Week 8 Lecture Toddler Language and Thinking Representation Language Components of Language Sound...

Week 8 LectureToddler Language and Thinking

Representation Language Components of Language Sound Patterns of language Speech perception Productive and Receptive skills First words Vocabulary growth Under and over extension Morphological rules and overregularization Syntax Language in Social Settings—pragmatics Theories of language development Child directed speech/motherese Pretend play Gestures

Representational Skills Skills for thinking about,

manipulating, and communicating to others about absent objects, past events, abstract thoughts.

These skills emerge in toddlerhood but continue to develop for years to come.

Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Permission required for reproduction or display.

Language:An abstract, rule-governed system of arbitrary

symbols that can be combined in countless ways to communicate information.

Children's representational abilities become obvious in their development of language.

Photo copyright © 2003 www.arttoday.com. Used with permission.

The Components of Language Phonology - sounds of a language.

Semantics - meanings of words.

Morphology - grammatical endings.

Syntax - sentence structure. Pragmatics – rules for using

language

The Components of Language Every language has its own set of

phonemes, speech sounds that contrast with one another and can change the meaning of a word.

The smallest meaningful units in a language are called morphemes.

Pragmatics is the set of rules governing conversation and the social use of language.


Productive & Receptive Skills Children need both productive

skills and receptive skills to carry on a conversation.

The development of receptive skills tends to run slightly ahead of the development of productive skills.

Productive skills: Language skills used to put ideas into words.

Receptive skills: Language skills used to understand what other

people are saying.


Learning the Sound Patterns of a Language

The early period of prelinguistic vocalization during the first year of life can be divided into five stages:

1. crying2. cooing3. vocal play4. canonical babbling5. conversation babbling (jargon)


Two things are needed to prepare children to begin speaking:

1. Must gain control over their speech apparatus to produce speech sounds intentionally.

2. Must learn the phonemes of their particular language by paying close attention to the speech sounds they hear and begin imitating them.


Variation in VOT

VOT frequency histograms of voicing categories across six languages (Lisker & Abramson, 1964)

English identification functions for VOT stimuli superimposed on VOT frequency histograms

English discrimination functions for VOT stimuli

Thai identification functions for VOT stimuli superimposed on Thai VOT frequency histograms

Thai discrimination functions for VOT stimuli



Between 10-12 months, most children start to make the transition from babbling to true speech.

Protowords:Vocalizations that seem to have consistent meanings for a child and are used in attempts to communicate, but do not closely resemble adults words in sound or meaning.



Learning Words & Their Meanings

First WordsFirst words usually refer to:

familiar persons “Mama” body parts “Nose” animals “Doggie” objects “Ball”

First words may also express: feelings “Goodboy” movement “Up” social commands not broken down into their

component words “Gimme!”



First WordsChildren differ in the purposes for which they use

their first words.

Referential style:Words primarily refer to objects and events.

Expressive style:Words primarily express social routines.


Learning Words & Their MeaningsVocabulary Growth

Average vocabulary for 18-month-olds is 50 words, then there is a dramatic vocabulary increase. Referential children have more obvious vocabulary spurts.

Average productive vocabulary = 8,000 to 14,000 words for the average 6-year-old. Children's receptive vocabularies are considerably larger than their productive vocabularies. Between ages 1 and 6, the average child is learning an average of 5.5 new words per day (40,000 words by age 10 or 11).

Vocabulary spurt:A sudden increase in word acquisition at about 18 months of age.



Processes of Word Learning Not until around the vocabulary spurt do children start

using categorical words for people, objects, & events. A milestone comes when the child discovers everything has

a name. Children's first task in learning words is to extract them

from the stream of speech they hear, which leads to some segmentation errors (e.g., “readit the book” ).

Segmentation errors:Mistakes in detecting boundaries between words in a sentence.

Wildwood Flower Oh, I'll twine with my mingles and waving black hair

With the rose so red and the lilies so fairAnd the mirltes so bright with the emerald dewThe pale and the leader and eyes look like blue

I'll twine 'mid the ringlets Of my raven black hair,The lilies so pale And the roses so fair,The myrtle so bright With an emerald hue,And the pale aronatus With eyes of bright blue.

I will twine, I will mingle my raven black hairWith the roses so red and the lilies so fairAnd the myrtle so bright with it's emerald hueThe pale emanita and the hyssop so blue




Processes of Word LearningEven before age 2, children can use fast mapping,

which is helped by joint attention.

Fast mapping:A young child uses context cues to make quick & reasonably accurate guess about the meaning of an unfamiliar word.

Joint attention:Tendency for language-learning children and adult conversation partners to share a focus of attention.



Errors in Early Word Learning

A common semantic mistake involves errors of underextension. too restricted use of a word example: calling toy trucks “truck” but not full-

sized trucks on the road Another common error involves

overextension too global of a word use example: calling a bus “truck”


Learning Morphological Rules Children's first words are usually single

morphemes.

A language's grammatical morphemes (units of language that change the meanings of words and sentences) are gradually added.



Learning Morphological Rules

Order of Acquisition

First children add -s to nouns and -ing to form present participles.

Later they used -ed to form past tense verbs and -s to form the third person singular.

The last to appear are those for contractions of the verb to be.


Learning Morphological Rules

Productivity & Overregularization

Morphological development provides clear evidence that language development involves rule learning.

Overregularization:Language errors in which a child applies a morphological rule to a word that is an exception to the rule.

• example: “mouses” for mice

October14, 2014 Online training for new students From words to sentences Syntax Question asking Passive voice Language in Social Settings—pragmatics Theories of language development Child directed speech/motherese Bilingualism Pretend play Gestures


Online training for new students Understanding Sexual Assault (45

min) AlcoholEdu (90 min)

http://www.sjsu.edu/wellness/



Learning to Form SentencesIn any system of syntax, individual words belong to particular form classes, such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

Syntactic rules specify how words belonging to various form classes can be combined to make phrases, clauses, and sentences.

Form class:A category of words in a language that

can fill similar syntactic roles in forming phrases and sentences.

Syntax Study of the rules by which words

are organized into phrases or sentences in a particular language.

Referred to as the grammar of the language and allows for more complex expression of thoughts and ideas by making references to past and future events.



The One-Word Stage When children first begin to speak, they

use only one word at a time. When these words are used to

communicate a more complex meaning, they are said to function as holophrases.

Holophrase: A single word that conveys the meaning of a phrase or sentence.

“Mama” = “Here is Mama.” “Mama” = “I want my Mama.”

“Mama” = “This belongs to Mama.”


First Sentences At 18-24 months, toddlers start to put

two words together, tied into the appearance of verbs in the child’s vocabulary.

When true two-word sentences appear, they usually take the form of telegraphic speech.Telegraphic speech: A toddler speech style in which words not essential to the meaning of a sentence (articles, conjunctions, prepositions) are omitted.


Further Syntactic Development

Brown’s Stages of Early Syntactic Development

based on length of utterances

I. Express simple semantic & syntactic relationships (1-2 morphemes).

“See teddy.”II. Acquire basic grammatical morphemes (2-2.5 morphemes).

“See teddies.”III. Variations on simple sentences, incl. questions (2.5-3

morphemes).“Where’s Mommy?” “You can’t come.”

Subordinate clauses (3-3.5 morphemes). “I want you to do it.”

Join simple sentences to form compound sentences (3.5-4).“I had cake and Daddy had ice cream.”

Question Asking Inflection Changes in word order and addition

of words

Two types of questions: Yes/no questions: Are you going to

school? Wh questions: Where are you going?


Yes/No Questions Inflection

The tree died? Tag questions

The tree died, didn’t it? Word order and addition

Did the tree die?

Learning to ask Wh questions phase one Children will make two word questions

ex.Where kitty? Phase two Children will add helping verbs to the

question but willl often reverse them. ex.Where kitty is going?

Phase three Children will form proper questions.

ex.Where is the kitty going?

Asking Why Questions You went to the store, why? Why you went to the store? Why did you go to the store?

Negation Phase one Children will put a negation in front of the word

they want to negate.ex. No kitty. Phase two children will put the negative word into their

sentences.ex. That not kitty. Phase three Children will be able to add a negative into a

sentence correctly ex. That isn't a kitty.

Asking negative questions You are going to the store. Are you going to the store? You aren’t going to the store. Aren’t you going to the store? Native speakers understand these

constructions, but even for adults they are hard to explain.

Active and Passive Voice Non-reversible passives

The boy kicked the ball The ball was kicked by the boy

Reversible passives The boy kicked the girl The girl was kicked by the boy

Before age 4– semantic strategy and first noun is the subject hueristic

Age 4 to 6 –rigid word order, first noun is the subject

After age 6 – correct understanding of passive construction, although very rare in production


Learning to Use Language Socially Children also acquire linguistic and

communicative competence. Linguistic competence involves

syntactically and semantically correct use of a language.

Communicative competence involves being able to carry on conversations, repair breakdowns in communications, and to use language in socially appropriate ways (as determined by culture).


How can children learn a language in such a short time?

Environment theories stress environmental factors in language acquisition, including: the language the child hears structure of social interactions physical environment

Nativist theories stress inborn, biologically based factors in language acquisition.


Chomsky argued that all languages share structural characteristics because language and the human brain evolved together.

Language acquisition device:Chomsky’s term for innate capacities of the human brain that make language possible.

• assumed that part of the brain is specially adapted for language learning• ignored social contexts in which language acquisition occursMost current researchers agree both inborn &

environmental factors contribute to language development.


What the Child Bringsto Language Acquisition

Evidence For Biological Underpinnings Apparent sensitive period early in life Hemispheric specialization Brain changes at 8-9 months of age Species-specific nature of language Inborn abilities & constraints


The Environment ofLanguage Learning

Child-directed speech (CDS) = motherese:

The modifications adults make in their speech when talking to young children.

simpler grammatically includes fewer grammatical errors higher pitch clauses & boundaries more clearly marked by

pauses, intonation focus more on objects and present tense events quite redundant includes many questions about objects & events

The Environment ofLanguage Learning

Impact of Child-Directed Speech (CDS) Simplifies input. Makes clear connections between words

and what they refer to. Provides chances for linguistic practice. Serves attentional & affective functions

in parent-infant interaction. Does not necessarily improve language

development.

Bilingualism Initially words learned in two languages may not

be separated by language. As children learn grammatical morphemes,

auxiliary verbs, and other features of syntax, the languages become separate systems.

Vocabulary development in each language may be slower than for monolinguals, but the total vocabulary may be larger.

Explicit knowledge of syntax is greater for bilinguals.

Cognitive executive functioning and cognitive flexibility is greater for bilinguals.

Lexical access is slower for bilinguals.


Toddlers’ Pretend Play14-19 months Pretend play with replica objects (dolls, toy

horses, toy cars) increases.

19-24 months Use of substitute objects (using pillow to represent a baby, a block to represent a car) increases.

by 24 months Most children can use one substitute object in a pretend scenario (using block to feed a baby doll).

later sensorimotor

Double substitutions (using a block for a bottle and a pillow as a baby) will appear.


Toddlers’ Use of Gesturesaround 9 months Simple communicative gestures (such as

pointing) normally emerge.

9-12 months Conventional social gestures (like waving bye-bye, nodding yes, shaking the head no) usually appear.

12-18 months Toddlers begin producing symbolic gestures, representing some object or action.

10-18 months Children gradually use more gestures.

around 18 months

Frequency of gesture use declines.

around 24 months

Frequency of gesture use levels off.


Toddlers’ Understanding of Iconic Symbols

Iconic symbols:Symbols that closely resemble the things they

represent.

9 months old

Babies seem confused by pictures.They try to grasp objects portrayed in them.

20 months old

Babies seem to understand objects in pictures are not physically present.

2 years old When shown a picture of where a toy is hidden, they are rarely able to find it.

2-and-a-half years old

When shown a picture of where a toy is hidden, children find it 80% of the time.

Date post:	25-Dec-2015
Category:	Documents
Upload:	peregrine-owen
View:	215 times
Download:	0 times

Week 8 Lecture Toddler Language and Thinking Representation Language Components of Language Sound...

Documents