HOW CHILDREN LEARN

LANGUAGE
1. The Development of Speech Production
2. The Development of Speech Comprehension
3. The Relationship of Speech Production,
Speech
Comprehension And Thought.
4. Parentese and Baby Talk
5. Imitation, Rule Learning, and Correction
6. Learning Abstract Words
7. Memory and Logic in Language Learning
 1. THE SPEE PRODUCTI
DEVELOPMENT OF CH ON
Spee
• Vocalization
From to to Babbling ch
Vocalization
to Babbling
– Prior to uttering speech sounds, a of
infants make variety sounds,
crying, cooing, gurgling.
– Around the seventh month, children ordinarily babble,
begin to to
produce what may be described as repeated of the
– syllables.
language is obviously a learned phenomenonfirst
because
The whenofinfants
production sounds using the intonation
babble they follow the intonation contours of the
contours
language they hear.
• Babbling to
Speech
• The infant does not intentionally make the
particular babbling
sounds which occur. They seem to happen by the
chance
• coordination of speech articulators.

While, a meaningful speech is the sounds must not

uttered at random but must match previously heard
sounds which are conventionally associated with certain
objects, need, and so on. The sound is created by speech
articulators.
• Explaining the acquisition order of
consonants and vowels
• In the meaningful speech phase, it appears that
consonants
are acquired in a front-to-back order, where
‘front’ and ‘back’
• refer to the origin of the articulation of the sound.
Vowels seem to be acquired in a back-to-front order.
 Early Speech Stages: Naming, Holophrastic,
Telegraphic,
Morphemic
Naming: one-word
•
utterances
• Children can be said to have learned their first
word when:
(a) they are able to utter a recognizable
speech form, and
when it is done.
(b) in conjunction with some object or event in the
• environment.
Ordinarily, children speak along with physical
movement.
• Holophrastic functions: one-word
utterance
• Children do not only use single words to refer to
objects; they
also use single words to express complex
thoughts which
involves those objects.
• Telegraphic speech: two- and three-word
utterances
• Variety of purposes and semantic
relations refus bra answ
– The child uses language to request, warn, e, g, er,
• name, and inform.
Low incidence
– Rarely of function
use articles, words
prepositions, and the
copula ‘be’.
•
Close approximation of the language’s word
order
• – Speak words in right order.
Syntactic vs semantic analysis
• Morpheme
acquisition
• Once two- and three-words utterance have been
acquired,
children have something on which to elaborate.
They start to
add function words and inflection to their
utterances.
 Later Speech Stages: Rule Formation for
Relative Clauses,
Negatives, Questions, an Othe Compl Structur
Passive, d r ex es.
• Negation
• formation
Question
formation
– Yes-No Questions
•
– WH Questions
•
Passive formation
Structures with or more
Other
twoproblems verbs
Verbs problems
2. THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPEECH
COMPREHENSION
Fetuses and Speech Input
– The mother’s speech sounds were found to be able to reach the
ear
of the fetus above the background sounds.
Speech Comprehension Occurs Spee Producti
Newborns (neonates) and Speech Input
without ch on:
the Case of Mute-Hearing
– Christopher
Children
– Nolan
– Anne McDonald
Rie
 In Normal Children Speech Comprehension
Develops in
Advance
o If childrenofdid
Speech Production
not first learn to understand the
meaning
words andofsentences, they no b abl tous word or
would
sentences in a way. t e e e s
meaningful
• Pre-speech normal
• infants
• The Huttenlocher study
• The Sachs and Truswell Study
A Reading before Speaking
Study
 Relative Paucity of
Comprehension Studies
• The product of the speech production process,
the child’s
utterance, is something that can be directly
observed while
the product of the comprehension process,
meaning,
cannot.
 3. THE RELATIONSHIP OF SPEECH
PRODUCTION,
SPEECH COMPREHENSION AND
•
THOUGHT.
Children must be able to comprehend the meaning
of theComprehension
Speech language Necessarily Precedes Speech
before they themselves can produce it.
Production
•
Children first need to be exposed to utterances with a clear
connection to the articles referred to before they themselves
can begin to say such utterances.
•
Children may sometimes repeat words or phrases they hear, but
this is not evidence for learning unless the sounds are used in
meaningful context that is suitable for those sounds form.
 Thought as the Basis of Speech
Comprehension
• The meaning that underlie speech
comprehension are
concepts that are in a person’s mind. nothin
•
Without such content of thought, the child would g
• have to assign as the meaning of words and firs
sentences.words for objects which are directlyt
learning
observable in the
One cannot begin to learn such abstract words
world.
without
 4. PARENTESE TAL
AND BABY K
Parentese is the sort of
• Parentese childrereceiv when
speech that n e they
are young. of
Characteristic
Parentese
• Immediacy and concreteness
– The speech which parents and others use in talking to
children has a number of distinctive characteristic which
evidently aid language learning.
• Grammaticality of input
– The speech directed to children is highly grammatical and
simplified.
• Short sentences and simple
• structure
• Vocabulary: simple and short
Exaggerate intonation, pitch, and stresstempo, frequent
– Adults exaggerate intonation and use a and ly
slower repeat or rephrase what they or say.
•
their children
Older children too adapt their speech
 Baby Talk
– Baby Talk involves the use of vocabulary and syntax that is
overly
simplified and reduced.
• Vocabulary
– Baby Talk words is that are supposed to represent
they the sounds
which various things
• make.
– Syntax play a less prominent role in Baby Talk than
Syntax
does vocabulary.
•
Should baby talk be used?
– Yes, it is. There is no good reason to be harmful.
 5. IMITATION, RULE LEARNING, AND
CORRECTION
Imitation
• What can by
is Learned apply only to speech
Imitation
production and not to
speech comprehension.
Productivity by
Rule
• Children have formulated rules in their minds
according to
which
The they construct
Frequent Futility ofnovel utterances.
Correction
• Correction does not play an important role in
grammar
learning. The child does notice his or her own
incorrect speech
and then makes the necessary revision.
 6. LEARNING ABSTRACT
WORDS
• Childre acquire the o word begi wit th
n meaning
an f sChildrn learhabstra
g o to th abstra e
concrebyd experiencing
word o n e ct. wordenMetaphn alsct hel
te
s those
children s. abstract
to comprehend the or o p
concepts.
 7. MEMORY AND LOGIC IN
LANGUAGE LEARNING
Two basic types of memory operate in language
• Memory
learning:
– associative learning, where a connection is formed between an
object and the sound-form name of that object.
– Episodic learning, where whole events or situations are
remembered
Logic
along with phrases and sentences that others have
• Children use inductive logic spoken.
• Young children use deductive
logic