An introduction to psycholinguistics

How Children Learn Language

Introduction

Psychological processes

Speech Production

Speech Comprehension

The Development of Speech ProductionFrom Vocalization To Babbling To Speech

Vocalization to babbling

CryingCooing GurglingEven deaf infants do it!

Vocalization To BabblingAround the seventh month, children

ordinarily begin to babble (syllabic reduplication).

E.g. Baba, momo, panpan, dadaBoth open syllables CV (“momo” and “baba”)

and close syllables CVC (panpan).From as early as 6 months of age infants

from different language communities begin to babble somewhat distinctively. (intonation)

Deaf infants deprived of hearing do not do. They babble with their hands!

Babbling to SpeechAround 1 year of age.There is some degree of discontinuity from babbling

to the production of speech sounds. Japerson (1993)There is some discontinuity between babbling and

meaningful speech where the kinds of sounds that occur in babbling are not always immediately realized in meaningful speech.

Intentional and non-intentionalSpeech is dependent to some degree on babbling.

By babbling the chilled will get the chance to learn them.

Explaining the acquisition order of consonants and vowelsConsonants are acquired in a front-to-back

order, thus, /m/,/p/, /b/, /t/ and /d/ tend to precede /k/ and /x/.

Vowels seem to be in a back-to-front order, /a/ and /o/ preceding /i/ and /Λ/.

Visibility of articulatorsEase of articulation

Early speech stages: naming, holophrastic, telegraphic, morphemicNaming: one-word utterancesWhen do children start to say their first words? Not at all conclusive.The mere uttering of sound like mama may or may

not indicate word knowledge.Children can be said to have learned their first

word when 1 they are able to utter a recognizable speech form, 2 this is done in conjunction with some object or

event in the environment. E.g. dada

Holophrastic Function: One-word UtterancesChildren do not only use words for objects,

they use single words for expressing complex thoughts as well.

Mama as in I want mama.Mama as in the shoe belongs to mama.Holophrastic=>holo=>whole and phras=>

indicates phrase or sentence.

Telegraphic Speech: Two- And Three-word UtterancesAround 2 years of age or so children begin to

produce two- and three-word utterances. Table 1.1 page 9.

Variety of purposes and semantic relations. Regarding the purpose, The child uses language to request, warn, name, refuse, answer, etc. and regarding semantic relations there are relations and concepts as agent, action, experiencer, receiver, etc.

Telegraphic Speech: Two- And Three-word UtterancesLow incident of function words:• A second feature of the child’s utterances is

the low incidence of function words such as articles, propositions, and the copula ‘be’.

Morpheme AcquisitionEase Of Observability Of Referent

Meaningfulness Of Referent

Distinctiveness Of The Signal That Indicates The Referent.

Ease Of ObservabilityThe more easily a chilled can see or hear or

otherwise experience the referent, e.g. seeing a dog, smelling a cookie, hearing a car, feeling hungry, the more likely are such referent – in conjunction with the speech sounds spoken by others – to be stored in memory.

“The dog is barking” is much easier for the chilled to learn than “the dog will bark” because it involves a present ongoing action.

Meaningfulness of referentReferent objects, situations, and events that

are of interest to the chilled and about which the chilled desires to communicate will be learned faster than those that lack such interest. It is only natural that the chilled will remember the more highly meaningful referents.

E.g. ‘car table’, ‘car going’, ‘doll sitting’, ‘doll walking’.

So it is clear that function items have little inherent meaning for a chilled who is just beginning to learn language.

Distinction Of The Sound Signal That Indicate The ReferentThe grater the sound distinction involved,

the easier it will be for a morpheme signal to be learned.

For example lets compare the copula ‘be’ in ‘what is it?’ with the auxiliary ‘be’ in ‘Mary’s playing.’

Later Speech Stages: Rule Formation For Negatives And Other Complex StructuresNegative sentences, question forms, passives,

and relative clauses are just a few of the many complex rules that children acquire in their first five years.

Negation is one of the earliest sentence structure rules acquired by children.

Page 19, periods.Period 1 neg+U (no fall)Period 2 aux+neg (don’t fall)Period 3 almost complete sentences.

The Development Of Speech ComprehensionCan speech sound reach the fetus while it is

still in the uterus? Benzaquen at al. (1990). microphone inside

the uterus.Lecanuet et al. (1989). The two sound

sequences.DeCasper and fifer (1980). Recording of a

mother reading a story.Locke (1993). Suggested that the learning of

the mothers voice have occurred within the first 12 hours after the birth.

Speech comprehension occurs without speech production: the case of mute-hearing childrenChristopher NolanAnn McDonaldRie

These mute persons develop a grammar, a mental grammar based on speech comprehension that enables them to understand the language that they were exposed to.

In Normal Children Speech Comprehension Develops In Advance Of Speech ProductionProgress goes bit by bit.As the chilled acquires an aspect of grammar

for comprehension, the chilled will then try to figure out how to use it in production.

Comprehension and production processes develop in a parallel mode, with production always trying to keep up with comprehension.

Speech Production Lags Behind Speech Comprehension The Huttenlocher study 1974He studied four young children, aged 10 to

13 months, over a six-month period and found that they were able to comprehend speech at a level beyond that to which they had progressed in production.

The Sachs and Truswell studyThey found that children who could only

produce single-word utterances nevertheless could comprehend syntactic structures composed of more than one word.

The Relation Of Speech Production, Speech Comprehension And Thought Speech comprehension necessarily precedes

speech productionIn learning any of the worlds languages,

children must first be able to comprehend the meaning of the language before they themselves can produce it.

Thought As The Basis Of Speech ComprehensionThe meanings that underlie speech

comprehension are concepts that are in a persons mind. speech sounds initially are simply sounds signifying nothing. The contents of thought are provided by the child’s experience of environment , i.e. dogs, cats, people, food, and events concerning those objects, and the child's experience of its own feeling, emotions, desires, and conceptual constructions (thoughts).

Parentese And Baby TalkParentese is the sort of speech that children

receive when they are young. We have heard this word in brown’s book as caregiver speech. It is also known as Motherese, adult-to-child language and as child-Directed Speech.

Characteristics of ParenteseImmediacy and concretenessGrammaticality of inputShort sentences and simple structuresVocabulary: simple and shortExaggerated intonation, pitch, and stress

Baby talkBaby talk is a form of Parentese but with its

own characteristics. Baby talk involves the use of vocabulary and syntax that is overly simplified and reduced.

Vocabulary: bow-wow (dog) هاپوand are mostly CV

In English bow-wow and Japanese wan-wan are apparently simulation of the barking of dogs. How about in Persian. I couldn’t find one?!

The effect of parents and baby talk in language learningDo Parentese and baby talk facilitate

language learning? The studies done on these questions demonstrated a positive but small effect.