Chapter 9 Language Development Components of Language •
Phonology refers to the rules governing the structure and sequence of speech sounds
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Semantics is the second component of language involving vocabularythe underlying concepts are expressed in words and word combinations.
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Grammar consists of two main parts: o Syntax the rules by which words are arranged in to sentences o Morphology the use of grammatical markers that indicate number, tense, case, person gender, active or passive voice, and other meanings. (the –s and –ed endings are examples)
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Pragmatics refers to the rules for engaging in appropriate and effective communication. (Taking turns, staying on topic and stating meaning clearly.)
Theories of Language Development BEHAVIORIST PERSPECTIVE •
Skinner proposed that language is acquired through operant conditioning.
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Parents reinforce sounds that are more like words with smiles, hugs, and speech in return.
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Says children rely on imitation to contribute to early language development.
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Few researchers follow this perspective because it cannot account for language development entirely.
NATIVIST PERSPECTIVE •
Chomsky is the father of the nativist perspective.
Chapter 9 Language Development •
He believed that all children have a Language Acquisition Device (LAD), an innate system that permits them, as soon as they have acquired sufficient vocabulary, to combine words into grammatically consistent, novel utterances and to understand the meaning of sentences they hear.
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Within the LAD is Universal Grammar is a builtin storehouse of rules that apply to all human languages.
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Support for Biological Language Preparedness include: o Animal language Language seems to be unique to humans o Brain structures
Language is housed mostly in the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex.
Damage to these structures result in aphasias or communication disorders.
Broca’s Area located in the frontal lobe, supports grammatical processing and language production.
Wernicke’s Area located in the temporal lobe, plays a role in comprehending word meaning.
o Sensitive Period brain lateralization INTERACTIONIST PERSPECTIVE •
Statistical Learning Theory infants identify basic patterns of language with the same strategies that they use to make sense of their nonlinguistic experiences.
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Native Capacity a strong desire to understand others and to be understood by them, and a rich language environment combine to help children discover the functions and regularities of language.
Chapter 9 Language Development
Prelinguistic Development: Getting Ready to Talk RECEPTIVITY TO LANGUAGE •
Newborn’s are especially sensitive to speech, especially their mother’s voice
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Phonemes are the smallest sound units that signal a change in meaning, such as the difference between the consonant sounds in “pa” and “ba.”
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Categorical Speech Perception the tendency to perceive as identical a range of sounds that belong to the same phonemic class is called categorical speech perception.
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Statistical Analyzers they analyze sound patters so they can distinguish adjacent syllables that frequently occur together
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Rule Learners can distinguish pattern in structure of short, nonsenseword structures.
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ChildDirected Speech (CDS) a form of communication made up of short sentences with highpitched, exaggerated expression, clear pronunciation, distinct pauses between speech segments, and repetition of new words in a variety of contexts.
FIRST SPEECH SOUNDS •
Cooing around two months, vowellike noises
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Babbling appears around 4 months in which infants repeat consonantvowel combinations in long strings, such as “babababa”
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There is universal timing of babbling.
BECOMING A COMMUNICATOR
Chapter 9 Language Development •
Joint Attention the child attends to the same object or event as the caregiver.
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Give and Take interaction between parent and baby that include peekaboo and pat a cake.
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Preverbal Gestures o Protodeclarative the baby touches an object, holds it up, or points to it while looking at others to make sure they notice. o Protoimperative the infant gets another person to do something by reaching, pointing, and often making sounds at the same time.
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WordGesture Combinations saying something and making body gestures at the same time.
Phonological Development
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First words can only pronounce a few sounds
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Related to semantic development
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Understand more than they can say
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At first, children produce minimal words in which they focus on the stressed syllable and try to pronounce its consonantvowel combination
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Soon they add consonants, adjust vowel length and add unstressed syllables
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Finally, they produce the full word with a correct stress patter, although they still need to refine its sounds.
Semantic Development •
Word comprehension begins in the middle of the first year.
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By age 6, they have a vocabulary of about 10,000 words.
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Children learn about 5 new words a day.
Chapter 9 Language Development •
Children’s comprehension, the language they understand develops ahead of production, the language they use. Ex. Toddlers follow directions such as “bring me your book” even though they cannot express it in their own speech yet.
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A 5month lag exists between children’s comprehension of 50 words (about 13 months) and production of 50 words (around 18 months.)
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Think recognition versus recall (chapter 7)
THE EARLY PHASE •
First words refer to more important people, animals, objects that move, foods, familiar actions, or outcomes of familiar actions.
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Children seem motivated to acquire words that are relevant to the particular cognitive problems they are working on at the moment. “all gone”object permanence
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Emotion influences early world leaning
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Spurt in Vocabulary occurs at around 1824 months (1 or 2 words per day); a transition between a slow and a faster leaning phase once the number of words produced reaches 50 to 100.
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Fastmapping Children can connect a new world with an underlying concept after only a brief encounter.
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Girls are slightly ahead of boys in vocabulary growth until age 2.
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Some believe this is because parents converse more to girls than boys and parents also converse with more sociable children.
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The more words caregivers use, the greater the number integrated into the child’s vocabulary.
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Most toddlers use referential style; their vocabularies consist mainly of words that refer to objects.
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A smaller number of toddlers use expressive style where they produce many more social formulas and pronouns such as “stop it” and “thank you.”
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Underextension is when children apply words too narrowly.
Chapter 9 Language Development •
Overextension is applying a word to a broader collection of objects and events than is appropriate.
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Word Coinages “plantman” or “crayoner”
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Metaphors “fire engine in my tummy” for stomachache
LATER SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT •
Elementary schoolage children see a huge vocabulary increase, learning about 20 new words a day.
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Fastmapping continues and they begin to analyze word structure.
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They use words precisely, understand multiple meanings such as metaphors and puns.
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Adolescents start to understand abstract terms, sarcasm, irony and figurative language such as proverbs.
IDEAS ABOUT HOW SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT TAKES PLACE •
Research shows that adult feedback facilitates semantic development.
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When adults go beyond correcting and explain, toddlers are more likely to move toward conventional word meanings.
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Young children’s fastmapping is supported by a special part of working memory, a phonological store that permits us to retain speechbased information.
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Strategies for word learning o Lexical Contrast Theory assumes that two principles govern vocabulary growth: conventionality, children’s natural desire to acquire the words and word meanings of their language community; and contrast, which explains how new word meanings are added. According to Clark, children assume that the meaning of each word they hear is unique. Therefore, when they hear a new label, they try to figure out its meaning by contrasting it with words they know and assigning it to a gap in their vocabulary.
Chapter 9 Language Development o Mutual Exclusivity Bias is when children assume that words refer to entirely separate (nonoverlapping) categories. o Syntactic Bootstrapping is when children discover many word meanings by observing how words are used in syntax, or the structure of sentences. o Social Information children draw on their expanding ability to infer others’ intentions and perspectives.
Grammatical Development FIRST WORD COMBINATIONS •
Between 1.5 and 2.5 years, children start using 2word combinations.
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Telegraphic Speech is the term used for these 2word combinations because, like a telegram, they focus on highcontent words and leave out smaller, less important ones.
FROM SIMPLE SENTENCES TO COMPLEX GRAMMAR •
In the 3rd year, 3word sentences appear in which Englishspeaking children follow a subjectverbobject word order.
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Follow adult rules piecemeal, gradually refine and generalize.
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Once children form threeword sentences, they add grammatical morphemes which are small markers that change the meaning of a sentence (ex. is and ‘s)
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Overregularization is an error that occurs once children grasp a regular morphological rule, they extend it to words that are exceptions. (Ex. My toy car breaked)
COMPLEX GRAMMATICAL FORMS
Chapter 9 Language Development •
Negatives o Nonexistence “no cookie” or “all gone crackers” o Rejection “no take bath” o Denial “That not my kitty”
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Questions o Rising Intonations o Subjectverb inversion
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Other Complex Constructions o Connectives o Embedded sentences o Tag questions o Passive Sentences o Indirect objectdirect object
IDEAS ABOUT HOW GRAMMATICAL DEVELOPMENT TAKES PLACE •
Semantic bootsrapping they use word meanings to figure out sentence structure. Children might begin by grouping together words with “agent qualities” (entities that cause actions) as subjects and words with “action qualities” as verbs and then merge these semantic categories with observations of how words are used in sentences.
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Recasts restructuring inaccurate speech into correct form.
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Expansions elaborating on children’s speech, increasing its complexity.
Pragmatic Development ACQUIRING CONVERSATIONAL SKILLS
Chapter 9 Language Development
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Children must learn to use language effectively in social contexts.
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For a conversation to go well, participants must take turns, stay on the same topic, state their messages clearly, and conform to cultural rules that govern how individuals are supposed to interact.
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Turnabout is a conversational strategy used by children in wchih the speaker not only comments on what has just been said but also adds a request to get the partner to respond again.
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Shading is a conversational strategy that comes around between ages 5 and 9 in which a change of topic is initiated gradually by modifying the focus of discussion.
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Illocutionary intent is what a speaker means to say, even if the form of the utterance is not perfectly consistent with it.
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Dialogues about story books are effective in language progress.
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Siblings also enhances young children’s conversational skills. Toddlers closely monitor interactions between their twin or older sibling and parents and they often try to join in.
COMMUNICATING CLEARLY •
To communicate effectively, we must produce clear verbal messages and must recognize when messages we receive are unclear so we can ask for more information. These aspects of language are called referential communication skills.
NARRATIVES •
Leapfrog Narratives 4year olds typically produce these narratives where they jump from one event to another in a disorganized fashion.
Chapter 9 Language Development •
Chronological Narratives Between 4.5 and 5, children start to produce these narratives where they place events in temporal sequence and build to a high point.
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Classic Narratives Around age 6, children add a resolution. “After dad cleaned the catfish, we cooked it and ate it all up!”
SOCIOLINGUISTIC UNDERSTANDING •
Speech Registers are language adaptations to social expectations.
Development of Metalinguistic Awareness •
Metalinguistic awareness is the ability to think about language as a system.
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4 and 5yearolds have early understanding
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Flowers in middle childhood
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Phonological awareness associated with reading success
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Advanced in bilingual children
Bilingualism: Learning Two Language in Childhood •
When children learn two languages at the same time, they have no problems with language development and are good at both by preschool.
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If children learn one then another it takes 3 to 5 years to be as good as sameage native speakers of second language