Phonemic development

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Phonemic development
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Exemplar theory/view

attractor
/t/
/d/
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Categorical perception

Continuous perception
Categorical perception
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Categorical perception

p
b
b
d
Liberman 1957
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Categorical perception
Like adult speakers of English, English
infants perceive the gradual transition from b
to t categorically.
Eimas et al. 1971
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Categorical perception
Categorical perception is a unique human capacity
and restricted to language.
Eimas et al. 1971
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Categorical perception

• Categorical perception also occurs in other
  species.
• Categorical perception is not restricted to
  speech.
• Categorical perception is not characteristic of
  all speech sounds.

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Phonetic assimilation

• Context-free strategies
• Context-bound strategies

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Phonetic assimilation
ds glass bEd bread sek snake hn hand
da star
Reduction of consonant cluster
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Phonetic assimilation
bn van dt that nEr there dk Jack d
b jam dEk check
Word-initial fricatives are replaced by stops
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Phonetic assimilation
bOt pot do toe dI kiss
Voicing of word-initial stops
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Phonetic assimilation
dat duck det gate zus shoes mts match
tb_at_dz cabbage
Fronting of consonants
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Phonetic assimilation
nOp knob bt bad dOt dog duf stove
Devoicing of final obstruents
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Phonetic assimilation
böt but gög big gök book gIg pig gOg
dog dOt dot gök duck gIk stick
Harmonization of initial consonants (if the word
ends in a velar consonant)
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Motherese

• Exaggerated stress patterns, exaggerated
  intonation
• Many repetitions
• Many vocatives/attention getters
• Many questions
• Simple sentences and simple grammatical
  constructions
• Basic vocabulary

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Fatherese

• Question-answer
• Request-response
• Focus of attention - response

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Early words
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Pragmatic development

• Language is an instrument. Language us used to

• express anger
• ask a question
• promise someone to do something
• warn somebody

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Pragmatic development

• Language is learned in social interactions
  involving three important components

• speaker
• hearer
• things and events talked about

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Pragmatic development

• Bühler 1934 Organon Model

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Pragmatic development

• dyadic interactions

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Pragmatic development
9-months revolution Tomasello 1999

• Triadic interactions

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Vocabulary development
12 13 First words 20 100-600
words 9-10 words a day 60 14,000
words 180 50,000 words
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Vocabulary development
vocabulary development
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Vocabulary development
What leads to the vocabulary spurt?
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Vocabulary development
What leads to the vocabulary spurt?
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Vocabulary development

• The vocabulary spurt begins when children
  recognize the symbolic nature of language (i.e.
  when they recognize that everything has a name.
• The vocabulary development is trigged by advanced
  articulatory skills.

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Vocabulary development
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Vocabulary development

• Words referring to people daddy, mommy, baby
• Words referring to animals dog, kitty, bird,
  duck
• Words referring to body parts eye, nose, ear
• Words referring to food banana, juice, apple,
  cheese
• Words referring to toys ball, balloon, book
• Words referring to cloths shoe, sock, hat
• Words referring to vehicles car, truck, boat
• Words referring to household objects bottle,
  keys, bath, spoon
• Words denoting routines bye, hi, uh oh,
  night-night, no
• Words denoting activities up, down, back
• Sound imitating words woof, moo, ouch, baa baa,
  yum
• Deictics that

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Vocabulary development
Childrens early words function as speech acts
(i.e. there is no functional distinction between
words and utterances.
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Vocabulary development
What do children need to understand in order to
learn words?
They need to understand the symbolic nature of
language.
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Vocabulary development
What do children need to understand in order to
learn words?
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Vocabulary development
see 1. I saw Peter. 2. I see what you
mean. run 1. She is running down the stairs.
2. She ran into Peter. car 1.
vehicle 2. toy have 1. She has a dog.
2. I have finished my work.
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Vocabulary development
head of a department
head of a nail
header
flower head
body part
to head
head of a team
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Vocabulary development
ball
balloon
ball
moon
orange
Partitioning of the conceptual space
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Vocabulary development
doggy
dog
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Vocabulary development
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Vocabulary development

• Why do children overgeneralize word meanings?

• Hypothesis 1 Children are not yet able to
  distinguish dogs from other animals.
• Hypothesis 2 Childrens restricted vocabulary
  forces them to overgeneralize words.