How Children Learn Language. Lec.1

1. How Children Learn Language. Lec.1 The development of speech production Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, & morphemic

2. Speech production & speech comprehension • Language acquisition consists of 2 different , but related, psychological processes: • Speech production & speech comprehension

3. From vocalizing to babbling to speech • 1. Vocalizing to babbling • before uttering speech sounds, infants make a variety of sounds: crying, cooing, & gurgling. • consistency & generality • Infants everywhere seem to make the same variety of sounds, even children who are born deaf (unlearned ability)

4. From vocalizing to babbling to speech • Babbling • (7 months old) Babbling structure mama, baba, • The sounds that infants make & speech sounds of the world languages • Babbling & the intonation of the language to which the baby is exposed (intonation contour) • Normal children (vocalize  cry  babble) • Deaf children (vocalize  cry)

5. From vocalizing to babbling to speech • 2. babbling to speech • Around 1 year old, (+/ -), children start uttering their first words. • Reacquiring new speech sounds • Sounds such as /p/, /t/ , /m/ , /a/, appear after /x/, /k/ , & /l/ • WHY? • Discontinuity between babbling & meaningful speech • WHY? • Advanced babbling seems to approach the CV combinations of later meaningful speech.

6. From vocalizing to babbling to speech • 3. Explaining the acquisition order of consonant & vowels • In the meaningful speech stage: • consonants are acquired in a front-to-back order, & (ii) whereas vowels are acquired in a back-to-front order • 2 variables dominate this stage : (i) visibility of articulation, & (ii) ease of articulation

7. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic • 1. Naming: one-word utterances: • When do children start to say their first words? • (4 months-18 months) Individual differences • Children can be said to have learned their first words when (i) they are able to utter recognizable speech form, and when (ii) this is done in conjunction with some object or event in the environment.

8. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic • Children first use nouns as proper nouns to refer to specific objects, after which they may or may not extend the meaning correctly for common nouns. • E.g. • Dada  to identify 1 particular person/all men

9. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic • 2. Holophrastic function: one-word utterance: • Children do not only use single words to refer to objects; they also use single words to express complex thoughts that involve those objects. • Adult vs. child

10. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic • 3. telegraphic speech: two-and three-word utterances: • Around 2 years old, children begin to produce two-and three-word utterances (table 1)

11. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic (Table 1)

12. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic • Features of telegraphic speech: • Variety of purposes & complexity of semantic relations • Low incidence of function words (articles, prepositions, & ‘be’). It is only (verbs, nouns, & adjectives) WHY? • Close approximation of the language’s word order (my cup NOT cup my)

13. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic • 4. Morphemic acquisition: Once two-and three-word utterances have been acquired, children have something in which to elaborate. They start to add function words, & inflections to their utterances. Function words: prepositions, articles, modals, & auxiliaries Inflections: plural ‘s’ /s/ & /z/ Morphemes are meaningful units

14. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic • The Brown morpheme acquisition research (1973) • The acquisition of function words & inflections in English • Brown found out that children acquired the morphemes in a relatively similar order (Table 2) • Other studies confirmed Brown’s results

15. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic

16. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic • Other researchers have found some variation among children in terms of the speed in which they learned the morphemes. • Similarity in normal children & children with language disorders

17. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic • WHY this order of acquisition? • A psychological learning principle, which is universal & accepted see (Steinberg et al : 2001) • Ease of observability of referent • Meaningfulness of referent • Distinctiveness of the sound signal that indicates the referent

18. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic • Ease of observability of referent • The more easily the child can see or hear or otherwise experience a referent , the more likely are such referents – in conjunction with the speech sounds spoken by other- to be stored in memory.

19. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic • 2. meaningfulness of referent • Referent objects, situations, and events that are of interest to the child and about which the child desires to communicate will be learned faster than those that lack such interest. • It is natural that the child will remember the more highly meaningful referents • child utterances reflect the concepts that the child wishes to communicate

20. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic • 3. distinctiveness of the sound signal that indicates the referent • In order to learn a morpheme, it is essential that the child be able to identify the speech sounds that signals the morpheme. • The greater the sound distinction involved, the easier it will be for a morpheme signal to be learned.

21. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic • Why are progressive & prepositions ‘in’ and ‘on’ learned earliest? • Objects in the child’s world are of a great importance to the child • Children are interested in action & location e.g. the prepositions ‘in’ & ‘on’ are learned before because: • They are sandwiched between 2 concrete nouns • The referents remain stationary in physical space with respect to one another, thus allowing for ease of observability

22. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic • Why are plural & possessive learned before third person? /s/ , /z/ , & /iz/ • The plural & possessive are much more involved with observable & meaningful referents for the child than the third person singular • Number & possessions are more easily to be recognized than abstract concepts

23. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic • Why are plural & possessive learned before third person? • For the plural e.g. one cookie vs. two cookies • For the possessive e.g. referents are more easily noticeable • For third person e.g. an abstract relationship

24. Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemic • Why is past irregular learned before past regular? Meaningfulness, sound signal, & frequency • Irregular verbs tend to be highly important ones in everyday life, & • They are the most common ones in everyday life as they tend to occur more frequently than the regular verbs e.g. ‘came’, ‘went’, ‘broke’, fell’, ‘ran’, etc.

25. Recommended films • Recommended films How children acquire and produce language (BBC 2001)