Ch. 17: Language Development

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

What is Language Development?

  • Inquiry into why infants and toddlers do not communicate verbally in a recognizable language like English at birth.

Overview of Language Development in Psychology 3050

  • Language components

  • Infant ‘pre-linguistic’ abilities

  • Child language environment

  • Children’s acquisition of language

  • Major theories of language development

Language Components

Phonology

  • Phoneme

    • Definition: The smallest unit of sound in a language that can signal a difference between meanings.

    • Examples:

    • ‘bigrigbin’

    • ‘bagragban’

Number of Phonemes in Languages

  • Consonant Phonemes:

    • Range: 6 to 95

    • Average: 23

    • English has 24 consonant phonemes.

  • Vowel Phonemes:

    • Range: 3 to 46

    • Average: 9

    • English has 12 vowel phonemes.

Phonological Discrimination

  • Many speech sounds are classified as different phonemes that we may not distinguish:

    • Example:

    • ‘pin’ vs. ‘spin’ (aspirated vs. non-aspirated ‘p’)

    • Differentiation based on vocal chord vibration timing concerning lip movements (e.g., ‘b’ sounds).

Morphology

  • Morpheme

    • Definition: The smallest unit of a language that carries definable meaning.

    • Components:

    • Lexicon: Vocabulary

    • Meaningful suffixes & prefixes: E.g., ‘-s’, ‘-ed’, ‘-ing’ and ‘un-’, ‘pre-’, ‘non-’, ‘dis-’.

Syntax (Grammar)

  • Syntax's power allows us to judge nonsensical sentences for grammatical correctness.

    • Examples:

    • “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

    • “Twas brillig, and the slithy tovs did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”

Syntactic Roles

  • Different languages indicate syntactic roles through:

    • Word order

    • Suffixes

    • Example in English:

    • ‘Mary loved John’ vs. ‘John loved Mary’.

    • Other languages may place the verb first:

    • ‘Loved Mary John’ vs. ‘Loved John Mary’.

Semantics

  • Definition: Vocabulary or lexicon—words that stand for concepts.

  • Example: Concept of ‘dog’.

    • Categories include Yorkshire Terrier, Great Dane, Toy Poodle, Afghan Hound, Dachshund, and Border Collie.

Learning Appropriate Use of Words

  • Importance of sentence context in communication.

  • Examples of humorous miscommunication and contextually inappropriate phrases like “I stubbed my head.”

Interaction between Syntax and Semantics

  • Syntactical ambiguity:

    • Ambiguous sentences are challenging to interpret, e.g.:

    • “Stolen painting found by tree.”

    • “Squad helps dog bite victim.”

Pragmatics

  • Definition: The use of language to express intentions and to take action in various contexts.

  • Tone and context significantly impact meaning, evidenced by common expressions in different scenarios (e.g., requests to close a window).

Prosody

  • Definition: The melody of language, including tone, stress, and rhythm.

  • Critical for conveying affective states (e.g., sarcasm vs. sincerity).

  • Importance of prosody in distinguishing languages and meanings (e.g., rising intonation often indicates a question).

Methods of Studying Language Development in Infants

  • New techniques allow better study of infant language production.

  • Examine prenatal language processing and sounds’ impact on infants when interacting with caregivers.

  • The role of visual and auditory recognition in language acquisition.

Infant Pre-linguistic Abilities

  • Prenatal language processing:

    • Impact of reading to pregnant bellies.

    • Infants can recognize their mother's voice and distinguish native from non-native languages.

Infant Attention to Caregivers

  • Infants monitor caregivers' speech sounds, facial movements, and expressions, aiding language acquisition.

Learning Sounds of Language

  • Critical phase for learning phonemes like l vs. r.

  • Techniques like conditioned head turning are used in research to confirm infant discrimination capabilities.

Changes in Phoneme Discrimination Over Age

  • Research Findings:

    • 100% discrimination correctness in infants of their native language diminishes with lack of exposure to non-native phonemes (shown via Janet Werker's work).

Importance of Personal Interaction

  • Personal interactions are crucial for learning the sounds of language, as shown in studies with Korean phonemes in English-speaking environments.

The Role of Child-Directed Speech (CDS)

  • CDS, formerly known as ‘motherese’, emphasizes pitch, prosody, and simplified structures to enhance language learning in children.

  • Adaptation in speech based on infant responses is critical.

  • Pitch, prosody, filler word removal, speed, enunciation, topic,

Child Language Environment

  • Properties of CDS:

    • High pitch, musicality, varied sentence length, quick speech rate with low error rates, enunciation, and diversified vocabulary (syntax, content).

    • Babies prefer it as shown in studies!

    • Pitch: higher pitch preferred.

    • except in languages where higher pitch = higher status

    • Prosody: More melodic when speaking to a baby

    • Sentence Length: Shorter sentences

    • Adult’s Mean length utterances in syllables increases as child’s mlu increases

    • Lower error rate when talking to baby

    • Better enunciation

    • Simpler vocabulary

    • Simpler syntax

    • Simpler content

Children's Acquisition of Language

Stages of Language Development

  • Crying and Cooing

  • Related to anatomical structure of vocal tract- larynx moves down during development

  • Still affected by prenatal exposure to language (french vs german)

  • Babbling

  • 1-word stage

  • Multi-word utterances

  • Rules and over-regularization

Vocal Changes in Babbling

  • Characterized by anatomical development, leading to varied sounds and intelligibility changes based on environmental speech exposure and interaction dynamics. Vowel matching, intonation, syllabic structure matches surrounding speech.

  • Babies pitch matches the pitch their parent speaks to them in

  • More closed syllables in languages w more closed syllables

  • Syllable repetition

  • ‘Jargon’ when older until around 1 year of age

1-Word Stage

  • Occurs around the age of 1, characterized by significant communicative intention.

  • Leads to a vocabulary spurt, where children recognize a name for everything they encounter. Everything has a name!!

Multi-Word Utterances

  • Commonly start at around 2 years.

  • Children may initially use phrases, gradually transitioning to multi-word sentences with proper grammatical structure and inflections.

  • Others use speech formulas

  • Dependent on ID vs. AD speech, siblings present, etc.

Rules and Over-Regularization of Language

  • Children grasp rules for verbs and nouns but often over-extend rules leading to incorrect forms (e.g., using 'runned' instead of 'ran').

  • The infamous 'wug test' assesses understanding of word forms and endings.

Complexities of Language Learning

  • Auxiliary verbs and question formation introduce complexities in English syntax, with examples regarding verb forms.

  • Genie could never do it

Major Theories of Language Development

Nativist Theories

  • Propose the existence of a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) within children, which facilitates innate linguistic knowledge.

  • Evidence:

    • Children create Creoles, indicating an innate understanding of language rules. Creoles are from first-gen Pidgin speakers who have transformed simplified languages into fully developed languages through their natural ability to form complex grammatical structures.

    • Creation of sign languages by deaf children (eg. Nicaragua) without exposure provides further support for nativist theories.

    • Seems to be a critical period involved

Social Interactionist Theories

  • Contrast with nativist theories by emphasizing interaction and child-directed speech. They argue that social contexts play a crucial role in language acquisition.

  • There seems to be a critical period

  • No LAD

  • Child directed language is super important

  • Evidence:

    • Children from different backgrounds have varying language exposure, which impacts language ability and cognition as demonstrated in studies (e.g., Hart & Risley).

The Role of TV and Conversation in Language Learning

  • Evidence suggests that mere exposure to language (TV or audio) lacks the effectiveness of personal interaction and conversation in learning language.

  • Studies illustrate that parent-child interactions significantly correlate with language development, shown via brain scans and linguistic testing. eg. hearing child of deaf parents could sign (spoken at home) but couln’t speak or understand spoken english despite watching lots of tv

  • Kids don’t learn language from TV or radio

  • English infants could not distinguish Korean sounds if only given Korean by video or audiotape

  • Mere exposure to more words not sufficient for brain development

  • MIT study

Summary and Conclusions

  • Language learning is a complex phenomenon beginning before birth, leveraged both by innate biological mechanisms and substantial social interaction.

  • Monitoring and enriching the language environment critiques the balance of nature versus nurture in developing linguistic skills.