Chapter 11

The Building Blocks of Language

Pragmatics

• Principles that underlie the effective and appropriate use of language in social contexts

• Involves sociolinguistic knowledge

  • Registers = culturally specified rules that dictate how language should be used in particular social contexts

• Properly interpret nonverbal signals

  • Facial expressions, gestures, body language

Interactionist -- Environmental Supports for Language Development

• Joint activities to create a supportive learning environment

  • Turn-taking in conversations

  • Things have names

  • Social registers in posing questions and giving answers

• Child-directed speech (aka motherese)

  • Short, simple sentences spoken slowly in a high-pitched voice

• Importance of conversation

  • Children must be actively in using language with the adults in person or via Skype

Object Scope Constraint

• The gavagai problem

  • We use “Object scope constraint/Whole object bias

    • Assign a word = the entire object and not one of its parts

Taxonomic Constraint

• Assume words label categories of similar objects that share common perceptual features

  • The word “kitty” refers to the animal a child has seen and to other small, furry, four-legged animals

Mutual Exclusivity

• Each object has one label

  • Different words refer to separate, non-overlapping categories

Syntactical Clues to Word Meanings (Syntactic Bootstrapping)

• Clue = The way the word is used in a sentence

  • This is a dax -- Dax - a noun - refers to the ball

  • This is a dax one -- Dax - an adjective - refers to the colour or shape of the ball