Questions and Issues

Science and Research in Language Development [p.125]

Summary

Science, its methods and dispositions, plays a fundamental role in understanding language development.

Through basic research, science addresses our curiosity about language development and through applied research, science addresses the needs of children with language disorders.

Scientific dispositions require us to approach data and theories with caution and objectivity.

Chapter 4: Part ONE

Page 123 – 144

Science

Science is a way of asking and answering questions to gain an objective understanding of the world

Explains natural events and relationships

Can explain development of language

Major goals of science are to explain a natural phenomenon and technical application

Scientific explanation

Scientific explanation

Identification and verification of the variables that cause an event to occur

Elements undergo manipulation to see what caused a change

Only manipulate one variable at a time

Example: What causes children to pay attention in class?

For language development, we focus on the variables:

Genetic inheritance

Neurological factors

Adults models

Imitation

Technical application

Technical application – goal of applied science in which knowledge results in technology that is helpful to society

Develop better technology

Pharmaceutical products

Efficient energy generation

Subgoals of explanation

Understanding

Identifying the nature and causes of an event

Need to repeat observations

Language development in terms of behavior, grammar, semantic, and pragmatics

Prediction

Goal of identifying the variables that reliable precede a phenomenon

Languagement development is strained with hearing loss, genetic disorders, and neurological damage

Control

Ability to influence probability of event through manipulation of variables

Models of language and learning

How does a child get from point a to point b?

Example: No grammar to adult grammar

Can reach a conclusion through describing or explaining

In this chapter we look at explaining

Explaining is focusing on the actual process that cause the child to develop language

nativism

Nature vs nurture

Children are born knowing all that they will ever know about language

This knowledge blossoms as they mature biologically

Language develops because it is part of the child’s genetic nature

Mentalism/structuralism

Very similar to the nativist view

Mentalism: knowledge primarily derives from inborn mental processes

Structuralism: emphasizes the structure (not function) od lnFUfw

Noam Chomsky

Empiricism

Children are born with none of the knowledge they will eventually obtain

Genetics provides basic tools – biological structures and neurological capacity

Language develops primarily from experience with the environment

Experiences provided by the environment nurture it

Behaviorism is close to this view

Knowledge is the primary result of behavior

B.F. Skinner

Interactionism

Mutual influence of cognitive processes or social contexts on language development

Interaction of genetic makeup and experience

Cognitive and social interactionism

Operant model

Skinner

Language is part of human behavior

Conceptualism applies to language as well as behavior

Behaviors are shaped and maintained through biology and environment

Biological – nature of specific

Environmental – behaviors of individual members of the species

Behavior is reinforced through reaction of other people, the social nature

Primary focus on spoken language

Verbal behavior is effect of multiple causes – past experience, listeners, and variables both present and remote

Responses and operants

Response – instance or occurrence of a behavior

A reaction to a stimulus

Operants – kind of behavior

Family of responses that are related according to when and why they occur

Smiles, nods, waves, stereotyped phrases

Probability – likelihood of a specific behavior

Comes from past and present circumstances

When we cross paths with one of our friends

Conditions and consequences

Consequences that follow speaking are a critical element

Frequently subtle

May result in primary negative reinforcement or primary positive reinforcement

Increase the probability of a behavior

Children find attention that follows their behavior to be very reinforcing

Examples of positive and negative reinforcement?

Verbal operants

Mand – “command” – requesting that an action be done in response to deprivation

Food or water

Echoic – behavioral equivalent of imitation

Tacts – behavior equivalent of naming, describing, or labeling

Intraverbal – of chains as in recitation, alliteration, tongue twisters, and cliches

Chaining – responses are learned as fixed sequences in which each response leads to a subsequent response

Textual – occurs in response to a written or rpinted simuli

reading

Operant model

Summary

The Operant Model was proposed by Skinner in 1957 as a functional analysis of verbal behavior as a social behavior

Primary verbal operants are classified based on their specific effects on others and are analyzed in terms of their setting events and consequences.

Secondary behavior, in the form of autoclitic behaviors, acts on primary verbal operants to arrange them according to the relationships among them.

Secondary Verbal Behavior: Autoclitics

autoclitic

Supplementary Variables

supplementary variables

audience

Chapter 4: Part Two (page 144-168)

Chomsky’s Syntactic Theories p.154

Summary

Chomsky proposed transformation generative grammar TGG I 1957 as a theory of mental processes for understanding and formulating sentences.

Two fundamental assumptions of TGG included the existence of linguistic universals and the innate, species-specific nature of language

Chomsky proposed the language acquisition device (LAD) as the hypothetical, innate mental structure that allows children to develop language in a seemingly effortless manner.

transformational generative grammar

Transformational generative grammar:

transformational generative grammar

language acquisition device

The components of TGG

deep structure

surface structure

phrase structure rules

transformational rules

elementary operations

generalized operations

conjoining

embedding

Government-Binding Theory

D-structures

S-structures

phonetic form rules

logical form rules

The Semantic Model: Fillmore’s Case Grammar [p.155]

The semantic model analyzes sentences in terms of case grammar in which meaning is carried in the relationships between each noun and the verbs in a sentence

The semantic model focused language development research on the influence of cognition on language development.

In applying the method of rich interpretation, researchers recognized the importance of considering the context to determine meaning of children’s utterances.

Case Grammar theory

Case grammar

Modality

Proposition

Impact on Child Language research

Cognitive determination

Method of Rich interpretation

Pragmatic model: Searle’s Speech Acts Theory [p.161]

Sociolinguists shifted the research focus to the effects and variations of language in social contexts.

Speech acts theory analyzed communication into locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary.

Interaction and routines within the infant-caregiver dyad have received increased attention as important factors in the development of language.

Other models also emphasizing interaction have evolved recently, although their full impact is not yet apparent.

Pragmatic model: Searle’s Speech Acts Theory

The basic elements of speech acts

propositional force

illocutionary force

locutionary

illocutionary

perlocutionary

Impact on child language

primitive speech acts

Other interaction models

world knowledge

event knowledge

End of Chapter 4

Review questions are on page 169 and on Discussion Board

Your homework assignment is to finish your power point notes

And to answer 5 of the review questions in DB before class next week.