Language Development: a system of symbols

2. Language Development: a system of symbols • Generativity: using a finite set of words to generate infinite ideas • Language Comprehension • Language Production

3. Components of language

4. Components of language

5. Language Development: need of a human brain

6. Language Development: need of a human brain

7. Primate Communication and Symbolic Skills (tool use) Vocabulary -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRM7vTrIIis Receptive vocabulary -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7IdghtkKmA&feature=related Imitation and discourse (Oprah piece) -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKauXrp9dl4&feature=related

8. The human brain & language

10. The human brain & language • Most linguists ignore the • Basal Ganglia (BG) • Swearing associated with • BG involvement • (see Steve Pinker, 2008) • Parkinson’s patients • “loss” of language • implicates the • importance of BG

12. Crucial need for language stimulation • Talking to the baby is essential: correlation between mom and baby’s language • “Infant Directed Speech” (“motherese”) • How we teach the baby about our “mother tongue” and how our society communicates

13. Crucial need for language stimulation • Infant Directed Speech & hearing the sounds of language • prosody: rhythm, tempo, cadence, melody, intonation • categorical perception: differentiating the phonemes (sounds) of your “mother tongue” • Turn-taking & social reciprocity: the communication dance

14. “Categorical” Speech Perception • Learning the phonemes (speech sounds) of your “mother tongue” • 200 “speech sounds” (sound “categories”) universally heard by all newborns • 45-ish sound categories (/bah/, /pah/, /rah/, /lah/, etc.) are heard in typical languages by adults • Why are they called “categories” of sound? • Because “bah” is always “bah” no matter who says it • You hear “bah” if it is said by 2 year old or 22-year old; female or male speaker, etc.

16. “Categorical” Speech Perception • Learning the phonemes (speech sounds) of your “mother tongue” • What happened to the other 150-ish sounds categories that young babies can hear, but are lost by adulthood? • Examples: Adult Japanese speakers do not distinguish the sounds /rah/ vs. /lah/ -- “flied lice” for “fried rice” • The Japanese language do not differentiate these sound “categories”(they are the same sound in Japanese) • English does differentiate these sounds in their langauge • What sounds do babies continue to “hear”? Those that they are routinely exposed to -- “Use it, or lose it”

18. Crucial need for language stimulation • Critical Periods • Victor the “wild child” -- Aveyron, France, 1800: learned a few words. • Genie imprisoned in home until 13-years of age • Developed “toddler-like” language • “Father take piece wood. Hit. Cry.”

19. Language Depervation • Oxana Malaya -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PyUfG9u-P4 • Genie -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICUZN462qMw

20. Crucial need for language stimulation • Language Stimulation: case of bilingualism • Very young children (before 1-year) can differentiate two languages • Maybe (??) some lags or disorders in early language when exposed to more than one? • Risk: “semilingualism” • Better performance on numerous cognitive tasks

21. The Progression of Language Acquisition • At Birth • Universal speech perception • Localize & attend to language (recognition of mom) • 6-to-8-weeks • “Cooing” and production of simple sounds

22. The Progression of Language Acquisition • 5-to-6-months • Beginning of simple vocal imitation & turn-taking • Following the gaze of another person (beginnings of shared “discourse”) • Words begin to “pop out” (listening longer to familiar words like their own name v. novel words)

23. The Progression of Language Acquisition • 6-to-9-months • Begin to possess the categories of the “mother tongue”(losing the universal perception) • Possess the beginnings of prosody of “mother tongue”(recognizing the “stress patterns” -- “ENG-lish” OF-ten” “SEC-ond”) • Babble in the mother tongue (case of the French 8-month olds) • Beginnings of expanded word recognition (“where’s mama?”)

24. The Progression of Language Acquisition • 10-to-18-months (variability now widens) • Intersubjectivity: 2 partners sharing common focus • Joint attention: 2 partners sharing in a common object • “Declarative” pointing • First words (consonant-vowel pairing: “hah” for “”hot”)

25. The Progression of Language Acquisition • 10-to-18-months (variability now widens) • Receptive vocabulary (comprehension/recognition) ranges from 10-to-150 words • “holophrastic Period”: 1 word (1 syllable) means an entire phrase (“Bah” means “I want my bottle” or “I want juice” or “I want cup”, etc.) • Word combinations carry meaning (“She’s kissing the ball” v. “she’s kissing the keys”)

26. The Progression of Language Acquisition • 18-months (variability continues to widen) • “Word Spurt” -- 5-to-10 new words per day • “Telegraphic speech” -- “more juice”

27. The Progression of Language Acquisition • 2-years • Explosion in comprehension (understanding whatever you say) • Explosion in “mean length of utterance” (from using 1 word to 4 word phrases) • The beginning of real syntax/grammar use (“eat cookie”, but not “cookie eat”) • The beginnings of “wh” questions

28. Large variability among children in langauge acquisition

29. Large variability among children in langauge acquisition

30. The Progression of Language Acquisition • 2 1/2-to-3 1/2-years • Beginnings of complex sentences (complex syntax) • “Crib talk” -- children chattering to themselves in long conversations • 4-years • Plurals (recongizing a picture of “a ‘wug’ with another “wug” is…? “Wugs”) • Overregularization errors: “mans” and goed” • Gradual use of irregulars (“men” and “went”)

31. The Progression of Language Acquisition • 5-to-6-year olds • Vocabulary that rivals adults (about 10,000 words) • Use of narratives -- descriptions of past events that have story lines • Sustain conversation with back and forth, staying on topic • Make few grammatical errors

32. The Progression of Language Acquisition • 10-year olds • 40,000 word vocabulary • University Students • Up to 150,000 word vocabulary

33. Theories of Language Development: Nativist View • Nativist Views: language is too complex to come from experience alone • Noam Chomsky • “Universal Grammar:” innate structure of syntax • Need only minimal and passive input to trigger language development

34. Theories of Language Development: Nativist View • Nativist Views: language is too complex to come from experience alone • Noam Chomsky & Modularity Hypothesis • Innate & self-contained “module” for language that operates separately from other cognitive functions • Evolved through Darwinian selection • Involves very specific and small number of brain reagions (i.e., Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas)

35. Theories of Language Development: Nativist View • Best evidence for nativist view? • Link between brain structures (Broca & Wernicke) and language • Deaf children surpass their poor-signing parents & impose syntax on their sign language (despite never being taught to do so)

36. Theories of Language Development: Nativist View Points of dispute with a nativist view? • Universal grammar: however there is not one universal grammar (there are several) • Specific grammar requires exposure to mother tongue • Experience is crucial for language to develop • Over-emphasis on syntax: ignoring the importance of language in social context

37. Theories of Language Development: Nativist View Points of dispute with a nativist view? • Ignoring language disorders related to Parkinson’s and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) – no cortical involvement • Language acquisition can be explained by general cognitive function • information-processing models explain some aspects of language acquisition well • no need to claim a “specific language module”

38. Theories of Language Development: Interactionist View

39. Theories of Language Development: Interactionist View

40. Theories of Language Development: Interactionist View

41. · Eleanor Bates: computational models (neural-networks) can explain language development · Information needed to learn language is in the language it’s self General cognitive skills allow infants & children to notice and - learn “statistical regularities” in speech No need for “language modules” to account for findings - These models give the most accurate account of what - children actually do (“over-regularization” errors i.e., “mans” and “goed”). Theories of Language Development: Information-Processing (Connectionist) View

42. Connectionist Theories: Neural-Networks Models

43. Connectionist Theories: Neural-Networks Models

44. Theories of Language Development: Information-Processing (Connectionist) View Critique: Haven’t tested many aspects of language yet

45. Theories of Language Development: “Where the truth may rest?”

46. Language is a “symbol system”: What are symbols?

47. What does it take to use symbols?

48. The evolution of “symbolic representation”