Chapter 9 language development

Phonology

The sound system of a language

Phonemes

Basic units of sound in any given language. These units can be combined into words

45

About how many phonemes exist in the English language

300 to 500

How many phonemes exist across all languages

Semantic

The meaning aspect of language. What a word or phrase means

Syntax

Rules for forming sentences from words. Includes order of subject verbs and objects

Pragmatics

How language is used. Includes intonation use of gestures and the differences in talking to different groups of people

Speech perception

How we hear phonemes

Words

One of the first challenges of learning language is being able to separate the phonemes into ______

Voice onset time

The interval of time between the air passing through the lips and the vibration of the vocal cords. This varies for different phonemes

Continuum

We differentiate between different phonemes based on where they fall on the __________ of voice onset times

Categorical

Differentiating between different phonemes is based on ________ perception of phonemes

One month old

Researchers used a habituation paradigm to test if babies were able to perceive phonemes categorically. Children as young as __________ we're able to detect the differences in the different phonemes

Universal linguist

The term for how babies can hear phonemes from all languages

Specialists

After about 11 months children become language _______

11

Babies seem to lose the ability to sense universal languages at around _______ months of age. When tested, English speaking babies were no longer able to tell apart the native American phonemes only at native American language speakers were able to

Universal

We seem to be born with a _______ language ability or the potential to learn all languages. However, as we age we are shaped by the language we are exposed to

Specialized

In a speech discrimination test in 11-month-old bilingual and monolingual infants, it was seen that the brain had already been __________ for certain languages.

Bilingual

Only _______ babies recognized and responded to Spanish and English phonemes at 11 months old

Prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex

The two areas of the brain activated in bilingual babies when hearing Spanish and English

Brain

Activation of the ______ was different in bilingual babies and the study done on speech discrimination

Environment

While babies are born with the universal language ability the input from the _______ specializes their brains to understand only the languages they are exposed to

Word segmentation

The ability to detect words from a stream of speech

Word segmentation

Pauses in speech repetition of words in different contexts and stress on certain syllables helps develop the ability of _______ _______

Cooing

Repetitive vowel like sounds. This occurs when babies are exercising their vocal cords and trying out sounds

6 to 8 weeks

Around what age does cooing appear

Yes

Do deaf babies coo

Babbling

Repetitive consonant and vowel sounds. Children are entertaining themselves with sound and begin to practice with consonants

4 to 6 months

How old are children when they begin to babble

Yes

Do deaf babies babble

Manually

When studying deaf children it was found that they babble vocally but as time progresses they begin to babble ______ with their hands by forming movements that looked like signing

Manual babbling

Babbling with hands seen in deaf babies. It is also sometimes seen in hearing children but at a much lower rate that declines with age

Yes

Do all babies from all languages babble the same in the beginning

8

By ____ months-old children begin to babble with intonation or accent of the language they're introduced to

Jargon babbling

Babbling that occurs from 12 to 14 months that resemble sentences but makes no sense or has no meaning

Modality

Development of babbling in deaf, babies follows the same pattern as babbling for hearing babies just with manual babbling instead of vocal babbling. This shows that the development of babbling is ________ independent

Maturational

Because both deaf and hearing children babble, this suggests that babbling is a product of an amodal brain based language capacity under _______ control