General Things about Language

• The symbols of a true language are arbitrary

• Language is infinitely generative
• Language allows for displacement
• Meaning in the structure
• In language development, comprehension
almost always precedes production

talk about these

in
essay 1
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 Components of Language
• Phonemes-components of sound
different
– About 200, English uses 45 noises

• Morphemes-units of meaning
– Don’t confuse with syllables- “happy” one
morpheme, “unhappy” two, “unhappiness” three
down
– Bound and free meaning
that can't be broken

any further

• Semantics-meaning of words & sentences

• Grammar-syntax and morphology rules
• Pragmatics-how language used social context
used in a

• Metalinguistic knowledge
reflecting your knowlage
on
language
of

• Human brain necessary 3

animals have communication, humans have
language
 Early Speech Perception
• Infants able to detect phoneme differences
as we lose this
grow up we

• Used as evidence for LAD, but primates have same ability

• Use distributional properties to pick up boundaries of words-
frequently occurring, more common stress, prosody & pauses
if
together frequently
word Baby talk"
things probably
its
go a

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 Categorical Perception

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew5-
xbc1HMk

L preceptual narrowing pick up any language

on
when we are born we can ,

used last
but if phonemes are not
they are

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Infant-Directed Speech
• Formerly called motherese
• Even young kids use it
• Most cultures use
• Sweet tone, exaggerated
prosody, enunciation, and
pauses-more emotion
• Repetition of key words
• Infants like & holds attention

no voice onset time

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 Babbling
• Practice babbling a lot and imitate others
• Deaf kids babble but drops out
• If being taught sign, will babble in sign
• Gradually taken on the sounds, rhythm, and
intonation of the language the child is learning

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 Intersubjectivity beingonane youa
• Not necessary for normal language learning but taking
helps
• Helps with pragmatics and understanding intentions
• Bruner says learn language in games and routines
• Turn-taking begins very early

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Pointing
• Begin to understand
around 9 months
• Protodeclarative verses
"Want to declare
something is
protoimperative labeling
"I want juice"

• Children with autism-

early sign Proto engagepointing
Don't in

decantile

• Protodeclarative leads to
naming

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 Early Words
• Most early words names for people and things
• Use holophrases - one word
meaning
• Nouns easiest to learn

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How Do Infants Learn New Words?
• Stress, positioning & joint
attention
• Learn in games &
routines
• Pointing
• Fast-mapping
• Contrast familiar and
unfamiliar
• Learn to follow other’s
gaze
• Under- & over-extension
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 Constraints on Word Learning
• Quine’s Dilemma-how can kids know the
referent?
• Whole object
• Mutual exclusivity
• Shape bias -samesameeng
• Syntactic Bootstrapping
when
kids
one part figure
know to the
sentace of
of a
rest
the
outentance

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 Grammar Development
• Using grammar by age 2
• Telegraphic speech-don’t violate word order rules
• Often get things correct, then overregularize
• Parents don’t correct grammatical errors but recast

properly
them
rules but can't
apply
know
grammer

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 The Wug Test

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgB2i
MuEZAA

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Pragmatic Development
• Early-turn-taking,
adjusting
• Collective monologues
• By age 5 able to
produce simple
narratives
• Conversational skills
improve, politeness
markers, and in grade
school metalinguistics-
reflect on language and
play with it
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School-Age Development
• Vocabulary continues
to increase
• Children get better at
complex syntax like
passive constructions
and embedded
sentences
• By high-school kids
know about 80,000
words

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*

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 Theories of Language
Development
• Nurture theories
– Learned through reinforcement
• Nature theories - whats
> in he brain that allows us
to learn langage
– Language Acquisition Device
• Interactionist theories >
- interaction w others promotes
language
– Communication primary motivation
• Connectionist theories
– Everything needed to learn within language
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 Learning Theories
• Skinner said all language learned through shaping-
reinforce sounds, then words, then sentences
• Parents don’t punish incorrect constructions, just truth
value
• Responsivity does encourage more talking

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 Innate Theories

• Chomsky too complex-must be UG >

- universal
9 where
Grammer
the
same

the
• LAD specialized for detecting and learning rules
accuisition Device
Language
• Modularity hypothesis-similar to core knowledge
• Critical period taken as evidence-e.g Genie
• Nicaraguan Sign Language and Creole
• No-one has found a Universal Grammar
• Focus on syntax and ignore semantics &
pragmatics

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 Interactionist Theories
• Range in amount they agree with constraints
• Virtually everything about language development
is influenced by its communicative function
• Language often presented in structured situations
• Kids are very motivated to communicate with
others-intersubjectivity
• Have many domain general mechanisms
• Have tended to focus on semantics but lately on
grammar

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 Connectionist Theories
• Statistical regularities in the language
allow us to learn without any innate
structures other than general learning
mechanisms
• Neural network models make same
overregularization errors
• Doesn’t explain fast-mapping

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 Symbolic Development
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK_B
QjVHZ00

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtngS
Htz-cc

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