Normal Language Acquisition Chapter 1, 2, & 3

Language

Systematic and conventional use of sounds (or signs or written \n symbols) for the purpose of communication or self-expression

At what age are we part of the adult system?

8/9 years old

Phonology

sound system of a language

Lexicon

words and associated knowledge

morphology

system for combining unites of meanings (words and \n parts of words)

syntax

system for combining words into sentences

Pragmatics

knowledge that underlies the use of language to serve \n communicative function

Sociolinguistics

knowledge that allows the socially appropriate use of \n language

Literacy

\
knowledge of reading and writing

Behaviorism

change in behavior occurs in response to the consequences of prior \n behavior

Cognitivism

we can not understand the behavior without understanding what is going \n on inside the mind of the organism producing the behavior

What did cognitive science emerge from?

cognitive revolution

What period of time was the goal to establish norms?

between ww1 and 1950’s

What did Noah Chomsky do?

His work syntactic structures revolutionized the field of linguistics and shortly after, the study of language development

What happened in the late 1970’s?

Domain of language further expanded

Language use was added to the field of inquiry – pragmatics and \n sociolinguistic development

What happened in the 1980’s and 1990’s?

refocus on syntax

Other questions about lexicon and pragmatics continued \n • Study of phonology and phonological development continued \n • Underpinnings of language and literacy development

learnability

focus on explaing the fact that language is acquired

developmental approaches

focus on explaning the course of language development

What is language development?

the process of learning to communicate in the way that the adults in one’s social or cultural group do so

What is language acquisition really?

language socialization

Language Acquisition Device

Everything that is part of adults’ knowledge of language (output) must be in the \n input, be in the internal device, or somehow result from the way the device \n operates on the input it receives.

Biological

degree to which language and language development share the hallmark features of other biological processes

Linguistic approach

describing the nature of the child’s innate linguistic knowledge (Universal \n Grammar (UG)). How does it interact with child’s experience to produce linguistic knowledge

Social approach

language is essentially a social phenomenon and language development a \n social process

Cognitive approach

premise that language acquisition is a learning problem no different from \n any other and that children solve it in the same way that they solve other learning problems

Dynamical systems theory

rejects notion that language is a static system of knowledge

Language emerges as a result of continuous interaction of the components of \n the system and the environment \n • DST directs attention to certain phenomena that are relatively ignored in \n other approaches \n • Variability in children’s performance \n • Influence of transitory states (compared to stable states of knowledge)

Nature

our genetics determine our behavior. Our personality traits and abilities are in this.

Nurture

our environment upbringing, and life experiences determine our behavior.

empiricism

asserts that the mind at birth is like a blank slate; all \n knowledge and reason come from experience

Nativism

Not from experience alone; mind must have preexisting \n structure in order to organize and interpret experience

What happened in the 1960’s?

radical change in research

What is the mental grammar that underlies what speakers do?

Since Chomsky, the work of linguists consists of trying to describe what is in the minds of speakers that explains how speakers do what they do

New research focus: Difference between children and adults mental \n grammar; how do children eventually achieve adult grammar?

Brown focused on describing the grammatical knowledge that underlay the speech they produced.

Pidgins

primitive languages developed to help people that don’t share a language to communicate

Creoles

a language that was once a pidgin and became the native language for some speakers

Nicaraguan Sign Language

•Deaf children in school together with no shared language began to develop their own language to communicate with one another.

•Language developed simple to complex

•More complexity with those that learned the language at an earlier age.

language bioprogram hypothesis

children take what they learn in experiences and add it to their own internal knowledge of language and produce a language system

What did bates argue?

language creation and acquisition result from a cognitive mechanism seeking a solution to communication

In research – note that children make consistent language out of inconsistent input, adults did not

Ability to produce speech depends on

•the structure and function of the vocal tract.

Human larynx is

lower in comparison to other mammals

Vocal tract alone is

•not sufficient for language. Sign language proves it isn’t necessary.

•Need the human brain

Functional architecture

how the brain is organized to do what it does

Neurolinguistics

•Study of brain in relationship to language functioning

Look at what parts of the brain are at work to carry out different functions

outer layer of the brain

cerebral cortex

cerebral cortex

•Controls higher mental functions such as reasoning and planning

•Subcortical structures

•Control more primitive functions such as eating and breathing

Left and right cerebral hemispheres are connect by

corpus callosum

contralateral connections

Each hemisphere connected to the opposite side of the body

ipsilateral connections

same side connections

Work of the brain is accomplished by

neural circuits (neural cells) that fire together when presented with a particular stimulus or when accomplishing a particular task

Lesion Method

Study patients who have suffered injuries to parts of their brains and determine what functions are impaired as a result

Split-brain patients

•have severed corpus callosum but otherwise undamaged brain.

•Provide unique window on how each hemisphere functions.

Dichotic listening task

•study healthy brains by taking advantage of the fact that information present to the right ear goes first to the left hemisphere. 

•Functional brain imaging methods

•Can be used with adults, children, infants with normal intact brains

•Allows researchers to present stimuli to subjects and then the imaging technique provides data on where the brain is most active as it process these stimuli

developmental cognitive neuroscience

Exploration of the neurological bases of language development is one line of research in a larger enterprise known

Broca

reported on patients that lost “the faculty of articulate language” and all had left-hemisphere damage

Aphasia

the condition in which language functions are severely impaired

Division of labor

•: left hemisphere damage = loss of language functioning; right hemisphere damage = problems particularly in visual-spatial information

functional asymmetry

When one hemisphere is more important than the other for particular competencies is known

Left hemisphere processes language

regardless of whether it is spoke or not.

Right-hemisphere patients

•Difficulty recognizing emotional tone of utterance

•Difficulty understanding jokes, sarcasm, interpreting figurative language, following indirect requests

•These suggest that right hemisphere may be involved in pragmatic aspects of language use

Right hemisphere is activated by

semantic processing

the left hemisphere is activated

primarily by syntax processing

Left-handed (but still left-hemisphere dominant) and even people who are right-handed but have left-handed family members may show…

more bilateral participation in language

Women show more

bilateral participation

Broca’s aphasia

difficulty producing speech and the speech they do produce seems to lack grammatical structure. Strings of content words (nouns and verbs) without grammatical morphemes.

Damage to front part of left hemisphere near the part of the cortex that controls movement

Wernicke’s aphasia

speech they produce makes no sense

Use words wrong for their meaning or meaningless words

Damage to a region more posterior than Broca’s area, next to the primary auditory cortex

Language will be more complex than the classical model of

syntactic Broca’s area and a semantic Wernicke’s area

Neuroimaging studies show

young infants show greater activation in the left than right hemisphere when presented with a variety of acoustic signals, not only speech, and that the lateralization for speech becomes stronger as children’s language skills develop

Speech elicits

greater left-hemisphere activation than does the same speech signal played in reverse (which removes speech-like quality). [Not understood what properties of the speech signal causes this effect.]

In children who have already acquired language

left-hemi. Damage is more likely to result in aphasia than is right-hemi. Damage. = suggest early specialization for language

Left-hemi. Damage =

Type of aphasia different from adults:

Children more likely to suffer nonfluent (Broca-type) aphasia

Wernicke’s aphasia more common in adults.

Children recover more quickly than adults

Children still left with residual impairment

Study language development of children with brain injuries in utero or in first few months of life

= different relation of injury site to language impairment than studies of older children and adults

Findings:

Right or left hemisphere damage can cause delay

Size of the lesion is more important than the location in predicting effects

Relation of injury site to delay is different for different components of language development and differs for expressive and receptive language

Many children also suffer from seizures after head injuries which also results in damage to the brain.

Right hemisphere damage impairs language acquisition more than later right-hemi damage impairs language functioning.

At one time, 2 views on neural underpinnings of language

equipotentiality hypothesis and invariance hypothesis

Current evidence suggests a position somewhere between these two theories.

Some specialization at birth

Degree of asymmetry in brain function increases with development

Ability of right hemisphere to take over language functions for a damaged left brain is greater in children than adults.

Equipotentiality hypothesis

at birth the left and right hemispheres have equal potential for acquiring language

Invariance hypothesis

left hemisphere has the adult specialization for language from birth and nothing about lateralization changes with development

Speed with which neurons in the left hemisphere fire

matches properties of language

How children process language as they gain expertise

Right more engaged with novel/new information

Left more engaged after expertise

Suggests processing efficiency over time

Plasticity

ability of parts of the brain to take over functions they ordinarily would not serve

Activity of young brain influences

Absence of experience

Biology appears to set a deadline by which connections must be used or they will be lost

Critical Period Hypothesis

= notion that a biologically determined period exists during which language acquisition must occur.

In science: evidence like imprinting in birds

Sensitive period or optimal period

the window of time during which the necessary experience must occur.

Wild” Children

Only conclusion we can really come to is that those conditions are not conducive to good health and normal development (i.e., dark closet; alone in a wolf den/forest)

Genie

Abused, neglected, malnourished: did not develop language typically (found at 13 years of age). She showed more right hemisphere activation in language (reasons why are hypothesized)

Late Acquisition of ASL

Normal early experience except for being deprived of exposure to language

Adults who were first exposed to ASL after early childhood did not perform as well as those who had been exposed as infants

Early learners of sign achieve greater proficiency than do later learners

Studies of ESL children

Age of exposure effects such that the earlier one is exposed to a second language, the higher the level of proficiency one will ultimately achieve.

It takes children longer to acquire a second language than most people realize.

Children do not always achieve native-like proficiency.

Young arrivals have less accent than older arrivals.

Younger at exposure matters.

Children are not faster at second language acquisition than adults

The Timing of age-of–exposure effects

starting language acquisition at the age of 2 years is different from starting at birth.

May be multiple critical periods with some ending earlier/some later

Age effects on mechanisms of language acquisition

different approach to second language acquisition; may mean that if you already know one language, you use it in learning a second.

Early exposure effects on a general linguistic ability

early knowledge of one language helps the acquisition of another.

less-is-more hypothesis

children can only extract/process small chunks versus adult who extract larger chunks and store more – makes analytical task more difficult.

Age-related change in opportunities to learn language

Different opportunities for children to learn second language (school for example more immersive experience)

Evidence suggest a dominant language switch:9/ (dominant language switch hypothesis) better second language acquisition by younger children because they switch to second language as dominant language

Social and Motivational Factors

Evidence that social psychological variables play a role in second language acquisition.

Less self-conscious about making errors and those whop identified themselves as Americans showed greater mastery of English.

Languages learned earlier are learned better

Adults have more difficulty of obtaining the necessary experience with a new language

Twin studies

– vary on the amount/percentage of language is genetic

: language skills are to a

degree genetically based.

Depends on Age and aspect of language skill under study

Experience may matter

Genes relevant to language may be activated a different points in development

Genetics of Language Impairment

Some children acquire language slowly and with difficulty.

Language impairment appears to be more heritable than individual differences in language development within normal range.

Important finding of family and FOXP2

FOXP2 plays a role, but is not only genetically based characteristic involved.

Research suggests multiple genes involved with language impairment and the interaction with the environment.

Individual differences in speed and ease of language development – within normal range and in cases of atypical makes a strong case for genetic bases. Still not fully known.

What constitutes a Language?

Symbols that stand for things

Syntax (combining of symbols)

Intentionality

Theory of mind allows

and impels the children to read the communicative intentions of others, which, according to some, is the basis of language acquisition.

Evolutionary psychology

the field that attempts to learn about aspects of human psychology and human development by considering evolutionary origins

Adaptations

passing on of characteristics that allows a species to have an advantage. Natural selection

Adaptationist view

Humans have language because it gave some of our hominid ancestors an advantage in survival and reproduction over those who did not have language