Cognitive Linguistic Development Weeks 8-16

Individual Differences

Variations in language learners

• Early words

Referential —------------------- expressive

• Referential - Using language primarily to label and name objects and people in the environment

• Expressive - more focused on pragmatics, Using language primarily for social interaction, expressing feelings, personal needs, and routines.

Individual Differences

Variations in language learners

• Language use

Code oriented —------------------- Message oriented

• What is the goal of their utterances?

• Code oriented - tend to label and repeat/practice the production of the language - focus on how well they are saying the code of language

• Message oriented - interested in how they can use language to manipulate social situation

Individual Differences

Variations in language learners

• Speech

Analytic —------------------------ Holistic

• Analytic - they carefully produce single words - careful with how they annunciate

• Holistic - their speech productions tend to be more variable

Individual Differences

Variations in language learners

• Early “sentences”

Nominal combos —----------------------- Pronominal combos

• Nominal combos - “daddy go, doggy bark” - specific label for a thing

• Pronominal combos - combinations that use pronouns (this, that, those, and personal pronouns) or less specific labels

Individual Differences

Variations in language learners

• rate

Early talkers —----------------------------- Late talkers

• Rate - timing of vocabulary spurt

• Early talkers - vocabulary spurt happens before a year and a half

• Late talkers - vocabulary spurt happens 24-30 months

other considerations for individual variance

Interactive style 

•  Assertive / passive

• Initiator / responder

Amount of talking

• Self-talk / audience

Interests

Position on one does not equal position on another

Wide range of performance

Expressive

• 75 words at 18 months

• Vary up to 25 words (33%)

Contributing Factors to language variance:

a. within child differences

environment

gender

nature of language

1. Within child differences

• Perseverance, curiosity, sociability, independence, cognitive style

2. Environment

• bidirectional

3. Gender 

• boys and girls learn language differently because you learn what you experience

4. Nature of language 

• languages like korean and japanese are structured differently, they use verbs at end - we tend to learn what we hear first and last - english tends to use nouns in the beginning and end of sentences

late talkers

**note for implications for assessment

• Usually defined as children who have an expressive vocabulary at 20 months of age have 50 or few words

• About half spontaneously resolve

Implications for assessment

• Individual differences and diversity are present in every person, disability or not

SYNTAXUALIZATION & GRAMMATICAL MORPHOLOGY:

Early language development is about lexical and relational semantics
- what is syntaxualization? what is its purpose?

• Form follows function

• Universal similarities in meanings

• Assumes language is organized by content

• Meaning is the key to discovering form

Utterance development:

• Length and complexity

• 1 word → SSWU → 2&3 word phrases (“combos/fragments”)

Syntaxualization

• The period during which young children's language begins to be organized by grammar (syntax) rather than meaning

• In utterances of children that indicate that are adhering to conventional syntax to organize their output

Evidence of syntaxualization (the process of syntactic development)

1. pronoun case → Nominative vs accusative

2. subject -verb agreement “I walk” vs “he walks”

3. Passive: “I read the book” vs “the book was read by me”

Nominative	Accusative
I	me
they	them
he	him
she	her

Analyzing structural stage (evidence for the level of syntactic development)

in this order:

1. lexicon

2. grammatical morphemes

3. sentence pattern

1. Lexicon

• Locatives

• Modals

• Negatives

2. Grammatical morphemes

• Free and bound morphemes → “box” - “boxes” (= boxness + plurality)

• Free can stand on its own (every root word)

• Bound are units of meaning that have to be attached to another morpheme to express its meaning

3. Sentence pattern (structure/complexity)

Morphological development

Characteristics of grammatical morphemes

1. Characteristics of grammatical morphemes

• Syntactic functions

• Low perceptual salience

• Low phonetic substance

• Sentence internal

• Meanings are often already expressed by word order

• High frequency 

obligatory contexts

sets stage for how we count errors

Morphological development

Order of mastery: based on the words of Rodger Brown!!!

• Used 90% of the time (obligatory contexts) 

• Keep in mind: time from first appearance to mastery and variety of learning curves

Morphological development

Developmental points of interest

• Considerable time lapse between first appearance and eventual mastery

• Variety of learning curves between morphemes

• Frequent over-regularization - adding the form to an already marker irregular form - “feets” - “we camed home” → THIS  IS EVIDENCE OF RULE GOVERNED-NESS!!!

• Look for productivity

• Inflections appear first in the most familiar (oldest) semantic contexts

• Some grammatical morphemes actually emerge at the same time

Morphological development

• MLU: Mean Length of Utterance

• Basic steps?

• Calculated in words or morphemes (usually morphemes)

• Indicated length of utterance

• For young children it will also capture complexity of utterances

• Must use convention

MLU Basic Steps:

1. Segment utterances

2. Mark mazes

3. include/exclude utterances

4. Count free and bound morphemes in each utterance

5. Total morphemes/total utterances = MLU

• Compare to robert brown stages

• Predict age 

• Determine (in)consistencies for stages

Grammatical Morpheme:

ing progressive

• Earliest with durative & non completive verbs

Me playing

Mommy eating

Grammatical Morpheme:

In, on

In box

On table

Grammatical Morpheme:

-s plural

Cats

Bears

Grammatical Morpheme:

Irregular past tense

• Early aspect meaning for completives, nondurative actions and events

I found

Truck broke

Baby fell

Grammatical Morpheme:

Possessive -s

Mommy’s hat

Grandpa’s car

Grammatical Morpheme:

Uncontracted copula

I am hot.

Mommy is mad?

Grammatical Morpheme:

Articles: a, the

A big, brown cow.

The dog.

Grammatical Morpheme:

Past tense: -ed

Skipped

Walked

Talked

Grammatical Morpheme:

3rd person -s

Baby sits

He sings

Grammatical Morpheme:

3rd person irregular (has, done)

1st person: I have a cup

2nd person: you have a cup

She has a cup

Grammatical Morpheme:

Uncontracted BE auxiliary

“Helping verb”

He is helping me.

I am stirring.

Grammatical Morpheme:

Contractible copula

I’m hot

You’re nice

It’s good

We’re happy

They’re sad

Everyone’s home

Grammatical Morpheme:

Contractible auxiliary

“Helping verb”

He’s helping me

I’m stirring

Morphological development

Developmental points of interest

• Considerable time lapse between first appearance and eventual mastery

• Variety of learning curves between morphemes

• Frequent over-regularization - adding the form to an already marker irregular form - “feets” - “we camed home” → THIS  IS EVIDENCE OF RULE GOVERNED-NESS!!!

• Look for productivity

• Inflections appear first in the most familiar (oldest) semantic contexts

• Some grammatical morphemes actually emerge at the same time

Morphological development

MLU: Mean Length of Utterance

MLU basic steps?

1. Segment utterances

2. Mark mazes

3. include/exclude utterances

4. Count free and bound morphemes in each utterance

5. Total morphemes/total utterances = MLU

• Compare to robert brown stages

• Predict age 

• Determine (in)consistencies for stages