6. Language

Terminology Cheat Sheat 

Comprehension: understanding what others say (or sign or write) 

Production: speaking (or writing or signing) to others 

Generativity: the capacity for language to generate an infinite number of sentences and express an infinite number of ideas 

Phonemes: the elementary units of sound used in a language  

Phonological Development: the acquisition of knowledge about the sound system of a language 

Morphemes: the smallest units of meaning in a language 

Semantic Development: learning the system for expressing meaning in a language, including word learning 

Syntax: rules specifying how different kinds of words (nouns, verbs) can be combined in a way that makes grammatical sense 

Syntactical Development: learning about syntax 

What is language? 

Structured, rule-based system of communication using symbols to communicate meaning 

1) Language is symbolic written word dog, oral language dog, sign language for dog, different symbolic representation that stands in for the real dog. Arbitrary symbol to represent real world things (chien and dog are not similar but...) 

2) Language represents specific meanings if I say that’s my dog you may think I am talking about the furry creature but if we are at barbeque you may think its about your hot dog! 

The meaning of a word is what it represents...So, the meaning of a word varies dramatically by context! 

3) Language is generative 

-"the classy blue skunk ate orange spaghetti" 

4) Language is structured/rule-based (syntax) 

"Carl hit Ryan with his car"  "Carl was hit by Ryan with his car" 

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" has meaning due to strucutre but doesn’t actually mean anythihng wouldn’t happen... 

Syntax, comprehension, production

Syntax 

System of rules specifying how words are arranged into sentences in a way that can be understood by others speaking the same language 

Comprehension- understanding what others are saying, signing, or writing 

-Receptive vocabulary: what words you would understand if you encountered them 

-Comprehension comes first in development 

Production- Speaking, signing, or writing yourself 

-Productive vocabulary: what words you can spontaneously use yourself 

Comprehension develops earlier 

Generativity

Generativity: the capacity for language to generate an infinite number of sentences and express an infinite number of ideas 

Unique property of language not found in the communication of other species 

-e.g monkeys have predator-specific alarm calls 

-One for leopards, another for snakes 

-Behave differently after hearing each call 

-Super cool evolutionary example of sophisticated communicaition 

-But no element of  generativity! 

-Couldn't say "there is a big female leopard by that specific tree!" 

Communication is not the same as language 

 

Deepak Chopra 

How can a sentence "make sense" but mean nothing 

 

On the reeption and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit 

Syntax 

Rules for how different kinds of words (nouns, verbs, adjectives) can be combined in a way that will make sense to another person speaking the same language 

-The dog bit the cat 

-The cat bit the dog 

-The cat was bitten by the dog 

Syntactic Development/ universal grammar

Syntactic Development: process of learning to understand (and later follow) the syntactic rules of one's language 

-intuitive effortless 

Universal grammar: set of highly abstract, unconscious rules that are common to all human languages 

-There are superficial differences 

-At a fundamental level, have same innate concepts (subjects, verbs, objects, tenses) 

Noam Chomsky 

"colorless green ideas sleep furiously" 

Phonological Development 

Phonemes 

-smallest units of speech that can be perceived by speakers of a given language  

Different languages use different phonemes! 

Processing Other's Speech 

Adults bad at distinguishing between phonemes we don't often hear/produce 

-Arabic speakers might struggle with /b/ and /p/, distinct phonemes in English 

-But English speakers struggle with /h/ and /x/ ("velar fricative" found in Arabic) 

Why 

-We learn to categorize different speech sounds, lumping some sounds together while distinguishing between others 

-Every language does this differently! 

 

Categorical Perception

Humans perceive sounds as belonging to different categories 

-In English, /b/ and /p/ are both bilabial sounds (made using the lips) 

-We distinguish between them based on their voice onset time (VOT) 

-Time between air passing lips and vocal chords vibrating 

Everything with VOT less than 25ms is b, everything above 25ms is p. As a language speaker you need to learn to draw this arbitrary boundry. 

Both adults and infants notice when two sounds are on either side of this boundary 

When two souds have the same difference in VOT but cross this boundary....Infants under 1 actually outperform adults! 

 

Baby getting listening to sounds and distinguishing them, bunny dancing 

 

Werker and Lalonde (1988) 

Trained baby so it would look at bunny dancing 

Babies turned their heads in anticipation of fun stimulus 

10-month-olds    They must have recognized the difference between /d/ and d3! (two sounds they learned are important to distinguish between in English) 

 

Not an English phoneme 10 month-olds  (No reaction 

-Suggests 10-month-olds did not recognize a difference between /d/ and ɖ 

(we don’t use ɖ in English, so it just gets categorized as a /d/) 

 

Not an english phoneme   6-month-olds (notices change!) 

Unlike 10-month-old who selectively process sounds in terms of  
English phonetic boundaries… 6-month-olds still caught the difference between /d/ and ɖ! 

(Still in the process of learning what differences in sounds to care about) 

Baby--> 10 m/o--> 6m/o 

sensiyive period and perceptual narrowing

Sensitive period  

Window when the brain highly attuned to certain experiences and stimuli, allowing for specific skills and knowing to develop rapidly and effortlessly 

Perceptual Narrrowing 

As we learn the important sound categories in our language, we start lumping together sounds from within category and lose the ability to detect subtler differences 

 

The 4 Paradigm

Anticipatory Looking Paradigm 

Learn about children's implicit understanding of the world by tracking where they look in anticipation of an event 

Often starts by training kids to associate a certain stimulus (or change a stimulus) with a fun attention grabbing outcome 

 

Preferential Looking Paradigm: see if children spend more time attending to one stimulus over another, showing they can tell the difference and have a preference (or at least we assume) 

Anticipatory Looking Paradigm: Use behaviours reflecting children's anticipation of an event (e.g. looking in direction associated with an outcome) to get at their cognitions 

Habituation Paradigm: Get childrenbored looking at a type of stimulus (e.g. category of thing) then see if changing things up renews their attention (suddenly longer looking time reflecting a perceived difference) 

Violation-of-Expectation Paradigm: Compare looking time to different event outcomes to learn what predictions children were making (longer=surprise at outcome) 

Phonological Development:

Phonological Development: The acquisition of knowledge about the sound system of a language 

-What sounds does my language use? 

-In what order do these sounds typically occur in my language? 

-In english a /z/ sound followed by a /w/ sound isn't really a thing  

-In Polish, no sweat 

-E.g. bezwzgledny ("ruthless") 

The bulk of this learning occurs in the first few years of life! 

White and Aslin (2011) 

18-20 month olds 

Part 1: Accent exposure 

-sock-> sack 

-Dog -> dag 

-Bottle -> battle 

-Block-> black 

Phase 2: Test Phase 

"look at the dag!" 

With exposure to an accent, children under 2 can adjust their interpretation of peoples phonemes! 

Sensitive Period for Language 

Time during which language learning happens rapidly and effortlessly 

From birth until sometime in middle childhood (exact end may vary) 

An experience-expectant process 

After this window, language acquisition still possible, but not quite the same 

More difficult, more effortful 

Likely won’t achieve same level of mastery with second language(s) 

L1: Native language(s) 

L2: Second language(s) 

 

Myth vs Fact

Myth: Infants should only be taught one language as learning more than one could slow their development 

Fact: Infants are language sponges and can learn many languages in parallel with no significant drawbacks! Multilingualism is awesome! 

Infant-directed speech (IDS) 

-Warm, positive emotionality 

-Higher pitch, slower enunciation 

-‘Swooping’ between high and low 

-Accompanied by exaggerated facial expressions 

Exhibited across many (but not all) cultures 

-Draws infants’ attention to speech 

-Highlights/clearly contrasts phonemes 

-Improves infant word recognition 

What about the kids who don’t receive IDS? 

-They learn language nonetheless! 

 

Word Segmentation: The Problem 

Words are distinct when written down,  
but when spoken aloud, humans don’t leave much space between words 

“Lookattheprettybaby!” “Haveyoueverseensuchaprettybaby?” 

How do infants segment continuous strings of sounds into their component words? 

Word Segmentations: the solutions  1

Solution 1: Attend to prosodic cues 

-Prosody: the characteristic rhythm and intonational patterns in a spoken language 

-E.g., stress patterns 

-In English, often at the beginning of words 

-ENG-lish, CARD-board 

-In Canadian French, at the end 

-gui-TARE, ber-ET 

-Infants learn what’s typical of their language 

Word Segmentations: the solutions  2/3

Solution 2: Attend to the distributional properties of speech sounds 

-Certain sounds are more likely to occur together 

-Infrequent pairings a cue for the transition from one word to another 

Statistical Learning! 

 

Solution 3: Using contextual cues and other known words to direct their attention 

-Important early cue: an infant’s own name! 

-Quickly learn words paired with own name 

-Less quickly with other names 

Precursors to production 

Starts with simple vocalizations/sounds 

-After birth: Crying 

-6-8 weeks: cooing, grunts, raspberries 

Babbling: repetitive production of speech/signs early in language development (6-10 months) 

-Consonant–vowel sequences (“bababa . . .”) 

-Hand movements (for learners of sign languages) 

Other signs of growing communication skills 

-Gestures/pointing 

-Joint attention/gaze following 

-Turn-taking 

First Words 

New task: figure out what words map onto which things in the world (i.e., referents) 

-Word comprehension occurs throughout the first year 

-Word production comes later (around first birthday) 

Holophrastic Period (9-18 months) 

-Window in which children use single words to communicate whole ideas  

-“Drink!” – I’m thirsty can I have some juice? 

-“Ow!” … “Eye!” – Yo Mom my eye hurts 

Overextension: using a newly-learned word more generally that one should 

Word Learning  

Fast Mapping 

-Rapidly learning a new word simply from hearing the contrastive use of a familiar and the unfamiliar word 

Pragmatic Cues 

-Using social information (e.g., eye gaze) to learn words 

Syntactic Bootstrapping 

-Syntax: the underlying structure of sentences 

-Using the grammatical structure of whole sentences to figure out the meaning of new words 

-“The duck is kradding the bunny!” 

-Kradding = pushing someone down 

Telegraphic speech

Telegraphic speech (18-36 months) 

-Early sentences, often only two or three words, featuring only the core elements of the intended communication 

-“Eat cookie”, “Daddy go work” 

-Missing the grammar of adult language, but their  
word ordering reflects an emerging knowledge of syntax 

-Wouldn’t say “Cookie eat” or “Work daddy go” 

Overregularization 

-Using newly learned grammatical rules/modifiers in new or irregular circumstances where they aren’t entirely correct 

-“Look! Mooses!” 

-“I eated a cookie” 

 

Big diagram of milestonees lecture 9 slide 21/22 

Learning multiple languanges in parallel doesn't significantly detract from vocabulary growth in one of them specifically! 

Language" in non-human animal

"Language" in non-human animals 

All these are fascinating and important examples of communication 
But calling them language downplays how amazing and unique language in human infants really is! 

Kanzi the bonobo 

Learned to use lexigrams as researchers attempted to teach his mother, Matata 

Symbolic vocabulary of over 300 words!!! 

-Astounding receptive vocabulary (connects symbols to referents when prompted) 

-But: Kanzi doesn’t spontaneously produce language the way baby humans do 

-Might make some simple requests 

-But children use language to describe the world continuously and for no reason at all 

Can follow complex verbal instructions  

-Understands verbal symbols (spoken words) 

 

Does Kanzi use or fully understand syntax?  

-Currently no compelling evidence! 

To date, it appears that only humans have the ability to use symbols in a meaningful, generative, and structured way 

In short: to the best of our understanding,  
only humans (even baby ones) have language! 

First Words

Big Diafram of milestones to add 

And Productive Vocabulary Size Development in Children Aged 18-24 months –Gender Differences 

Multilingual toddlers' vocabulary development in two languages: Comparing bilinguals and trilinguals 

Being trilingual was associated with producing 72 fewer words than being bilingual, although this difference failed to reach statistical significance. Each additional day of age was associated with one more produced (e.g. a 28 month old child prudced approximately 30 more words than a 27 m/o) and  being female associated with producing 89 more words on average 

Learning multiple languages in parallel doesn't significantly detract from vocabulary growth in one of them specifically! 

First Words

New task: figure out what words map onto which things in the world (i.e., referents)

•Word comprehension occurs throughout the first year

•Word production comes later (around first birthday)

Holophrastic Period (9-18 months)

•Window in which children use single words to communicate whole ideas

•“Drink!” – I’m thirsty can I have some juice?

•“Ow!” … “Eye!” – Yo Mom my eye hurts

Overextension: using a newly-learned word more generally that one should

First Sentences

Telegraphic speech (18-36 months)

•Early sentences, often only two or three words, featuring only the core elements of the intended communication

•“Eat cookie”, “Daddy go work”

•Missing the grammar of adult language, but their
word ordering reflects an emerging knowledge of syntax

•Wouldn’t say “Cookie eat” or “Work daddy go”

Overregularization

•Using newly learned grammatical rules/modifiers in new or irregular circumstances where they aren’t entirely correct

•“Look! Mooses!”

•“I eated a cookie”

Multilingual toddlers

Learning multiple languages in parallel doesn’t significantly detract from vocabulary growth in one of them specifically!