Language Acquisition Exam 1

how many languages in the world

7100 langauges

language complexity

all human cultures have a grammatically complex language, regardless of the level of their technology, and almost all linguists see all human languages as about equally complex

language development

any normal child growing up in any language environment will master the local language

• including children who are blind, deaf, or neurologically impaired

mastery of a first language is usually achieved early and without explicit instruction

normal adults have difficulty achieving competence, let alone fluency, in a second language, despite greater cognitive sophistication than children

language: 5 components

a system made up of different modules that interact with one another

• phonology

• morphology

• syntax

• semantics

• pragmatics

phonology

study of phonemes and how they combine

phonemes- meaningless sounds

phonemic inventoryeach language has its own set of phonemes

morphology

study of morphemes and how they combine

morpheme- smallest meaningful units of language

most morphemes have an identifiable meaning

• ex: bird-house

some do not: cran-berry

syntax

order and arrangement of words in phrases and sentences

combinations of subject, verb, object

semantics

study of meaning and sense

• words, phrases, sentences

lexicon- mental dictionary

pragmatics

language use in context

• ex- “its fine”

intentions

politeness rules are culturally dependent

communication

occurs when one organism (transmitter) encodes information into a signal which passes to another organism (receiver) which decodes the signal and is capable of responding appropriately

what distinguishes language and communication

• arbitrariness

• displacement

• duality of patterning

• creativity

• grammaticality

arbitratiness

arbitrary nature of language symbols makes it possible to represent abstract concepts and imaginary ideas

nonarbitrary words- onomonotopias

grammaticality

ensures that communication of meaning is precies

displacement

language not limited to talking about the here and now

• past and future

• abstract concepts like feelings

creativity

language has openness, allowing users to create new words and new sentences

aka productivity

duality of patterning

small number of meaningless sounds that, when combined in various ways, yield unlimited number of meaningful words and sentences

human language has two levels of structure

1. meaningful elements (words and morphemes)

2. word-internal meaningless elements (phonemes)

how is communication through language similar to other forms of communication

both language and some nonverbal aspects of communication in humans are in part cultural transmitted; referential, intentional, purposeful

• linguistic cues

• paralinguistic cues- tone, pitch, volume, rate, intonation, pauses

• nonlinguistic cues- face, body, space, appearance, posture, gaze

language is specific and uniform to humans

onset of speech is regular, not affected by culture or language being learned

speech is not suppressible

language cannot be taught to other species

languages have some universal features constrained by human cognition

biological bases of language

specific and uniform to humans

FOXP2- gene on chromosome 7

critical periods

social interaction is required and our brain is prepared for it

• Broca’s area responsible for pronunciation and grammar

• Wernicke’s area responsible for meaning and comprehension

• Arcuate fasciculus connects these two

Modern imaging studies are able to show brain activity during language processing. Which of the following measures the changes in hemoglobin levels that accompany the increased blood flow to active areas?

 

1. NIRS, or Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

2. MEG, or magnetoencephalography

3. fMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imaging

4. ERPs, or event-related potentials

1. NIRS, or Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

A research study that follows the same children over a period of time to observe how their language develops is

1. a developmental study.

2. an incremental study.

3. a cross-sectional study.

4. a longitudinal study.

4. longitudinal study

The primary reason researchers decided to try to teach chimpanzees American Sign Language rather than a spoken language was that 

1. chimpanzees do not have the articulatory and physiological ability that spoken languages require.

2. sign language is more flexible semantically than spoken languages.

3. chimpanzees have a natural tendency to imitate movement.

4. sign language is structurally less complex than spoken languages.

1. chimpanzees do not have the articulatory and physiological ability that spoken languages require.

Adam, Eve, and Sarah were 

1. chimpanzees taught to use ASL in a Carnegie Mellon University study.

2. researchers on the neurology of speech in the 60s.

3. subjects in a famous language acquisition study at Harvard University.

4. nineteenth century “wild children” who never developed language.

3. subjects in a famous language acquisition study at Harvard University.

Researchers intensively tracked the early speech and language development of three toddlers given the pseudonyms

 A person with brain damage whose speech is fluent but filled with nonsense words might have

1. Broca’s aphasia.

2. Developmental Language Disorder.

3. a defect in semanticity and displacement.

4. Wernicke’s aphasia.

4. Wernicke’s aphasia.

Normally developing children start to learn to talk at about the same time as they learn to walk.

True or False

True

Children whose native language contains difficult sounds and complex phonological rules, such as Chinese, learn to speak somewhat later than children whose native languages are relatively less complex.  

True or False

False

Human language can be said to have a biological base because

1. humans have areas in the brain that are specialized for language.

2. very young children use vocalizations to make their wishes known

3. children’s first words are related to bodily functions.

4. children will learn language even if no one speaks to them.

1. humans have areas in the brain that are specialized for language.

 Alex was a remarkable African grey parrot who was able to 

1. ask for crackers and nuts in several unrelated languages.

2. sing Italian operatic arias in both perfect pitch and with a perfect accent.

3. recognize colors, shapes and numbers of objects and answer questions about them in English.

4. correctly name pictures of hundreds of other kinds of birds about 80% of the time.

3. recognize colors, shapes and numbers of objects and answer questions about them in English.

All true languages are said to be characterized by productivity,

1. semanticity and replacement.

2. specificity and generativity.

3. semanticity and displacement.

4. specificity and iconicity.

3. semanticity and displacement.

earliest language study

King Psamtik (664-610 BCE)

• first ‘study’ of the roles of nature and nurture

• if children are raised without language, then whatever they speak must be the language of the oldest group of humans

nativism theory- babies arrive in the world with a specific language already in their heads

method: take two children and raised not surrounded by langauge

result- first word was becos

conclusion- becos means bread in phrygian language, phrygians are the oldest race of humans

diary studies, baby biographies (1800s-1910)

descriptive, longitudinal parental observation of own children, not very theoretical

language studies in early 1900s

large sample studies- systematic, cross-sectional measurements of particular phenomena

outbreak of behaviorism- focus on simple learning principles (reinforcement, imitation)

• view language as a skill not fundamentally different from any other behavior

• language development involves linking stimuli in the environment to internal responses, and these responses to verbal behavior

• conditioning and reinforcement

Chomsky- late 1900’s

Syntactic Structures- 1957

• focus on syntax led developmental psycholinguists to concentrate on syntax, with other aspects of language explored only later

language research since the 1900s

new kinds of data- neuroimaging studies

use of computer models to try to understand language development

more emphasis on

• individual differences

• aspects of language outside of syntax

• roles of the environment in language learning

longitudinal studies pros and cons

pro

• control for individual and environmental differences

• look for persistent traits

cons

• takes a long time

• doesn’t represent whole population

• expensive

• attrition

cross-sectional studies

pro

• trend across time without having to wait

con

• loss of control of individual and environmental differences

different methodological approaches in language studies

• single-language vs. cross language (multiple language)

• studies of individual children vs groups (interact with other kids)

• typical vs atypical individuals

  • chronic ear infections- losing input, potentially effects language output

  • low birth weight or gaining weight

• observational vs experimental approach

• children vs adults

experimental design

• hypotheses: what will happen

• participants: experimental vs. control

  • randomization and standardization

• independent variables: what is manipulated

  • exposure, training, itnervention

• dependent variables: what is measured

  • some unit of language or behavior

since 2000: changes to how we conduct studies

• preregistration of research studies- write and make hypothesis public

• open materials

• open data

• changes in publication process- publishing null results

CHILDES & TalkBank

sharing of transcripts of speech samples, standardized format for transcripts corpora representing more than 20 different languages, bilingual and monolingual children, autistic and typical, …

before speech, infants develop prelinguistic abilties

perception- competence

production- performance

infant directed speech (child directed speech, motherese, parentese)

speech directed at infants differs from that usually directed at adults

• prosodic features (sound quality)

  • elongated and hyperarticulated vowels and stress

  • wider range of pitches (intensity and volume)

  • slower tempo

• other features

  • distinct label pronunciation *”this is a … ball..)

  • repetition

  • positive affect (happy talk)

some cultural and parental differences, but many similarities

infants prefer to listen to IDS

Fernald (1985)- IDS preference

4 month olds chose to listen more often to motherese when given the choice btw IDS and ADS

head-turn preference paradigm

ManyBabies (2020)- IDS

RQ: Are previous findings that infants prefer infant-directed speech over adult-directed speech replicable?

• AND does a preference for infant-directed speech vary across age, native language background, and testing method?

Sixty-nine labs from 16 countries participated and collected data from 2,329 infants from 3 to 15 months old

results: head turning had the strongest effect sizes- requires more effort so captrues broader change

research methods for testing infants

• central fixation: human controlled- starts and stops audio when baby looks/looks away

• eyetracking

• headturning

follow up to ManyBabies (2020)

studied babies’ preference for IDS across two sessions

• Babies who show a larger preference for IDS in one session don’t

  necessarily show a larger preference for IDS in another session

• low test-retest reliability

what makes IDS attractive

infants prefer the prosody and pitch patterns

• associated with positive interactions with caretakers

does this IDS benefit language aquisition

exaggerated stress patterns and shorter phrases may help infants isolate words and divide sentences into phrases

hyperarticulation may make vowels more distinguishable, easier to learns

alternatively, role of speech may be to direct infants’ attention or to rouse or calm them, and it may not benefit language acquisition

pitch, rated affect, and vowel hyperarticulation in infant, pet, and adult directed speech

IDS and PDS- shorter utterances, more repetition, more present tense

caregiver interactions characteristics (interaction style)

• conversational; supports later linguistic competence

• joint attention- directing attention at the same object at the same time

  • lead to contingent comments

• interaction styles related to later language skills

  • sensitive/responsive (reacting to what baby is interested in) vs. intrusive (replace what baby is paying attention to)

  • structured (peek-a-boo, picture book reading) vs. unstructured

• lexical differences compared with ADS

  • IDS words: shorter, higher frequency, lower phonotactic probability (easier to produce), higher neighborhood density (every word has neighbors that sound similar to it, high ex- cat)

emergent intentional communication

early crying, cooing, and babbling are not intentionally communicative

8-10 months

• reach for objects

• express frustration

6-10 months

• direct attention with pointing or “showing”

9-12 months

• understanding pointing

• understand that others can have intent

research methods → real-world applications

• low structured observation

• structured observation

  • situation manipulation to increase likelihood of behavior of interest

  • Casby & Compata (1986)- communicative temptation task

• developmental norms

  • aid in clinical evaluation

  • MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MCDI)- words child knows and can say

  • Language Development Survey (LDS)

  • Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales (CSBS)

Which of the following best describes infants' learning of the sounds of their languages? 

1. Infants come into the world being unable to perceive most speech sounds, and must gradually learn to hear the differences between sounds in their native language

2. Because infants can learn in utero, they come into the world being able to perceive only those speech sounds in their native language (and not perceiving nonnative contrasts)

3. Infants come into the world being able to perceive most possible speech sounds, and gradually lose the ability to distinguish sounds that do not occur in their native language

4. Infants, like adults, can naturally distinguish nearly all of the important speech sounds for the various languages of the world, and this ability does not change with age

3. Infants come into the world being able to perceive most possible speech sounds, and gradually lose the ability to distinguish sounds that do not occur in their native language

Adults probably use baby-talk characteristics to prelinguistic infants because

1. the infant pays more attention when they do

2. they are attempting to teach the baby how to talk

3. baby-talk is necessary for normal infant development

4. they are mimicking the baby's vocalizations

1. the infant pays more attention when they do

If an adult responds vocally to a 3-month-old's cooing, the infant will tend to?

1. begin to cry

2. make more speech-like sounds in return

3. try to repeat the sounds of the adult's voice

4. make more and louder sounds in return

2. make more speech-like sounds in return

When a mother points at a dog and says "Look! A doggie" to her seven-month-old, she is 

1. establishing joint attention

2. familiarizing the child with his environment

3. explicitly teaching the child vocabulary words

4. probably not affecting the child's language development one way or another

1. establishing joint attention

A child exposed to a large quantity of adult-to-adult speech will learn language at about the same rate as a child who is exposed to a large quantity of direct adult-to-child speech.

True or False

False

By 12 months of age, infants who are later diagnosed with austism spectrum disorder will

1. respond when their name is called

2. respond to bids for joint attention

3. easily shift attention from one object to another

4. display differences in joint attention

4. display differences in joint attention

Pointing is considered

1. an early form of conversational turn-taking

2. a typical communicative gesture used by children in the first year of life

3. a more sophisticated action, that is generally not understood until the child is well into his second year

4. an inadequate substitute for true communicative behavior

2. a typical communicative gesture used by children in the first year of life

The type of study in which experimenters compare how long infants look at flashing lights on the side walls after turning their heads toward different types of sounds is called the 

1. high amplitude sucking paradigm

2. headturn-preference procedure

3. preferential looking study

4. conditioned headturn study

2. headturn-preference procedure

Breaking up fluent speech into individual words is known as: 

1. statistical learning

2. segmentation

3. habituation

4. joint attention

2. segmentation

During their first year of life, infants typically do all of the following EXCEPT:

1. begun to indentify statistical patterns in the language they hear around them

2. begun to communicate intentionally

3. begun to point to objects and become involved in joint attention

4. begun to produce multiword utterances

4. begun to produce multiword utterances

human can make ____ speech sounds

over 200 intelligibly different

• english only uses 45

goal of phonetic alphabet

unambiguously convey the important aspects of the pronunciation of a given set of sounds using a written system of symbols

• each symbol represents one sound only and there’s only one symbol per sound (think about the letter c in cat, cymbal, cynic)

• if two sounds distinguish one word from another, they should be represented by different symbols

• if two sounds are very similar, we should be able to represent the similarity

international phonetic alphabet (IPA) notation

/ /= individual sounds

[]= production, whole word

“ “ or italics for conventional spelling

english has opaque orthographic transparency of vowels

opaque- not 1 to 1

• example of transparent- spanish

orthographic- how we represent language in writing

vowels- mechanics

• vocal tract unobstructed

• position of jaw- open vs close

• position of tongue- front vs back

• position of lips- round vs unrounded

consonants

place of articulation- where constriction is tightest

manner of articulation- how air is flowing

• stop, fricatives, affricates, nasals, liquids/glides

voicing- whether vocal chords are vibrating

• voiced vs. vocieless

allophones

different sounds but do not differentiate meaning

ex- pee vs put

phonemes and allophones

lack of invariance problem

• speech signal is MESSY

• phonemes vary in the acoustic signal based on:

  • coarticulation (the sounds surrounding it), speaker, accent, dialect, affect

children have to learn how to distinguish among sounds and learn which distinctions are important/signal meaning

categorical perception

perceiving values along a continuum as fixed points/categories

• impose non-naturally occurring boundaries on perception

voice onset time

length of time between the release of a stop consonant (p, b, d, g, k, t, d) and the following sound

• /b/ around 15 ms

• /p/ around 100 ms

exists along a continuum

• however we do not hear some sounds as being intermediate between /p/ and /b/

• VOT less than 25ms categorized as /b/

• VOT greater than 40ms categorized as /p/

• adults succeed at differentiating 20ms across categorical boundary, but fail if it does not (40 vs 60)

do 4 mo show categorical perception- Eimas et al. (1971)

method: high amplitude sucking procedure, infants were habituated to a sound with one VOT

results

• If the next sound had a different VOT that crossed the category boundary, the

  infants dishabituated

• if the next sound had an equally different VOT that did NOT cross the category boundary, they did not dishabituate

habituation

infants habituate to repeated stimuli

• interest declines upon repeated presentation of stimuli

• partly due to novelty-seeking

  • novelty decreases as familiarity increases

  • attention decreases as novelty decreases = habituation

if change in stimulus is detected and perceived as novel, then attention should increase

high amplitude sucking procedure

• infant given pacifier with sensor to monitor sucking rate

• each time the infant sucks the pacifier, a sound is played

• when sucking rate declines by a prespecified amount (habituation criterion) computer switches the auditory stimulus

• if sucking rate increases than we know the infant has detected change

  • dishabituation- renewed response

newborns as universal listeners Werker and Tees (1984)

newborns are sensitive to virtually every distinction between counts that has been tested

tested English-learning infants (and infants learning other languages) on non-native contrasts from Hindi and Salish

results- initially infants sensitive to all phonetic distinctions, experience with native language results in decline in ability to perceive unused contrasts

• decline occurs before baby can produce any words in native language

• language-specific sensitivity of infants in second half of first year extends to many other properties of language

  • native language vowels

  • stress patterns of words

  • phonotactics- rules and restrictions governing how speech sounds (phonemes) combine to form syllables and words

Strong similarities have been observed between the phonology of children's babbling consonants and the sounds of their earliest protowords and words. This is considered evidence of the 

1. silent period

2. phonemic attraction hypothesis

3. child's use of vocal motor schemes

4. inevitability of phonological regression

3. child's use of vocal motor schemes (preferred sound sequences)

A child's speech is intelligible when

1. all her speech sounds are produced correctly

2. about half her speech sounds are produced correctly

3. an adult who doesn't know her could understand her without difficulty

4. her classmates can understand her without difficulty

3. an adult who doesn't know her could understand her without difficulty

The transition between babble and speech

1. is usually marked by a silent period

2. is a gradual progression: speech and babble often coexsist for several months

3. requires a phonetic inventory

4. does not predict the quality of phonetic development for children with hearing loss

2. is a gradual progression: speech and babble often coexsist for several months

The child's phonetic inventory at a particular time is 

1. a list of speech sounds and word patterns that occur in her word productions

2. a list of all the speech sounds and word patterns that occur in the adult language she is aquiring

3. an alphabetical list of the child's words

4. a list of speech sounds and word patterns that occur in the adult form of the words she attempts to say

1. a list of speech sounds and word patterns that occur in her word productions

Which statement below is FALSE?

1. The several dialects of Spanish in the U.S. differ in how certain consonants are pronounced

2. Children develop sounds in different orders in the two languages

3. Bilingual children's errors in pronunciation are the same in their two languages

4. Bilingual children's pronunciation development is as fast or almost as fast as monolingual's pronunciation development

3. Bilingual children's errors in pronunciation are the same in their two languages

Vocalizations such as [baba] or [dada] normally first appear at about:

1. 3-4 months

2. 6-7 months

3. 10-11 months

4. 14-18 months

2. 6-7 months

Consonant sounds are normally classified on the basis of 

1. place and manner of articulation and voicing

2. voicing, alveolar interference, and articulatory difficulty

3. stops, glides, and contrasts

4. phonetic detail, specificity, and voicing

1. place and manner of articulation and voicing

The English consonants /t/, /n/, and /d/ are all: 

1. voiced consonants

2. oral stop consonants

3. alveolar consonants

4. platal consonants

3. alveolar consonants

When we speak of a child having a rule of, for example, final stop deletion, this means that 

1. she has deliberately decided not to say stop sounds at the end of words

2. she intends to say these sounds, but she can't manage to do so

3. she can't hear stop sounds at the ends of words

4. the stop sounds are missing at the ends of words that have them in the adult language, but no claim about the child's knowledge can be made

4. the stop sounds are missing at the ends of words that have them in the adult language, but no claim about the child's knowledge can be made

The sounds /b/ and /d/ are 

1. voiced stops

2. unvoiced stops

3. open consonants

4. voiced affricates

1. voiced stops

speech segmentation (co-articulation)

speech sounds and words seem to adults like separable and sequential

in reality

• usually no silent gaps between words

• co-articulation: speech sounds overlap

spectrogram

a visual representation of a sound over time

• x-axis is time and y-axis is frequency

specific frequency values are perceived as pitch

• loudness (amplitude) is shown by intensity

used to see patterns in pitch and loudness over time and allow analysis of speech and music

how might infants identify possible words in the speech stream?

hypothesis- infants may note which syllables frequently occur together, store these phonological forms, and later link them to meanings

weakness- IDS lots of instances of isolation

• but infants learn better when words are spoken in sentences

statistical learning as a segmentation cue

statistical cues are one of the first cues to detect word boundaries

segmented words can be mapped to words and related to later vocabulary

• role of experience

in between nature and nurture- born with general ability, but need environmental input

transitional probabilities

the likelihood that one event predicts another

• o-1

• help infants discover word-like units in speech

do infants use statistical cues to find word boundaries? saffran, aslin, and newport (1996)

8 month old infants

method

• 2-minute exposure to a nonsense language

• tested with word and part-words (i.e. sequence spanning word boundaries)

hypothesis- infants show more interest in part words because more novel → infants learn and recognize the words

results- significantly more time spent looking during part-words

ecological validity- relevant to real world learning?

• artificial stimuli

• short exposure time

• simplified task demands

• lack of social context

provided proof of principle

are representation of sequences with high transitional probability more available to be mapped onto words? Graf-Estes et al. (2007)

17 month olds in statistical word segmentation task + object-label-learning task (habituation)

• labels were words, nonwords, or part-words from segmentation task

method- listen to string of made up words, then shown pictures of objects and labeled with either a word or nonwords, then tested with either the correct image or a different image

results-

• more looking time at switched images for words

• worse at learning non-words

• no difference with part-words between correct and incorrect images

statistical learning is a domain-general mechanism

non-speech domains

• tone sequences

• visuospatial and visuomotor sequences

• sequences of shapes

• haptic events

non-baby evidence

• even non-human primates can do some of these things

• adults are similarly skiled as chidlren in these statistical learning tasks

stress patterns in the language- segmentation cue

around 80% of two syllable content words in English have stress on first syllable (trochaic pattern = STRONG-weak)

by 7.5 months infants use stress to detect word boundaries, expecting words to begin with stressed syllables

limitation- not always correct, but a good start

• sometimes weak-STRONG

words in isolation- segmentation cue

• high salience

• unambiguous boundaries

• often repeated = high frequency

• can be used as “anchors” for other cues

• account for substantial portion of earliest words

phonotactics- segmentation cues

language-specific rules about which phonemes may occur together

• ex- consonant clusters- sequence of 2+ consonants either before or after the vowel in a single syllable

  • st-, sl-, gr-,

  • good night as goo + dnight or as good + night

• infants are sensitive to phonotactics by 9 months and use the cue to infer word boundaries

• infants prefer legal sequences over illegal sequences

traditional view of vocal development

• experience independent

• the same regardless of what language(s) the infant is exposed to

• reflects constraints of anatomy and of motor control

PROVEN WRONG

stages of phonological development

• prelinguistic (0-12 months)

• prerepresentational (12-18 months)

• representational (18-36 months)

• phonetic inventory completion (3-7 years)

• advanced phonology (7-12 years)

prelinguistic stage 1- reflexive vocalizations

• brith-2 months

• vegetative sounds

• crying, burping, fussing