Announcements

1
Announcements

• No Class on MONDAY 2/19

2
Today

• Stages of acquisition
• Order
• Characteristics
• Readings 9.4 - 9.6

3
Innateness

• Language acquisition is a biologically-controlled
  behavior
• Has a critical period
• Has a regular sequence of milestones during
  development

4
Stages of acquisition

• All (normal) children go through same stages of
  acquisition in same order
• Age at which they reach each stage and the rate
  of progression through the stages can vary greatly

5
Stages of acquisition

• Crying (0-1 month)
• cries, burps, grunts
• Cooing (2-3 months)
• vowel-like, coo/goo, gurgling
• Vocal play (3-6 months)
• raspberries, squeals, yells
• Social Precursors for language
• http//www.vocaldevelopment.com/

6
Cross-section of babys mouth
Babys vocal tract Adult vocal tract
7
Babbling

• Babbling (6-12 months)
• CV monosyllables (e.g., ma, pa, da, di)
• Canonical babbling repeated CVCV (e.g., mamama,
  papapa, dididi)
• Variegated babbling different CV syllables
  (e.g., badigu, potaki, tamami)
• Jargon babbling meaningless word-like units w/
  intonation

8
Functions of babbling

• Provides motor practice
• Stimulates adult-infant interactions
• Decoding of language into phonological units
• Sign-learning childrens babbling has a unique
  signature

http//www.sciencedirect.com/science?_obArticleUR
L_udiB6T24-4BBMVF9-1_user582538_coverDate08
2F312F2004_rdoc1_fmt_origsearch_sortdvie
wc_acctC000029718_version1_urlVersion0_use
rid582538md5c6ed1ed69e7910a03614cef3010a63c8
9
Is babbling linguistic or biological?

• All babies babble same sounds up to 6-10 mos.,
  then focus on native sounds
• Hearing children of deaf parents babble
• Deaf babies orally babble until 6 mos., then
  only babble with hands

10

• Babies open their mouths
• wider on right than on left when babbling
• wider on left than on right when smiling
• equally on both sides when making other sounds

babbling smiling non-babbling
http//www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/297/558
6/1515/DC1
11
One-word stage

• 1 - 1 1/2 years
• Lexicon lt 50 words (avg. 15)
• At first, words for people, objects and things
  (mommy, doggie, bottle)
• Later, verbs and other useful words (go, mine,
  no), and holophrases (one-word phrases, e.g.,
  gimme, whassat, allgone)
• Simplified phonology (but rule-governed)

12
Two-word stage

• 1 1/2 - 2 years
• Lexicon gt 50 words
• 2-word combinations indicate semantic rather than
  syntactic relations, e.g.,
• Noun verb (baby sleep)
• Verb object (kick ball)
• Noun preposition (baby up)
• Possessor possession (Mommy book)
• No inflections

13
Telegraphic stage

• 2 years
• Can combine more than 2 words
• Speech contains primarily content words w/ no
  function morphemes
• Syntactically organized

14
Word inflections

• 2 years
• Progressive -ing (eating)
• Plural s (blankets)
• Possessive s (babys bottle)
• 3rd person singular s (Daddy walks)
• Past tense (Mommy walked)
• Negatives