The Development of Language

1
The Development of Language

• Chapter 9
• Language and Communication

2
How do we develop the ability to communicate?

• Module Objectives
• What are the elements of speech?
• How do children develop speech?
• How do children learn the meaning of words?

3
Infants begin making sounds at birth. They cry,
coo, and laughbut in the first year they dont
really do much talking

• It could be argued that infants DO communicate
  with others, but do not have language

4
What is Language?

• Think about your languagemaybe you even speak
  more than one! What makes a language?
• This is a broad conceptlanguage is a system that
  relates sounds or gestures to meaning.
• Language is expressed through speech, writing and
  gesture.

5
There are four distinct elements to language

• -Phonology refers to the sounds of a language
• Semantics is the study of words and their meaning
• Grammar refers to the rules used to describe the
  structure of a language
• Which involves syntax or rules that specify how
  words are combined to form sentences
• Pragmatics is the study of how people use
  language to communicate effectively

6
Children must learn to hear the differences in
speech sounds and how to produce them they must
learn the meaning of words and rules for
combining them into sentences and they must learn
effective ways to talk with others
7
Phonemes

• The basic building blocks of language
• The unique sounds that can be joined to create
  words
• The sound of p in pin, pet, and pat
• The sound of b in bed, bat, and bird
• Infants can distinguish many of these sounds,
  some of them as early as 1 month after birth
• Can discriminate sounds they have never heard
  before such as phonemes from a foreign language

8
The language environment for infants is not
solely auditory. Much language exposure comes
from face-to-face interaction with adults
9
Infants use many tools to identity words in
speech. They dont understand the meaning of the
word yet, but they can recognize a word as a
distinct configuration of sounds
10
Parents and adults help infants master language
sounds by talking in a distinctive style

• Think on your own
• In what distinctive way do adults talk to
  infants? How can this help infants master the
  language?

11
Language development

• Infants are equipped for language even before
  birth, partly due to brain readiness, partly
  because of auditory experiences in the uterus
• Children around the world have the same sequence
  of early language development
• Newborns prefer to hear speech over other sounds-
  they prefer to listen to baby talk- the high
  pitched, simplified and repetitive was adults
  speak to infants
• The sound of a human voice, whether familiar or
  strange always fascinates infants

12
Adults Use Infant-Directed Speech

• Adults speak slowly and with exaggerated changes
  in pitch and loudness and elongated pauses
  between utterances
• Also known as parentese, motherese, or
  child-directed speech
• Infant-direct speech may attract infants
  attention more than adult-directed speech because
  its slower pace and accentuated changes provide
  the infant with more salient language cues
• Helps infants perceive the sounds that are
  fundamental to their language

13
When talking to girls, adults use more words
like doggie and blankie whereas with boys,
adults use more words like dog and blanket.
Girls hear twice as many diminutives.
14
If infant-directed speech helps infants perceive
sounds that are essential to the development of
their language

• What about children who cannot hear?

15
Deaf Children

• About 1 in every 1,000 American infants is born
  deaf
• Over 90 of deaf children have hearing parents
• These children are often delayed in language and
  complex make-believe play

Mommy
Daddy
Baby
16

• Deaf infants and toddlers seem to master sign
  language in much the same way and at about the
  same pace that hearing children master spoken
  language.
• Deaf 10-month-olds often babble in signs they
  produce signs that are meaningless but resemble
  the tempo and duration of real signs

17
Deaf Children

• Compared to hearing children, babbling of deaf
  children is delayed
• However, if they are exposed to sign language
  development will be right on schedule with
  normal-hearing childrens speech development
• Hearing dog, infants in the middle of the first
  year of life may first say dod then gog
  before finally saying dog correctly
• The same gradual progression will occur with sign
  language infants will make mistakes at first
  before making the correct sign for dog

18
Speech Production

• At 2 months, infants begin making sounds that are
  language-based
• Starts with cooing
• They begin by producing vowel-like sounds, such
  as ooooo and ahhhh
• At 5 to 6 months, infants begin making
  speech-like sound that have no meaning
• Cooing turns into babbling

19
Baby Talk

• Babbling is the extended repetition of certain
  single syllables, such as ma-ma-ma, da-da-da,
  ba-ba-ba that begins at 6-7 months of age.
• Babbling is experience-expectant learning
• All babies babble
• All babies gesture
• The sounds they make are similar no matter what
  language their parents speak

20
Babbling

• Over the next few months, babbling incorporates
  sounds from their native language.
• Even untrained listeners can distinguish between
  babbling infants who have been raised in cultures
  in which French, Arabic, or Cantonese languages
  were spoken.
• Many cultures assign important meanings to the
  sounds babies babble
• ma-ma-ma, da-da-da and pa-pa-pa are usually
  taken to apply to significant people in the
  infants life

21
First Words

• Infants first recognize words, then they begin to
  comprehend words
• At about 4 ½ months of age, infants will listen
  longer to a tape repeating their own name than to
  a tape of different but similar name
• At about 7-8 months of age, infants readily learn
  to recognize new words and remember them for weeks

22
At 6 months if an infant hears either mommy
or daddy, they look toward the appropriate
person.
23
By their 1st birthday, infants usually say their
first words, usually an extension of babbling.

• By the age of 2 most children have a vocabulary
  of a few hundred words, and by age 6 the
  vocabulary includes over 10,000 words!

24
The Importance of Symbols

• Children begin using gestures, which are symbols
  shortly before their first birthday.
• Gestures and words convey a message equally
  wellsometimes gestures pave the way for language
• In one study, 50 of all objects were referred to
  first by gesture and, about 3 months later, by
  word (Iverson Meadow, 2005)

25
After children know that objects have names, a
gesture is a convenient substitute for pronouns
like it or that and often cause the adult to
say the objects name
26
Names for everything!

• Once an infants vocabulary reaches about 50
  words it suddenly begins to build rapidly, at a
  rate of 50-100 words per month, mostly nouns.
• This language spurt occurs around 18 months and
  is sometimes called the Naming explosion.

27
Productive Vocabulary

• Early productive vocabularies of children in the
  US include names for people, objects, and events
  from the childs everyday life.
• Frequent events or routines are also labeled,
  such as up or bye-bye
• Nouns predominate the early productive
  vocabularies of children

28
The rate of childrens vocabulary development is
influenced by the amount of talk they are exposed
toThe more speech that is addressed to a
toddler, the more rapidly the toddler will learn
new words
29
Word Comprehension

• Fast Mapping is the process of rapidly learning a
  new word simply from the contrastive use of a
  familiar word and an unfamiliar word
• The childrens ability to connect new words to
  familiar words so rapidly that they cannot be
  considering all possible meaning for the new word

30
Example of Fast Mapping

• In a preschool classroom, an experimenter drew a
  childs attention to two blocks asking the
  child to get the celadon block not the blue one
• From this simple contrast, the child inferred
  that the name of the color of the requested
  object was celadon
• After a single exposure to this novel word, about
  half the children showed some knowledge of it a
  week later by correctly picking the celadon color
  child from a bunch of paint chips

31
Give Fast-Mapping a try

• Answer the following questions on you own.

32

1. This is a snurk. It walks on its flaxes. How
   many flaxes does a snurk have?
2. Snurks have twice as many flaxes as ampolinks.
   Where are the amopolinlks?
3. Snurks are covered with garslim. Garslim is like
   __________?
4. Like dogs, snurks can wag their pangeers. Where
   is the pangeer?
5. Do you think snurks can bispooche? Why or why
   not?

33
These questions put you back in toddlers shoes
listening to adults speak. Like toddlers, you
all must rely on context to comprehend the
strange vocabulary to describe the snurk.

• In absence of adequate context, comprehension is
  impossible (as you experienced in question 5).

34
Early Errors in Language

• One common inaccuracy is underextension using a
  word too narrowly.
• Using the word cat to refer only to the family
  cat
• Using the word ball to refer only to a favorite
  toy ball

35
Sarah refers to the blanket she sleeps with as
blankie. When Aunt Ethel gives her a new
blanket Sarah refuses to call the new one a
blankie she restricts that word only to her
original blanket.
36
Overextension

• The use a given word in a broader context than is
  appropriate
• Common between 1 and 3 years of age
• More common than Underextension
• Toddlers will apply the new word to a group of
  similar experiences
• Open for opening a door, peeling fruit, or
  undoing shoelaces

37
Language Errors

• Children overextend because they have not
  acquired another suitable word or because they
  have difficulty remembering a more suitable word
• Examples
• Ball referring to ball, balloon, marble, egg, or
  apple
• Moon referring to moon, half-moon shaped lemon
  slice, or half a Cheerio
• Car referring to a car, bus, truck, or tractor
• Daddy referring to dad or any man
• Doggie referring to dog or any four-legged animal

38
Making Sentences

• Most children begin to combine words into simple
  sentences by 18 to 24 months of age
• Childrens first sentences are two-word
  combinations referred to as Telegraphic speech
• Words directly relevant to meaning
• Words not critical to the meaning are left out
  similar to the way telegrams were written such
  as
• Function words a, the in
• Auxiliary words is, was, will be
• Word endings plurals, possessives, verb tenses

39
These sentences are brief and to the point,
containing only vital information

• More cookie, Mommy go, Daddy juice, Sue
  dogs

40

• By about 2 ½ years of age, children have the
  ability to produce more complex sentences (four
  or more words per sentence).
• The longer sentences are filled with grammatical
  morphemes (words or endings of words that make
  sentences more grammatical).
• A 1 ½-year-old might say kick ball but a
  3-year-old would be more likely to say I am
  kicking the ball

41
Overregularization

• Speech errors in which children treat irregular
  forms of words as if they were regular.
• Applying rules to words that are exceptions to
  the rule
• This leads young children to talk about foots,
  tooths, sleeps, sheeps and mouses.
• Although technically wrong, Overregularization is
  a sign of verbal sophistication because it shows
  children are applying the rules to grammar.

42
Between 3 and 6 Years of Age

• Children learn to use negation
• That isnt a butterfly
• Children learn to use embedded sentences
• Jennifer thinks that Bill took the book
• Children begin to comprehend passive voice as
  opposed to active voice
• The ball was kicked by the girl as opposed to
  The girl kicked the ball
• By the time most children enter kindergarten,
  they use most of the grammatical forms of their
  native language with great skill

43
The development of language in children is
amazing, but how do they do it?

• There are several theories that attempt to
  explain how we develop language

44
Infants Are Conditioned to Speak

• Behaviorists believe that all learning is
  acquired step-by-step, through associations and
  reinforcements
• According to this view, the reinforcement of the
  quantity and quality of talking to child affect
  rate of language development.
• When a 6 month-old says, ma-ma-ma they are
  showered with attention and praise. This is
  exactly what the baby wants and will make the
  sounds again to get the same rewards.

45
Say Ma-Ma..

• Children who are spoken to more and praised by
  caregivers tend to develop language faster.
• Parents are great intuitive teachers- we name
  items for infants and praise infants when they
  repeat our words.
• For instance, parents typically name each object
  when they talk to their child, Here is your
  bottle, There is your foot, You want your
  juice?
• Parents name the object and speak clearly and
  slowly, often using baby talk to capture the
  infants interest (Gogate et al., 2000).

46
(No Transcript)
47
What Do the Linguists say?

• Noam Chomsky believes language is a product of
  biology and is too complex to be mastered so
  early and easily by conditioning.
• Chomsky noted that children worldwide learn the
  rudiments of grammar at approximately the same
  age because the human brain is equipped with a
  language device.
• including intonations and structure of language

48
Our Brain is Specialized for Language

• LAD (language acquisition device) is an area of
  our brain which facilitates the development of
  language.
• Chomsky believes that the LAD facilitates
  language and enables children to derive the rules
  of grammar from everyday speech, regardless of
  the native language.
• Language is experience-expectant, words are
  expected by the developing brain-Chomsky believes
  that children are pre-wired for language

49
Think about a successful conversation

• What factors influence effective communication?

50
Using Language to Communicate

• For effective oral communication
• People should take turns, alternating as speaker
  and listener
• A speakers remarks should relate to the topic
  and be understandable to the listener
• A listener should play attention and let the
  speaker know if his or her remarks do not make
  sense

51
Taking Turns

• Soon after 1-year-olds begin to speak, parents
  encourage their children to participate in
  conversational turn-taking
• By age 2, spontaneous turn-taking is common in
  conversations between children and adults
• By age 3, children have progressed to the point
  that if a listener fails to reply promptly, the
  child repeats his or her remark in order to
  elicit a response

52
Taking Turns

• Parent Can you see the bird?
• Infant (cooing) oooooh
• Parent It is a pretty bird.
• Infant oooooh
• Parent Youre right, its a cardinal.
• Parents having a conversation with a 6-week-old
  infant still involve taking turns. To help
  children along, parents often carry both sides of
  the conversation to demonstrate how the roles of
  speaker and listener alternate.

53
Initiating a Conversation

• The first attempt to deliberately communicate
  typically emerges at 10 months
• Usually by touching or pointing to an object
  while simultaneously looking at another person
• At 1 year, infants begin to use speech to
  communicate and often initiate conversations with
  adults
• First conversation are about themselves but this
  rapidly expands to include objects in their world
• By preschool, children begin to adult their
  messages to match the listener and the context
• School-age children speak differently to adults
  and peers
• Preschool children give more elaborate messages
  to listeners who are unfamiliar with a topic than
  to listeners who are familiar with it

54
Click on the picture for an interesting article
on language development
55
Whats Next?

• How Do Our Emotions Develop?