Language Acquisition PDF

# Understanding of Language Acquisition ## Observation ## Hypothesis ## Variables - Number of morphemes per utterance - Complexity ## Measures - Number of morphemes - Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) ## Analysis - Language Sample Analysis (LSA) ## Physiological Processes of Speech 1. **Respiration...

# Understanding of Language Acquisition ## Observation ## Hypothesis ## Variables - Number of morphemes per utterance - Complexity ## Measures - Number of morphemes - Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) ## Analysis - Language Sample Analysis (LSA) ## Physiological Processes of Speech 1. **Respiration**: Breathing 2. **Phonation**: Vocal fold vibration 3. **Resonaton**: Use of cavities to amplify sound 4. **Articulation**: Formation of phonemes of a language (Tongue, Lips, Teeth, Palate) - Sign Language Articulators ## Components of Language - **Phonology**: Phonemes (sounds), phonological rules - **Morphology**: Bound (-s, -ed), free - Smallest units of meaning - **Semantics**: Mental lexicon (vocabulary) - **Syntax**: Word class, word order, syntactic rules - **Prosody**: Intonation, suprasegmental aspects - **Pragmatics**: Social conventions, turn-taking ## Hockett's 13 Design Features - **Interchangeability**: Ability to use other languages (Parrot uses human language) - **Semanticity/Indexicality**: Inherent contextual word meanings (Parrot) - **Productivity**: Form new messages - **Displacement**: Talk about remote events (Bees) - **Duality of Patterning**: Phoneme inventory used for new words (Parrot) - **Recursion**: Stack linguistic forms - **Prevarication**: Non-cooperative communication (Lying) - **Reflexivity**: Metal linguistic ability - Talking about language # Theories of Language Acquisition ## Nativist - Nature: Brain hardwired, genetics. Child is passive. - Noam Chomsky: Language is unique to humans. - **Phrase Structure Rules**: Universal rules of language describe underlying relationships between words, thoughts, and ideas. - **Deep Structure**: How words connect - Underlying syntactic structure of the sentence. - **Transformation Rules**: Nonuniversal rules that determine how words are shaped to make up grammar. - **Surface Structure**: Individual words - Outward form of a sentence derived from deep structure. ## Behaviorist - Nurture: Teaching based. Child is passive. - B.F Skinner: Pigeon training. - **Operant**: Stimuli - **Reinforcement**: Pos/Neg - **Shaping**: Molding to learn - **Chaining**: Training of sequence of behavior ## Interactionist - Child is active. - Greenberg: Language universals - Nature - Piaget: Stages of cognitive development - Language is a product of cognitive development. - **Sensorimotor**: 0-2 years - Coordination of senses with motor responses. - **Pre-operational**: 2-7 years - Symbolic thinking, proper syntax and grammar. - **Concrete Operational**: 7-11 years - Concepts attached to concrete stimuli; time/space/quantity. - **Formal Operational**: 11+ years - Abstract, theoretical, hypothetical thinking. ## Cognitive Organization - **Schema**: Cognitive structure that helps to process, identify, organize, and store information (File folder) - **Assimilation**: New stimuli is fitted to an existing schema. - **Accommodation**: New schema created for information that doesn't fit existing schemata. - **Equilibrium**: Balance between existing schemata and the creation of new schemata. ## Vygotsky - Nurture: Cog dev influenced by environment and culture, continuous. - **Social Interactionist**: Social interaction crucial for language cognitive development. - **Private Speech**: Talk to self to practice language articulation/syntactic structure. - **Zone of Proximal Development**: External support for domains children don't learn quickly on their own - Learned with a person, not a book/video. This does not only apply to language. # Unda Smith's Dynamic Systems Theory - Perception + Cognition develops together. - Individual timescale of language development affected by: - Perception/Cognition - Social environment: Social contact + joint attention - **Shape Bias**: Connect meaning/word to its shape. - **McGurk Effect**: Visual cues affect hearing/understanding. ## Early Sounds - Up to 4 months old. - **Reflexive cries**: (0-1 months) First cries. - **Vegetative sounds**: (0-1 months) Burp, sneeze, cough - **Cooing**: (1-4 months) Vowel-like - **Differentiated crying**: (1-4 months) Hunger, pain, etc. - **Laughing**: (4 months) ## Babbling - 5 months on. - **Marginal babbling**: (5 months) CV - ba - **Reduplicated babbling**: (6-8 months) CVCVCV - ba ba ba - **Variegated babbling**: (8-12 months) CVC VCV - bam aba - **Jargon**: (8-12 months) Melody overlay - **Vocalbles**: (8-12 months) Protowords, performatives. ## Word/Sentence Emergence - Early words are predominantly nouns. - **Verb-Object** emerges at 18 months. - **Subject-Verb-Object** (sentential word order) ## Reliability - Representative of what this child can say. - Not reliable: Bad mood, tired, sick. ## Validity - Representative in comparison to other children - Not valid: English only sample from bilingual child. ## MLU - Reduplication, filler (Um), false starts, names, memorized repetitions. - 2 years: 1.92 - 3 years: 3.16 - 4 years: 4.40 - 5 years: 5.63 # Syntactic Development - Questions - **Understood** then **produced** - **Rising intonation**: "Go bye bye?" Late stage 1-Early stage 2 (1.5-2.5) - **Yes/No questions**: (2.5-2.8 months) - **What/Where**: Asking about something observable: Stage 2 - **Who/Why/How**: Inference, ways/means, agents/subjects: Stage 3 - **Invert auxiliary/copular verbs**: Ask yes/no: Stage 3 # Vocab Expansion (Categories) - **Syntagmatic - Paradigmatic Shift**: Reorganization of words from syntactic (likely to occur next to each other) to paradigmatic (semantic features of words). - *Mommy-kiss* (As happens in a sentence - Syntagm from fast mapping.) - *Mommy-Daddy* (Semantic category - Parents - Meaning of word.) - In context with schemas, paradigm ~ schoolage. # Consonants | Consonant | Age | Intelligibility | |---|---|---| | Natural Sounds /m, n/ Sonorants | 2 | 50% | | Stops /p, b, t, d, k, g/ >Front First | 3 | 75% | | Fricatives /f, v, s, z/ | 4 | 90-100% | | Affricates /tf, dz/ | | | | Gliders /w, j/ | | | # Typical Sound Production - **Fronting**: Gate -> Date - **Stops for fricatives**: That -> Dat - **Gliding for /r/ and /l/**: Rabbit -> Wabbit - **Final consonant deletion**: Cat -> Ca # Atypical Sound Production - **Backing**: Top -> Gop - **Fricatives for stops**: Do -> Su - **Glides for stops**: Yarn -> Darn - **Initial consonant deletion**: Cat -> At