Language Acquisition: Key Concepts

Language Acquisition: Understanding Language Development

• Language Acquisition Observation: Examining how complexity of morphemes per utterance and morpheme length measured by MLU (mean length utterance).

• Physiological Processes of Speech: Speech production involves Respiration (breathing), Phonation (vocal fold vibration), Resonation (amplifying sound using vocal tract), and Articulation (forming sounds using tongue, lips, teeth, and palate).

• Components of Language: Language is composed of phonology (sounds and rules), morphology (meaningful units), semantics (meaning), syntax (sentence structure), prosody (intonation), and pragmatics (social use of language).

• Hockett's Design Features: Defining characteristics of human language include interchangeability, semanticity (meaningful signals) ,productivity (ability to create new messages), displacement (referring to past and future events), and duality of patterning (combination of sounds create meaning).

Theories of Language Acquisition

• Nativist Theory (Chomsky): Argues that humans are born with innate language abilities (nature), and language is unique to humans providing innate ability to think, and form relationships between words. Language learning is an active process.

• Behaviourist Theory (Skinner): Proposes that language is learned through environmental stimuli and reinforcement (nurture). Operant conditioning and imitation are believed to be involved. Learning is passive.

• Interactionist Theory: Human language develops through interaction with the environment, both social and biological. Language is influenced by both nature and nurture; biological predispositions combined with experiences.

Stages of Cognitive Development (Piaget)

• Stages of Cognitive Development: Learning occurs in stages that involve Sensorimotor (0-2 years), Preoperational (2-7 years), Concrete Operational (7-11 years), and Formal Operational (11+ years). Cognitive development influences language, and vice versa.

Vygotsky's Theory

• Cognitive Development & Environment: Cognitive development is influenced by environmental and cultural factors. Learning occurs through social interaction. Both nature and nurture involved; language develops through environment, as well as biological predispositions.

Early Language Development (Uda Smith)

• Dynamic Systems Theory: Language perception and cognition develop concurrently, influenced by social factors, contexts, and experiences. The time scale of language development differs across individuals and is affected by varied social experiences.

• Early Sounds: Infants produce sounds like cries, cooing, differentiated crying, and laughter, progressing to babbling (including marginal and variegated) and jargon stages.

• Word and Sentence Emergence: Early words predominantly involve verb-object structures, followed by subject-verb-object constructions.

• Reliability & Validity: Assessing early language is challenging, particularly in terms of reliability and validity.

Syntactic Development

• Syntactic Questions: Studying how children ask questions (e.g., Wh- questions) reveals stages and different syntactic processes, and understanding how children ask and construct complex questions and sentences.

• Vocabulary Expansion: Children's vocabularies evolve, with shifts from syntagmatic to paradigmatic use of words.

• Consonant Production: Shows different stages of development, including typical and atypical patterns. Timelines and measures of intelligence are commonly included.

This quiz explores the fundamental components of language acquisition, including the physiological processes of speech and Hockett's design features. Test your understanding of morphemes, phonology, and the factors that contribute to effective communication. Perfect for students and enthusiasts of language development.