Language Development

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Language Development

• Language seems to be a uniquely human ability,
  suggesting an evolutionary foundation
• Arguments against a purely genetic explanation
• Productivity of novel phrases and statements
• Variety of languages and grammatical structures

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Language Development
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Auditory Processes

• Before infants can learn language or even
  perceive speech sounds, they need to be able to
  discriminate generally sounds of different
  frequencies

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Auditory Processes

• Like with vision
• Newborns hear sounds better at low frequencies
• By 6 months, higher frequency sensitivity is as
  good as adults
• Overall sensitivity increases until 10 years, but
  higher frequency sensitivity does not improve
  after 4 or 5 years

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Preverbal Infancy

• Language acquisition works through the perception
  of speech and its sounds
• Must learn to parse the stream of sound into
  phonemes, syllables, words, and phrases.
• Phoneme - is the smallest unit of sound that when
  changed, changes meaning

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Categorical Perception

• Infants can discriminate when two sounds are the
  same or different phonemic category
• Phonemes are distinguished by their voice-onset
  time between lip opening and voicing by vocal
  cords

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Categorical Perception

• Eimas, Siqueland, Jusczyk Vigorito (1971) - 1-
  and 4-mo-olds perception of the distinction
  between /b/ and /p/
• Adults - VOT of less than 25 msec, perceive /b/

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Categorical Perception

• Eimas, Siqueland, Jusczyk Vigorito (1971) -
  familiarized infants to 20 msec VOT (/b/) and
  tested them with either 40 msec (/p/), 20, or 0
  (/b/)

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Categorical Perception

• Eimas, Siqueland, Jusczyk Vigorito (1971) -
  familiarized infants to 20 msec VOT (/b/) and
  tested them with either 40 msec (/p/), 20, or 0
  (/b/)

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Categorical Perception

• Eimas, Siqueland, Jusczyk Vigorito (1971) -
  familiarized infants to 20 msec VOT (/b/) and
  tested them with either 40 msec (/p/), 20, or 0
  (/b/)

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Phonemic Discrimination

• In the Japanese language, adults have trouble
  pronouncing and even discriminating between /r/
  and /l/
• They are not used in their language
• Young Japanese infants can discriminate between
  these sounds
• At some point they lose this ability (6-12 mos.)

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Discriminating 2 Hindi syllables
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Early Sounds

• 2 months - Cooing
• One syllable sounds, like ah and oo
• Associated with positive emotions
• 6 months - Babbling
• Strings several instances of same sound together,
  like bababa
• This babbling is similar across different
  cultures and languages

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Early Sounds

• End of First Year
• Stop duplicating and begin to string different
  sounds together
• Include changing intonation and pitch
• These sounds and strings are very similar to
  their first words
• Even deaf infants display babbling
• Suggesting a biological mechanism
• But, they are delayed in babbling and production
  of proper syllables

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Nonverbal Language

• Gestures first seem to be use around 8-10 months
• Used to indicate requests, for example, wanting a
  toy
• Might be related to physical development
• Around 11-12 months, gesture start to be used for
  referential communication
• To indicate items or events in environment
• Example, holding up a toy to show it

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Nonverbal Language

• End of first year, get combination of gestures
  and vocalizations
• Then, gestures start to fall out and get
  transition to their first words.

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First Words

• When they first appear shows considerable
  variability, from 9 months to 16 months
• First words are typically of items that are
  familiar and important in their day-to-day lives
• Bates (1979) and Barrett et al. (1986)
• no when rejecting an object
• bye when putting down a telephone
• papa when the doorbell rings

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Lexical Development

• Once child begins to talk, its vocabulary and
  usage expands dramatically and quickly
• Acquiring words is easier than attributing them
  with the right meaning

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Lexical Development

• By 18 months, infant typically has on average 50
  words it can produce and 100 words it can
  understand

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Lexical Development

• Answering Questions
• Whats That?
• Whos That?
• Asking Questions
• What? (what is that)
• Where?
• Comments
• Gone (empty cup)
• Hot (pot on stove)
• Cut (band-aid on daddy)

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Lexical Development

• Errors in first words usage
• Overextensions
• Using Daddy for every male
• More common in production than comprehension
• Underextensions
• Using Duck for a toy duck but not a real one

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First Word Combinations

• Occurs around age 2
• Tend to leave out fillers
• Mommy apron
• Types of combination seem to be common across
  languages
• Even as sentences grow to three and four words,
  they can be characterized as telegraphic speech
• They leave out fillers (a, the, and)

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Grammar Development

• To change a verb to past tense, we add ed
• Children overregularize
• Add ed to words where it is not required
• For example, lose becomes losed instead
  lost
• This also happens for adding s for plural
• Infant learn the grammar rules and they apply
  them religiously and have to learn the exceptions

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What are Bilinguals

• Individuals who have knowledge and use of more
  than one language
• How much do you need to know?
• Have native-like control of two languages
• Limits the number of bilinguals
• Fluent in one language and can produce meaningful
  statements in the other

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What are Bilinguals

• Daily bilinguals vs. dormant bilinguals
• Balanced vs. Dominant bilinguals
• Compound bilinguals
• two linguistic codes stored in one meaning unit
• Coordinate bilinguals
• each code stored in separate meaning units
• Subordinate bilinguals
• code for L2 is interpreted through L1

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What are Bilinguals

• Additive bilinguals
• Can enhance L2 proficiency without losing L1
  proficiency
• Both languages valued by society
• Subtractive bilinguals
• L2 acquired at expense of L1 proficiency
• Simultaneous bilinguals are more likely to be
  balanced

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What are Bilinguals

• Distinctions fall along continuum, such as
  proficiency

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Proficiency

• Linguistic competence
• knowledge of language rules
• Performance competence
• use of language in the appropriate social context

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Proficiency

• Does proficiency refer to knowledge or usage?
• Is knowledge limited to grammar or does it
  include pragmatics and socio-cultural aspects?
• How is motivation and emotions related?

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Proficiency

• Two factors to determine whether balanced or
  dominant
• proficiency in each language
• comparison of proficiencies across languages
• Problems
• What is the norm for a native speaker?
• variations in vocabulary and knowledge
• Can monolinguals and bilinguals be compared on
  same scale?
• Are assessments of proficiency for one language
  valid for another?

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Age - Acquisition

• Are children more efficient L2 learners?
• Does one need to start learning L2 before a
  certain age?
• Need to consider
• route of acquisition
• rate of acquisition
• attainment of L2 proficiency

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Age - Acquisition

• Route of acquisition
• adult L2 learners acquire grammar in similar
  order as children L2 learners
• Rate of acquisition
• when control for exposure amount to L2, adults
  outperform children
• however, with 3 month exposure, teenagers (12-15)
  gt adult (gt15) gt children (3-10)
• after 10 month exposure, children adult

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Age - Acquisition

• Age of attainment of L2 proficiency
• some evidence of critical period for L1 among
  deprived and deaf children
• decline in L2 performance in older acquirers
• due to biological/neurological factors?
• is it possible for older to acquire native
  proficiency?

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Age - Acquisition

• Age of attainment of L2 proficiency
• disagreement over closure age
• evidence for critical period from negative
  correlation between age arriving in country and
  performance
• decline has been shown to start at 5 and close at
  15

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Age - Acquisition

• Age of attainment of L2 proficiency
• other factors besides age including intensive
  instruction, high motivation, and lots of L2
  exposure
• further, aptitude may play a role
• finally, others have suggested there is no
  closure and that the decline is continuous
• instead, interactions between L1 and L2 constrain
  L2 accuracy