Language Acquisition: Chomsky and Pinker

• Copula uses an adjective after, for example, "he is excited".
• Auxiliary is a helping verb.
• Pinker (1994) explains how language is acquired.
• Language connects community members, creating an information-sharing network.

Language and its Acquisition

• Language is not a cultural artifact, but a distinct part of the brain's biological makeup.
• Language is a complex skill, developed spontaneously in children.
• Acquisition occurs without conscious effort or formal instruction.

Chomsky's Language Facts

• Almost every uttered or understood sentence is a new word combination.
• Language cannot be a set of pre-learned responses.
• The brain contains a recipe or program to build limitless sentences from a finite word list. Complex grammars develop rapidly in children without instruction.
• Children give consistent interpretations of novel sentences they've never heard before.
• Language acquisition is effortless for children, even with its complexity.
• Humans are born with mechanisms to acquire language.

Language and SLPs (Speech-Language Pathologists)

• SLPs sometimes address concrete speech aspects like "r" sounds.
• Language isn't discrete or concrete, requiring comprehensive approaches.
• Recipes help individuals learn mechanisms for language use.

Language Disorders

• DLD (Developmental Language Disorder) impacts socializing, school subjects, and instruction following.

Receptive vs. Expressive Language

• Receptive language involves understanding spoken and written language.
• Expressive language is the ability to convey thoughts through spoken and written words.

Language Components

• Language consists of skills described in terms of form, content, and use.
• Form includes phonology, morphology, and syntax, focusing on structure.
• Content refers to meaning (semantics).
• Use encompasses pragmatics, detailing why and how language is used.

Domains of Language

• Phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics are key language domains.

ASHA's Definition of Language Disorder

• It is an impairment in comprehension or use of spoken, written, or other symbol systems.
• It can involve language form (phonology, morphology, syntax), content (semantics), or function (pragmatics).

Language Structure

• Form focuses on language structure.

Phonology

• The study of a language's sound system, including phonemes and phonotactics.
• Phoneme is the smallest sound unit differentiating language.
• Phonics involves decoding.

Morphology

• Morpheme is the smallest language unit with meaning.
• It can be a word, prefix, or suffix.
• Morphology represents meaning through words, affixes, grammar, tenses, and plurality.
• Morphology varies across languages and dialects.

Free vs. Bound Morphemes

• Free morphemes can stand alone (e.g., cat, dog).
• Bound morphemes appear as part of a larger expression (e.g., -s, un-, -ing).

Syntax

• Syntax is the structure of sentences.
• Word order indicates meaning in English and Spanish (subject-verb-object).
• Indirect objects usually precede direct objects.
• Case-based syntax, like in Russian/German, marks nouns differently.
• English word order is subject-verb-object.
• Knowing word order is important in English.

Vestiges of the Old English Case System

• "Whom" is used as an object of a proposition.
• Pronouns signal subject (I/we/she/it/they), object (her/him/us/them), and possessive forms (my/her/his).

Content

• Content relates to word meanings.

Semantics

• The study of word meanings.
• Include the meanings of individual words and word combinations.
• Children learn by attaching meaning to phonological sequences.
• Fast-mapping describes quickly learning new vocabulary and mentally tagging it.
• Statistical learning refers to discerning word boundaries in a speech stream.

Use: Pragmatics

• Relates to how and why language is used
• Social use of language, depending on culture and setting.

Pragmatics Involves

• Using language for different reasons (e.g., greeting, requesting).
• Changing language for the listener or situation (e.g., with a friend vs. a boss).
• Following conversation rules (e.g., turn-taking).

Communication

• Includes speech, language, hearing, reading writing and more domains/skill sets

Grammar

• Consider prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar.
• Prescriptive grammar involves rules, while descriptive grammar describes actual language use.
• A descriptive view is useful for helping children develop language skills.

"Grammar" vocabulary

• Nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions
• Sentence types: simple, compound, complex

Complex Sentences

• Many find it difficult to identify complex sentences.
• The trick is to look for the verbs.
• Complex senteneces have multiple clauses -Independent and Dependent -Subordinating
• Dependent clauses cannot stand alone.
• Subordinating conjunctions (because, although, while) indicate complex sentences.
• Adverbial clauses modify verbs/adjectives/adverbs and can move in a sentence.
• Relative clauses modify nouns.
• Noun clauses take the place of a noun and can be swapped with "it".

Language and Vocabulary

• Past tense involves adding -ed, with pronunciation varying based on the final sound of the verb.
• Irregular tenses involve word changes (e.g., fall/fell, take/took).

Pronouns

• Subject pronouns, object pronouns, and possessive pronouns.
• Reflexive pronouns ending in self/selves

Special Types of Verbs

• Copula connects a subject with a noun/adjective such as 'I am happy'
• Auxiliary is a helping verb that precedes another such as: "I am eating"

Contractible Verbs

• This can be pushed together with the pronoun that it precedes such as: "I'm", "they're" , "she's" etc

Complex Sentences

• Combines a dependent and independent clause.
• Subordinating conjunctions (e.g., because, until, after, although) create complex sentences.
• Coordinating conjunctions join independent clauses and do not require complex sentences.
• Prepositions include in, on, under, with, and their phrases involve preposition + noun.

Concept Vocabulary

• Temporal (until, at the same time), sequential (first, next), and conditional (if, unless) terms

Language Acquisition

• A significant amount of language is acquired by age 5.
• Researchers previously considered 5-year-old language "adult-like".
• Language development from ages 5 and over continues.

Language and Growth

• Stages of development are categorized: 0-5, 6-12, 13-19, and 20+ years.

Sources of Input

• Role of written language.
• Shift from learning to read to reading to learn occurs in 3rd/4th grade.
• Content learning is reinforced through reading and class.
• Struggling readers may miss content.

Narratives

• Storytelling, relates to later reading comprehension
• Early skills are related to academic achievement, vocabulary skills, and writing
• It can be used in science, social studies

Narrative Development

• Skills develop in stages.
• By the end of first grade, children produce chain or true narratives.
• By the end of fifth grade, multi-episodic stories with complex sentences and character development emerge.

Narrative Language Stages

• Heap Stories (2-3 years): labels/descriptions; no theme.
• Sequence stories: central theme.
• Primitive narratives: 3 story grammar elements.
• Chain narratives (5 years): 4 story grammar elements; no resolution.
• True narrative: theme, characters, plot, motivations, events sequence; 5 story grammar elements.

Story Grammar

• Characters, setting, problem, feeling, plan, action, consequence, and ending.
• Story champs: helping to expand narrative grammar.

Developing Literacy Skills

• Foundations for reading & writing begin very early
• Reading to children and exposing them to print reinforces development.
• Phonological awareness (rhyming, syllables, blending) is crucial.

Phonological Awareness examples

• Rhyming: meat, great, feet
• Say the world "bluebird" without "blue" - what word do you get?
• Syllables and words

Phonological Awareness

• Meaning skill: language to talk about language.
• It is a building block for reading, word association (phonics) and letter/sound association.
• Impair reading and writing

Early Literacy Skills

• Social routines develop.
• Children learn to hold, open, and turn pages.
• Books teach that letters form words, expanding language skills.

Early Literacy and Language Disorders

• Children with language disorders need ongoing language support for discrete skills and reading.

The Reading Wars

• Debate; phonics / whole language approaches.
• Phonics help struggling readers improve their language.
• Both are helpful in reading

Language Development

• School aged (5-12) and Adolesence stage (12-18) - form, content, and use.
• Content include multiple-meaning words (homophones)

Lexical ambiguity

• "Parking Fine," W.C. Fields' joke on clubs, Groucho Marx's book joke, and Harry Hill's stepladder joke.
• Children start to see humor.
• Elaborated Noun Phrases: group of words consisting of a noun and 1+ modifier (articles, possessives, demonstratives quantifiers, wh words and adjectives)
• Adverbs are words that modify verbs.
• Mental and linguistic verbs refer to thinking and speaking, necessitating complex sentences.

Morphology

• Inflectional morphology changes tense.
• Derivational morphology changes word meaning, category and complexity.
• There is a shift in derivational improvement.

Syntax

• Difficulty occurs with complex syntax, like adverbial clauses.
• Metal state verbs and noun clauses are frequently part of sentences
• Functional flexibility increases, understanding different language uses in varying contexts.

Adolescent Language

• Conversational abilities involve turn-taking and narrative development.
• Sentence length increases via less frequent structures and subordination.

Adolescent (12-18) Semantics and Use

• Literate lexicon includes scholarly words that commonly occur in high school and college.
• Semantic knowledge (PPVT) changes throughout life.
• There is significant increase in using figurative expressions, such as idioms, metaphors, and proverbs
• Interpersonal negotiation is very important with emphasis on long term resolution
• Significant increase in the cognitive and development importance of slang

Bilingual Language Development

• Language difference vs disorder.
• Benefits: increased cognitive flexibility, math abilities, shifting focus, and word categorization.
• Simultaneous bilingualism: acquisition of two languages from birth or typically before the age of 3.
• Sequential bilingualism: second language introduced after 3.

Conversational and informal language fluency (CILF)

• Usually acquired after 2-3 years of exposure
• formal academic language fluency is usually developed after 5-7 years of exposure

Multilingualism considerations

• the range of variability of how children acquire 2nd language needs investigation

Dialect vs Language

• Actually, quite a gray area

Dialect

• pronunciation, vocab, grammar

Dialect features

• Differ to pronunciation vocab and grammar regional accents of American English.

ASHA

• Recognizes difference vs disorder.

African American English

• Systematic patterns and rules that are different than MAE.

AAE, MAE and disorded

• Last week, John cooked dinner- Last week, John cook dinner Last week, John look dinner

Deficit-Based Language

• AAE- She walk to school, Disordered MAE- Omits 3rd person singular/s/

The way forward

• If AAE probs not dsiorders
• AAE more accesible, talk about both angles in conversation

Should code switching occur: what is the solution

• If it fits the situation the best
• Context based
• Comfortability

Solution

• Miss match shared interests
• Are they all attending to learning.
• Dialect is important.

Standardized

• A lot of dialects are not common
• Need new way to diagnose

IDEA

• Individualities education program

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

• Children with disabilities have available to them programs
• Responsibilities are all school based

Roles

• Working Across All Levels
• Range of Disorders
• Ensuring Educational Relevance (Services are giving helping the access the curriculum)
• Providing Unique Contributions to Curriculum
• Highlighting Language/Literacy

IEP Steps

• Referal
• Eval/reevalutation
• Eligiblity
• Development
• Inplementation
• Annual Review

Eligibility

• An education impact?
• Needs and designs (special and unique)

MTSS/RTI

• Tier 1 general
• Tier 2 Targeted
• Tier 3 individual

Tier 1 General

• All students
• Students teaching
• Same way to all student

Tier 2

• Targeted group
• Education seating

Tier 3

• Individual
• More required by the kids

Response to intervention

• Kid gets some support
• Students learning
• Make education or referrals

Section 504

• Equal and physical
• Rehabilitation Act of 1973
• Need accommodations for students
• Section is only used when have and require
• Medicaid in school
• Family size and more

HIPAA / FeRPA

• Educational Right/privacy
• Edicational record
• For Release, permission form is needed

Common Core Stats

• Benchmark the students needed.
• Has standardized everything.
• But is aligned with all the states

Best practice

• Good resources
• Google/Pub med

What is the best EBP

• Independant with converging evidence/control and not bias
• Relevance and feasibility
• Gillian Gillon video of Librarian is a good

Steps

• Create general/specific
• Find pertinant external evidence
• Evaluations
• Involve teachers
• Make decision about findings

Treatment

• Description/deficit
• Control
• Have a big interest

Asessments

• Eval
• Diagnose
• Baseling
• Target and serve.

Eligibility questions

• Educational disability
• Impairment

Assess

• Screen
• Conclude
• Create
• Goals
• Change

Screen

• Psychometrics - is more sensitive
• The screen results determines more

Assessment

• Baseline Function
• Look at all areals
• Give cares

Criteria

• Goals and Measure

Assess for Domains for each

• Form/syllabs
• Phonolgy
• Syntax
• Use frequency
• For multiple measures of the student

Always Screen

• Hearing -Oral
• Cognations
• Functioning
• Peer

Methods for assessment

• Observations
• Interviews
• Quizzing or checklist
• Exams
• Records
• Reviews
• Analyses is all needed

Authenticity

• Data
• Standards

Methods standardized assessment

• Aha/non-references for more/less
• Normal/test for them
• And also the normal range of assessment

What's Important

• Validity
• And is there is no good reliability of what's trying to measure
• Tests should be able to compare
• Is there is a good correlation

Standardized: Score Interpretation

• What's the point?
• Aka Number
• Give meaning

Scale v standard

• Standard mean and have SD and test
• Assyined v scored.

The Norm

• Number.
• SD
• Average scale
• Percendile ranks, etc.

Scores

• The range from scores.

Tests

• what is reliable or not
• good sensitivity or what?
• high reliability or test?
• should test test

So

• Assessment accuracy v sensitivity .v speacitys- cut off score test to identify

So what if need to use this

• use to look at in the correct
• to do look for what to do

So do the purpose?

• How does to all need and then.

Assess and Method

• What we could find
• Review
• Record

So Assess

• Be trustworthy
• Listeners
• Have a set out goal
• No why

The records

• Have assessment performance
• Has academic all around
• Looks as assessment for.