chapter 7 Language Acquisition

4 components of language

1. Phonological (speech sound) phonemes

   1. different phonemes can change the meaning of words. Example: “bat” and “pat” DIFFERE ONLY IN INITIAL PHONEMES (/B/ AND /P/)

2. Semantic (meaning) morphemes

   1. The smallest unit of meaning. The words “cats” consist of two morphemes “cat” (the root) and “-s” (indicating plural)

3. Syntactic (structure or grammar)

   1. The way words are arranged in a sentence. In English you say who is doing something first (subject) then what they are doing (verb) , and who or what they are doing it to (object) Example: “the dog (subject) chased (verb) the cat (object)”

4. Pragmatic (contextual)

   1. Context influences meaning. For example, saying “could you pass the salt? In a dinner setting usually serves as a polite request while in a different context it might be taken literally.

Nature and nurture contributions

1. Nature/nativists

   1. Genetic endowment and a brain for language

2. Cultural Context

   1. Language influences cognition / emotion

3. Nurture (minimal)

   1. wild boy deprived of language input

   2. Formats recurrent socially patterned activity determine children’s vocabularies

   3. Children more likely apply a label to an interesting/familiar referent than a boring referent

   4. American children learn mostly nouns first and then move towards verbs and relational words by 2 years.

Prelinguistic Development

• Hearing in prenatal period

• Preferences and competencies at birth

• Babbling

• Representation and Memory

Social referencing - Look to caregiver for cues when approaching unfamiliar objects/events (around the time of crawling)

Primary intersubjectivity - rounds of greeting noises in face t face interaction early in infancy

Secondary intersubjectivity = shared attention and feelings about other events/objects

Phases and area of language development

• One-word utterances (9-month - 18 month old’s): Acquisition of word meaning

• Two-word utterances (18-month to 24 month old’s): acquisition of grammar

Inborn Constraints

• whole-object principle: Assume a label (“cup”) applies to the whole object

• Mutual-Exclusivity Principle : Assume that a referent has only one name

• Categorizing Principle: Assume that a label (“dog”) extends to a class of similar objects

• Grammatical constraints: see next page

• Which constraints is in action when children typically make mistakes

  • Overextension: Apply a label too broadly (“Daddy” to all men)

  • Under extension:; Applying a label too narrowly (“cat” only to the family’s cat)

• A common measure of receptive vocabulary (acquisition of semantics) Peabody picture vocabulary Test (PPVT)

2.5 years old

• Hand

• reading

• closet

4 year old

• feather

• wrapping

• garbage

5 years old

• empty

• porcupine

Two-word utterances and acquisition of syntax

• telegraphic speech: “What do” “More sing” “water off” “Mail come”

• Use order of words to create different meanings. e.g. “Chase Daddy”

• A typical mistake children make is called

  • Over-regularization

    • My doggy runned away”

• Children have not heard adults saying ‘runned’ it means that children did not learn from mimicry

Chomsky’s view that grammar is acquired through

• Language Acquisition Device (LAD) allows a child to recognize the deep structure that underlie any particular language

• Innate equipment: LAD does not contain grammatical rules per se, but will process the sentences in a linguistic environment to quickly obtain/ output grammatical rules.

• Start of modularity nativism

Languages Influence on cognition

• Japanese speak about specific kinds of shame with different words

• Chinese-speaking children talk and think about numbers differently

  • Maya Indians and Australian aboriginals take and think about space differently.

Psycholinguistics Psycholinguistics studies the relationship between language and psychology. It investigates how language is processed in the brain, how it is acquired, and how it influences thought. Key aspects include understanding language comprehension, production, and the role of social and environmental factors in language learning. Psycholinguistics also explores how linguistic structures affect cognitive processes.