Language
development
Language development is a process starting
early in human life, when a person begins to acquire language by
learning it as it is spoken and by mimicry.
Children's language development moves from simple to complex. Infants start
without language. Yet by four months of age, babies can read lips and
discriminate speech sounds. The language that infants speak is called babbling.
Usually, language starts off as recall of simple words
without associated meaning, but as children grow, words acquire meaning, with
connections between words being formed. As a person gets older, new meanings
and new associations are created and vocabulary increases as more words are
learned.
Infants use their bodies, vocal cries and other preverbal
vocalizations to communicate their wants, needs and dispositions. Even though
most children begin to vocalize and eventually verbalize at various ages and at
different rates, they learn their first language without conscious instruction from
parents or caretakers. In fact research has shown that the earliest learning
begins in utero when the fetus can recognize the sounds
and speech patterns of its mother's voice.
Theoretical frameworks of
language development
There are four major theories of language development.
The behaviorist
theory, proposed by B.
F. Skinner suggests that language is learned through
operant conditioning (reinforcement and imitation). This perspective sides with
the nurture side of the nature-nurture debate. This perspective has not been
widely accepted in either psychology or linguistics for some time, but by many
accounts, is experiencing a resurgence.[1]
Some empiricist theory
accounts today use behaviorist models.[2]
The nativist theory,
proposed by Noam Chomsky,
argues that language is a unique human accomplishment. Chomsky says that all
children have what is called an LAD, an innate language acquisition device that
allows children to produce consistent sentences once vocabulary is learned. His
claim is based upon the view that what children hear - their linguistic input -
is insufficient to explain how they come to learn language. While this view has
dominated linguistic theory for over fifty years, it has recently fallen into
disrepute.
The empiricist theory
suggests, contra Chomsky, that there is enough information in the linguistic
input that children receive, and therefore there is no need to assume an innate
language acquisition device (see above). This approach is characterized by the
construction of computational models that learn aspects of language and/or that
simulate the type of linguistic output produced by children. The most
influential models within this approach are statistical
learning theories, as suggested by Saffran[3] ,
such as connectionist models
and chunking
theories.
The last theory, the interactionist
perspective, consists of two components. This
perspective is a combination of both the nativist and behaviorist theories. The
first part, the information-processing theories, tests through the
connectionist model, using statistics. From these theories, we see that the
brain is excellent at detecting patterns. The second part of the interactionist
perspective, is the social-interactionist theories. These theories
suggest that there is a native desire to understand others as well as being
understood by others.
References
- ^ Roediger, R. (2004) "What happened to
Behaviorism."
American Psychological Society.
- ^ Ramscar, M. & Yarlett, D.
(2007) Linguistic self-correction
in the absence of feedback: A new approach to the logical problem of
language acquisition. Cognitive Science: 31, 927-960.
- ^ Saffran, J. (2003). Statistical language
learning: Mechanisms and constraints. Current Directions in
Psychological Science, 12(4), 110-114.
Biological preconditions
Linguists do
not agree on the biological factors contributing to language development,
however most do agree that the ability to acquire such a complicated system is
unique to the human species. Furthermore, many believe that our ability to
learn spoken language may have been developed through the evolutionary
process and that the foundation for language may be passed down genetically.
The ability to speak and understand human language requires a specific vocal apparatus as
well as a nervous system with certain capabilities.
One hotly debated issue is whether the biological
contribution includes capacities specific to language acquisition, often
referred to as universal grammar. For fifty years, linguist Noam Chomsky
has argued for the hypothesis that children have innate, language-specific
abilities that facilitate and constrain language learning. In particular, he
has proposed that humans are biologically prewired to learn language at a
certain time and in a certain way, arguing that children are born with a
Language Acquisition Device (LAD). [1]
Other researchers, who believe that words and grammars
are learned (rather than innate), have hypothesized that language learning
results from general cognitive abilities and the interaction between learners
and their surrounding communities. It has also recently been suggested that the
relatively slow development of the prefrontal
cortex in humans may be one reason that humans are
able to learn language, whereas other species are not.[2] [3]
Environmental Influences
A purely behaviorist view of language development is no
longer considered a viable explanation of how children acquire language, yet a
great deal of research describes ways in which a child's environmental
experiences influence their language skills. Michael
Tomasello stresses that young children are intensely
interested in their social world and that early in their development they can
understand the intentions of other people."[4][5][6]
One component of the young child's linguistic environment
is (child-directed
speech) also known as baby talk or motherese, which
is language spoken in a higher pitch than normal with simple words and
sentences. Although the importance of its role in developing language has been
debated, many linguists think that it may aid in capturing the infant's
attention and maintaining communication [7]
From Their Keps and Tups>. Adults use strategies other than child-directed
speech like recasting, expanding, and labeling:" Recasting is
rephrasing something the child has said, perhaps turning it into a question or
restating the child's immature utterance in the form of a fully grammatical
sentence. Expanding is restating, in a linguistically sophisticated
form, what a child has said. Labeling is identifying the names of
objects[1]
Social preconditions
It is crucial that children are allowed to socially
interact with other people who can vocalize and respond to questions. For
language acquisition to develop successfully, children must be in an
environment that allows them to communicate socially in that language.
There are a few different theories as to why and how
children develop language. The most popular -- and yet heavily debated--
explanation is that language is acquired through imitation. The two most
accepted theories in language development are psychological
and functional. Psychological
explanations focus on the mental processes involved in childhood language
learning. Functional explanations look at the social processes involved in
learning the first language.
There are four main components of language:
- Phonology involves the rules about the
structure and sequence of speech sounds.
- Semantics consists of vocabulary and how concepts are expressed
through words.
- Grammar involves two parts. The first,
syntax, is the rules in which words
are arranged into sentences. The second, morphology, is the use of grammatical
markers (indicating tense, active or passive voice etc.).
- Pragmatics involves the rules for
appropriate and effective communication. Pragmatics involves three skills:
- using
language for greeting, demanding etc.
- changing
language for talking differently depending on who it is you are talking
to
- following
rules such as turn taking, staying on topic
Each component has its own appropriate developmental
periods.
From shortly after birth to around one year, the baby
starts to make speech sounds. At around two months, the baby will engage in
cooing, which mostly consists of vowel sounds. At around four months, cooing
turns into babbling
which is the repetitive consonant-vowel
combinations. Babies understand more than they are able to say.
From 1–2 years, babies can recognize the correct
pronunciation of familiar words. Babies will also use phonological strategies
to simplify word pronunciation. Some strategies include repeating the first
consonant-vowel in a multisyllable word ('TV'--> 'didi') or deleting
unstressed syllables in a multisyllable word ('banana'-->'nana'). By 3–5
years, phonological awareness continues to improve as well as
pronunciation.
By 6–10 years, children can master syllable stress
patterns which helps distinguish slight differences between similar words.
From birth to one year, comprehension (the language we
understand) develops before production (the language we use). There is about a
5 month lag in between the two. Babies have an innate preference to listen to
their mother's voice. Babies can recognize familiar words and use preverbal
gestures.
From 1–2 years, vocabulary grows to several
hundred words. There is a vocabulary spurt between 18–24 months, which includes
fast mapping. Fast mapping is the babies' ability to learn a lot of new things
quickly. The majority of the babies' new vocabulary consists of object words
(nouns) and action words (verbs). By 3–5 years, children usually have
difficulty using words correctly. Children experience many problems such as
underextensions, taking a general word and applying it specifically (for
example, 'blankie') and overextensions, taking a specific word and applying it
too generally (example, 'car' for 'van'). However, children coin words to fill
in for words not yet learned (for example, someone is a cooker rather than a
chef because a child will not know what a chef is). Children can also
understand metaphors.
From 6–10 years, children can understand meanings
of words based on their definitions. They also are able to appreciate the
multiple meanings of words and use words precisely through metaphors and puns.
Fast mapping continues.
From 1–2 years, children start using telegraphic
speech, which are two word combinations, for example 'wet diaper'. Brown (1973)[8]
observed that 75% of children's two-word utterances could be summarised in the
existence of 11 semantic
relations:
Eleven important early semantic relations and examples
based on Brown 1973:
- Attributive:
'big house'
- Agent-Action:
'Daddy hit'
- Action-Object:
'hit ball'
- Agent-Object:
'Daddy ball'
- Nominative:
'that ball'
- Demonstrative:
'there ball'
- Recurrence:
'more ball'
- non-existence:
'all-gone ball'
- Possessive:
'Daddy chair'
- Entity
+ Locative: 'book table'
- Action
+ Locative: 'go store'
At around 3 years, children engage in simple sentences,
which are 3 word sentences. Simple sentences follow adult rules and get refined
gradually. Grammatical morphemes get added as these simple sentences start to
emerge. By 3–5 years, children continue to add grammatical morphemes and
gradually produce complex grammatical structures. By 6–10 years, children
refine the complex grammatical structures such as passive voice.
From birth to one year, babies can engage in joint
attention (sharing the attention of something with someone else). Babies also
can engage in turn taking activities. By 1–2 years, they can engage in
conversational turn taking and topic maintenance. At ages 3–5, children
can master illocutionary intent, knowing what you meant to say even though you
might not have said it and turnabout, which is turning the conversation over to
another person.
By age 6-10, shading occurs, which is changing the
conversation topic gradually. Children are able to communicate effectively in
demanding settings, such as on the telephone.
Social Plugin