Language

1
Language

• Language is a form of communication in which
  sounds and symbols are combined according to
  formal rules
• Language Acquisition is the process of learning
  language and its rules and structures

2
Animal Language

• Animals are capable of limited communication
• Language in animals is not comparable to human
  language
• Apes lack appropriate vocal cords for generation
  of speech
• Apes can be trained to use non-vocal sign
  language
• Washoe acquired American Sign Language
• Dolphins can be trained to respond to hand
  signals and to vocal commands
• Animal language lacks complexity and syntax

3
Theories of Language Development

• Is language capability innate or learned?
• Most researchers believe that language
  acquisition is a combination of nature and
  nurture.
• Language Acquisition Device- an innate mechanism,
  hypothesized by Chomsky, that enables a child to
  analyze language and extract the basic rules of
  grammar

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Movie
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Elements of Language

• Phoneme
• Basic speech sound
• Initial consonant in rake versus lake

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Elements of Language contd

• Morphemes
• Smallest unit of language that have meaning
• Types of morphemes
• Free morphemes can stand alone
• Cat
• Danger
• Bound morphemes cannot stand alone and always
  attach to free morphemes
• -ness in happiness
• un- in unclear
• -ing in swinging

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Elements of Grammar

• Syntax
• The structure of language
• Grammar Parts of speech and rules for combining
  words
• Word order Spot bit Abby differs from Abby
  bit Spot
• Semantics
• The study of meaning

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Development of Language Abilities

• Prelinguistic Sound Production
• Crying (0-2 months)
• Cooing (1-5 months)
• Takes same form in all languages
• Is done by all babies
• Babbling (5-12 months)
• Vocal play (single syllables)
• Reduplicated babbling
• Nonreduplicated babbling (more complex sounds)
• Deaf babies and babbling
• Hearing speech is not necessary for babbling
• Deaf babies babble manually if exposed to sign
  language

9
Early Expressions of Communicative Intent

• Protowords (end of first year)
• Many first words
• Are not real words because they are used in only
  1 context
• Baby points to object of interest and says ha
• Characteristics that suggest communication is
  intentional
• Child makes eye contact with adults
• Child vocalizes with consistent sounds and
  intonation patterns
• Child persists in attempting to communicate if
  not understood

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Early Expressions of Communicative Intent contd

• One-word utterances
• Appear in most children between 10-15 months but
  sometimes not until 2
• Typical Early Words
• Familiar objects or people
• Daddy
• ball
• Social words
• bye-bye
• uh-oh

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Early Expressions of Communicative Intent

• Two word utterances and beyond
• Typically appear around 18-20 months of age
• Telegraphic speech
• Most obvious and essential part of ideas are
  conveyed
• ride car rather than I want to go riding in
  the car
• Few function words like a, the, of
• Few bound morphemes like s or ing
• Adult word order is usually maintained

12
Word Learning

• Associating words with concepts in the world
• objects, actions, abstract notions, etc...
• Poses 2 problems
• 1. Extension Figuring out what aspects of the
  world people are talking about
• 2. Intension Figuring out what people mean when
  they use word-referent links

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Extension Mapping words to objects

• Seems like it would be straightforward
• Child sees something and then hears a word
• Associative learning!
• Evidence Children learn more words when parents
  follow-in to their childs attentional focus

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Problems with dumb associative learning

• Parents dont always follow-in
• 30-50 of the time, children are looking at
  something OTHER than whats being labeled by
  speaker.
• Discrepant Labeling
• In some cultures, people dont speak directly to
  children
• But, word learning is not necessarily delayed

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Finding the meaning

• Even when its clear what part of the world a
  speaker is talking about, its unclear what the
  meaning is
• Quines problem of Indeterminacy
• Infinite number of logical possibilities for the
  meaning of a given word

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Indeterminacy Gavagai
Gavagai!
Frog? Green? Ugly? Jumping?
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3 Constraints on word learning

• Whole-object constraint
• Assume words refer to whole objects instead of
  parts or properties
• Taxonomic constraint
• Assume that words you know extend to similar
  KINDS of things
• Mutual Exclusivity
• Assume that words refer to one and only one object

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Learning the rules of language

• Syntax
• Knowledge about how words go together to form
  sentences
• word order
• Morphology
• Understanding of how to change words to make them
  mean different things
• Verb inflection Past-tense

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Do children know the rules?

• One test of early morphology
• Berko-Gleasons wug test
• This is a wug, and these are 2 ______?

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Past-tense learning

• Regular Verbs
• Ones in which the past-tense is formed via a
  regular rule (e.g., add -ed)
• Irregular Verbs
• Ones where the past-tense is a change in the word
  (e.g., run-ran speak-spoke)

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Development of irregular past tense production

• When children first learn, surprisingly they do
  it right
• Will say ran for past tense of run
• But then they overregularize
• Will say runned for past tense of run
• This suggests theyve learned the rule and
  over-apply it
• Then, they slowly acquire the irregulars
  Memorization.

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• Childs words dont always match adults words
• Overextension
• Using a single word to mean many different things
• ball to refer to anything round or that can be
  thrown
• kitty to refer to any small animal, such as a
  turtle
• Underextension
• Using words in an overly specific way
• Using dog only for golden retrievers
• Using kitty only for their cat and not for all
  cats

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Language The case of Genie

• Severely abused child discovered in LA in the
  mid-70s
• No exposure to language between 13-20 months, and
  13 years
• Upon discovery, very little language
• Small set of words
• Understood some intonation stuff (e.g.,
  prohibitions, questioning)
• The big question Can she learn language?

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The Genie Results (Curtiss, 1977)

• Trouble breathing and talking at same time
• She developed a large vocabulary
• Could use meaningful combinations of words
• Grammatical abilities severely impoverished
• Lots of trouble learning the rules of language
• Pragmatic skills also poor