How children learn language - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

How children learn language

Psycholinguistics – Meeting 8

Slide2

At birth

we cannot comprehend speech, nor can we produce speech. Yet,

by the

age of 4 years we have learned vocabulary and grammatical rules

for creating

a variety of sentence structures including negatives, questions,

and relative

clauses.

Although

4-year-olds still have passives and

some other

elaborate syntactic structures to learn, along with a never-ending

stock of

vocabulary items, they have already overcome the most difficult

obstacles in

language learning.

Slide3

Vocalization to babbling

Prior to uttering speech sounds, infants make a variety of sounds –

crying, cooing

,

gurgling.

Infants

everywhere seem to make the same variety

of sounds

, even children who are born

deaf.

Around

the seventh month, children ordinarily begin to babble, to

produce what

may be described as repeated syllables (‘syllabic reduplication’), e.g

. ‘

baba’, ‘

momo

’, ‘

panpan

’.

Slide4

While most of the syllables are of the

basic

Consonant

+

Vowel

type (‘baba’ and ‘

momo

’), some consist of closed

syllables of

the simple

Consonant

+

Vowel

+

Consonant

variety (‘

panpan

’).

Slide5

Babbling to speech

It is from the advanced stage of babbling that children move into

uttering their

first words. Often this occurs at around 1 year of age but can

occur much

earlier or much later

.

Slide6

How infants perceive speech

About

3 months

before birth, you begin sensing sound and draw on this

experience from

the outset. You begin life with a preference for listening to speech

over other

complex sounds

.

How do infants break into the speech stream? They face three challenges:

Slide7

The

segmentation problem

: How do

infants

figure out that a stream

of speech

can be segmented into phonemes

?

The

invariance problem

: How do

infants

identify a stable set

of phonemes

from a signal that is

full

of variation? For example

, /

p/ is pronounced differently according to whether it appears at

the beginning

or end of a word: compare

pit

(where

/p/

is aspirated) to

tip

(

where /p/ isn't aspirated). Add to that the fact that each speaker has

a slightly

different pronunciation, and that even the same speaker

doesn't pronounce

the same word twice in the same way

.

The language problem

: How do infants figure out which set of

sounds belong

to their target language?

Slide8

Initially young

infants

can discriminate (perceive whether two sounds

are the

same or different) phonetic sounds from any human language, even

ones they

haven't been exposed to.

They retain this ability until

the age

of about 8 months,

at

which point they show

a preference

for the

sounds of

their target language

.

Infants

pay more attention to the

sounds that

are most frequent. Being able to discriminate the sounds of a

target language

and to identify the most frequent ones are the first steps in

solving the

segmentation and to language

problems.

Slide9

By 8 months, infants are expert statisticians and keep score of

which sounds

hang out together.

They

detect regularities about which

sounds are

likely to occur with which other sounds, the typical stress

patterns on

words, and the difference between content words (such as verbs

and nouns

) and function words (articles such as the and auxiliaries such as

be, have

, do).

Slide10

By 6 months, infants recognize familiar words, including their own names.

By 9 months, they recognize sound patterns for words of their language.

The ability

to perceive words as units lays the foundation for the ability to

pro­duce

single-word

utterances.

Slide11

How infants produce speech

Calling attention: Crying

The universal strategy of all babies everywhere is crying

.

Crying comes in regular bursts - there are pauses in

between, and

each sound burst falls in pitch as it goes on. And if the crying

isn't immediately

responded to,

babies turn

up the volume. These three ingredients

- a

rhythm of recurring sounds, modulation of pitch, and modulation

of volume

-

lay

the groundwork for speech.

Slide12

Communicating before words: Cooing

Babies are

getting used to the shape of

their vocal

tract, figuring out where

their tongue

fits in your mouth, and learning to coordinate breathing and

making sound

.

By

2 months,

they've

progressed to cooing.

They experiment making consonant-like

and vowel-like sounds

– these are

not

actual consonants and vowels

- and

they're

soon stringing them together in longer sequences.

S

omewhere

between the ages of 5 and 8 months,

their

natural ability as

a phonetician

bursts forth.

Babies can

produce all sorts

of

speech sounds,

including ones

that are not in

their target

language.

Slide13

Research conducted by Catherine

Snow indicates

that adults provide turn-taking instructions to young infants.

She reports

the following interaction between a mother and her

i

nfant

daughter of

3 months. Notice that the mother's feedback gives her daughter

implicit instruction

on turn-taking.

Slide14

Daughter: (smiles)

Mother:

Oh, what a nice little smile. Yes, isn't that nice? There. There's

a nice

tittle smile.

Daughter: (burps)

Mother:

What a nice little wind as well. Yes, that's better, isn't it? Yes.

Daughter: (vocalizes)

Mother:

There's a nice noise.

Slide15

By the age of 6 months, infants have figured out how to get adult

attention through

a mixture of vocalizations and gestures. But the adults are still

doing all

the work to create the conversation, interpreting any sounds the

infant makes

- from cooing to burping - as a conversational turn.

Slide16

Babbling

Next

infants start

to

aim on their target

language. By the age of 6 to 7 months

, they're

babbling away, and the sounds that

they are

using are getting

closer and

closer to being the sounds of

their language

.

They repeat

similar

syllables and

sounds over and over again:

ba

,

ba

, bi, bi,

bu

, bu

.

The ability

to detect and produce sound distinctions not found in

the infants’ language

starts to fade away: By 9 months,

their speech

perception

is

focused on

the sounds of

their target

language, and by 10

months their speech

pro­duction

locks onto

their target

language as well.

Slide17

From phonemes to syllables to word

1. Stop consonants (

/p

,

t,

k, b, d, g, m, n, n

/) and glides (y, w/)

 around 7 months

2. Vowels

 around 24 months

3.

Fricatives

/s, z/,

affricates

/

ts

,

dz

/, and liquids /r, l

/

 around 30-36 months

Until they

attain

the motor control that

allows them

to produce all the sounds of

their language

, kids often omit or

substitute

sounds

Slide18

Substitution

Kids

often voice consonants

in initial

position, and devoice consonants

m the

final position. So

p

ie

comes out as [

b

ay

] and

kno

b

comes out as [na

p

].

And

until

they figure

out how to produce frication,

they often

substitute a stop for a fricative.

So

knife

comes out as [

naib

], and

bus

comes out

as [

b



d

].

And

because /

r/and/l/

come

in so

late, kids often substitute those

sounds with

(y] and (w]. So

rabbit

comes out

as [

w



bit

].

Slide19

Omission

Kids often omit the

final consonant

of a word. So

ball

comes out

as [

ba

],

boot

as [

bu

].

For

words with more

than one

syllable, kids acquiring English,

which has

a stress-based intonation, often

omit the

weak (unstressed) syllable. So

bye

-bye

comes

out as (

bab

].

hel

lo

comes out

as [

hwow

].

Ste

vie

comes out as [iv

],

and

a

way

comes

out as [

wei

].

This

also means

that they

often omit grammatical words

such as

the

and

a

(which are almost

always unstressed

). So a sentence like

He

catches the

pig

may come out as 'He catches pig.'

Slide20

ln

addition

to learning the phonemes of

their target

language, kids also have to figure

out how

the sounds combine with each other.

Kids' first words are often single

CV syllables, like

[

ga

], [da

],

[

ba

], [

ma],

and [

na

].

Then they move

onto sequences of

CV syllables

,

then CVC syllables

, then syllables with long

vowels (CVV, CVVC).

And

when they start

making CVC syllables

, they often produce forms

where the

two consonants have the same place

of articulation

, for example (tin] (where both [

t] and

[

n]

are alveolar) or (

pom

] (where both

[p] and

[m] are labial).

Slide21

Language after the

first year

of

life

After

infants get their first

words out (at around 12 months),

they start combining words

with each other (at around 18 months) and then move onto

more complex

sentences (at around 24 months).

By

3 years old,

infants have

a

pretty good

understanding of how

their language

forms words (morphology)

and sentences (syntax

) and how to

use

language appropriately

(pragmatics).

Slide22

Linguists give names to some of the stages that kids go

through:

The

one-word stage

(12 to 18 months) is also called the

holophrastic

or

whole sentence stage

.

It's followed by the

two-word

stage

(18 to 24 months)

and

then the

telegraphic speech

stage

(24 to 30 months).

Slide23

Major developmental stage:

one-word stage (holophrastic)

Naming

Children

can be said to have

learned

their first word when (1) they are able to utter a recognizable speech

form, and

when (2) this is done in conjunction with some object or event in

the environment.

First

words have been reported as appearing in children from as

young as

4 months to as old as 18 months, or even older. On average, it

would seem

that children utter their first word around the age of 10 or 12 months.

Slide24

Holophrastic function

Children

do not only use single words to refer to objects;

they also

use single words to express complex thoughts that involve

those objects.

T

he

child uses a single word to express

the thought

for which mature speakers will use a whole

sentence.



holo

(whole)

phrastic

(phrase, sentence)

Example:

A young child who has lost its mother in a department store

may cry

out ‘mama’, meaning ‘I want mama’. Or a child may point to a shoe

and say

‘mama’, meaning ‘The shoe belongs to mama’.

Slide25

Two-word stage

Around

2

years

of age

(18 to 24 months) or

so children begin

to produce

two- and three-word

utterances.

They know

about 50 words

, and they use

two-word combinations - this is the beginning of syntax.

For

example

,

Doggie bark

for 'The dog is barking' expresses an

agent-action semantic

relationship and a subject-verb syntactic relationship.

And

Daddy hat

, for 'Daddy's hat', expresses a possessor-possessed semantic

relationship and

a genitive-noun syntactic relationship.

By

this time,

they can

walk,

feed themselves,

and scribble lines with crayons.

Slide26

Knitting together sound

, meaning,

and structure

There's

a rapid

vocabulary expansion: At 24 months

children know

about 400 words,

by 30

months

they have

around 900 words, by 36 months

they're

at 1,200

words, and

by 48 months

they're

hovering

at 1,500 words.

There's

also a

rapid growth

of syntax

– children now

begin to master the forms of words, the rules

of word

order, the placement of negation, and the forms of passives,

questions, and

relative clauses.

Slide27

Learning the forms of words

In

early stages of language acquisition, kids leave out grammatical

words and

word endings, in particular, inflectional suffixes

.

Figuring word order

Between 24 and 30 months,

kids figure

out the rules for basic

sentences. They use

the subject-predicate pattern, for example,

I good boy

for 'I'm

a good

boy'.

They also

use the subject-verb-object pattern (

Daddy like book

for

'Daddy likes the book'), which

they embellish

on with an adverb (

Man ride

bus today

for 'The man rode the bus today').

Slide28

Going from active to passive

By the age of two, kids start to use the passive-live sentence, but they

don't fully

master the passive construction until they're three. Eve Clark

reports the

following sentences

:

Adult models:

My

temperature was taken by the doctor.

I

want to see my bottle getting fixed.

Child's version (26 months):

I

took my temperature from the doctor.

I

want see my bottle getting fix.

Slide29

Asking questions

As documented by Edward

Klima

and

Ursula

Bellugi

, children progress in their mastery of both yes/no

questions and

content-questions in the following way

:

Stage

I :

see hole?

and

where kitty?

Stage

2:

you want eat?

and

where my mitten?

Stage 3:

will you help me?

and

where the other Joe will drive?

Slide30

Forming relative clause

By

the age of two, kids unpack relative clauses into their component clauses.

Dan

Slobin

and Charles Welsh report

the following

relative clauses

produced by

a

26-month-old

child. It will take another two years for kids to master

the form

of relative clauses, but by the age of four they match the adult model.

Slide31

Adult model:

The

owl who eats candy runs fast.

The

man who I saw yesterday got wet.

Child's version (26 months):

Owl

eat candy and he run fast.

I

saw the man and he got wet.

Slide32

Achieving a basic grammar

By the age of five,

kids have

mastered the basics of

their grammar

.

They can use language

to talk about language,

define

words, and

correct themselves.

The

rest is fine-tuning -

vocabulary

continues to increase (

at a

slower rate), and

kids become

more sensitive to stylistic variation.