PSY 369: Psycholinguistics

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PSY 369 Psycholinguistics

• Language Acquisition

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Acquiring language
Dr. Cutting, language sure is complicated. How
do you expect us to learn all this stuff?

• Student in my psycholinguistics course

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Acquiring language
Whadda ya mean, mommy. I can talk. I can
understand what you say. Whats so hard?

• Student in my psycholinguistics course

• 2 year old

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Acquiring language

• How do we (humans) do it? How do we learn to use
  this complex behavior?

• Student in my psycholinguistics course

• 2 year old

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Overview

• Some of the major issues
• Imitation vs Innateness
• Born to walk
• Born to talk?
• How much explicit teaching do we get?
• Commonalities across languages and cultures
• Language is complex everywhere
• Sounds, words, syntax, and more
• No primitive (simple) languages
• Language development is similar everywhere
• Similar stages

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Typical language development

• 6 Months
• Responds to his name
• Responds to human voices without visual cues by
  turning his head and eyes
• Responds appropriately to friendly and angry tones

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Typical language development

• 12 Months
• Uses one or more words with meaning (this may be
  a fragment of a word)
• Understands simple instructions, especially if
  vocal or physical cues are given
• Practices inflection
• Is aware of the social value of speech

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Typical language development

• 18 Months
• Has vocabulary of approximately 5-20 words
• Vocabulary made up chiefly of nouns
• Some echolalia (repeating a word or phrase over
  and over)
• Is able to follow simple commands

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Typical language development

• 24 Months
• Can name a number of objects common to his
  surroundings
• Is able to use at least two prepositions
• Combines words into a short sentence
• Vocabulary of approximately 150-300 words
• Volume and pitch of voice not yet well-controlled

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Typical language development

• 36 Months
• Use pronouns I, you, me correctly
• Is using some plurals and past tenses
• Knows at least three prepositions
• Handles three word sentences easily
• Has in the neighborhood of 900-1000 words
• About 90 of what child says should be
  intelligible
• Verbs begin to predominate

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In the beginning
and the womb

• Prelinguistic communication

• We experience language before were even born

What was that? Youre mumbling.

• Normal human language uses sounds between 100 and
  4000 Hz
• Sound travels through skin and fluids too
• In the womb, sounds up to 1000 Hz
• Cant hear individual words
• But can hear
• Intonation, durations, rhythm, stress

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In the beginning
and the womb

• Prelinguistic communication

• We experience language before were even born

• Mahler (mid 80s, in France)
• 4 day old babies
• Nonnutritive sucking method

• Played French or Russian
• Sucking pattern changed if language was switched
• Sucking pattern didnt change if language wasnt
  switched
• Babies knew (something about) the languages

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In the beginning
and the womb

• Prelinguistic communication

• We experience language before were even born

• DeCasper, et al (1994)

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In the beginning
and the womb

• Prelinguistic communication

• We experience language before were even born

• DeCasper, et al (1994)

Fetal heart monitor

• Had mothers read stories everyday to fetuses
  during 34-38 weeks of pregnancy
• After 38th week, two stories were played to the
  fetuses (but mom couldnt hear it)

• Same story
• Different story

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In the beginning
and the womb

• Prelinguistic communication

• We experience language before were even born

• DeCasper, et al (1994)

Fetal heart monitor

• Had mothers read stories everyday to fetuses
  during 34-38 weeks of pregnancy
• After 38th week, two stories were played to the
  fetuses (but mom couldnt hear it)

• Same story
• Different story

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In the beginning
and the womb

• Prelinguistic communication

• We experience language before were even born

• DeCasper, et al (1994)
• Had mothers read stories everyday to fetuses
  during 34-38 weeks of pregnancy
• After 38th week, two stories were played to the
  fetuses (but mom couldnt hear it)

Fetal heart monitor
Decreased fetal heart-rate

• Same story
• Different story

• Baby learned something about the story

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The early days

• Prelinguistic communication

• After birth

• Child-directed speech (motherese)

• Phonological differences are key
• Higher in pitch
• More variable in pitch
• More exaggerated intonation
• All may help to orient and maintain attention of
  infant
• May help bootstrap later learning

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The early days

• Prelinguistic communication

• After birth

• Early conversations

• Turn taking behaviors
• From the movie - breast feeding conversations
• Parents interpret infants vocalizations as
  having meaning (also from the movie, Snows work)

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The early days phonology

• Eimas et al, (1971)
• Categorical perception in infants (1 month olds)

Sharp phoneme boundary
Young infants can distinguish different phonemes
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The early days phonology

• Categorical perception in infants

• A number of studies suggest that very young
  infants can perceive between a number of phonemic
  distinctions (e.g., Kuhl Meltzhoff, 1997)
• Not limited to their language context
• However, as they age/experience their context
  language the ability to perceive some of these
  distinctions are lost (10 to 12 months)

• Nature/nurture debate
• Are humans pre-programmed to distinguish speech
  sounds?

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The early days phonology

• Eimas et al, (1971)
• Categorical perception in infants (1 month olds)

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Sharp phoneme boundary
Chinchillas do it too! Kuhl and Miller (1975)
/ba/
Are they pre-programmed to perceive human speech?
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Prelinguistic communication

• Prelinguistic gestures (around 8 months)

• Demonstration that the infant is trying to
  communicate in some way
• e.g., pointing behaviors
• Criteria
• Waiting
• Persistence
• Development of alternative plans

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Early speech production

• Vocal track differences

Infant
Adult

• Infants vocal tracts are smaller, and initially
  shaped differently
• The infants tongue fills the entire mouth,
  reducing the range of movement
• As the facial skeleton grows, the range for
  movement increases (which probably contributes to
  the increased variety of sounds infants start to
  produce)
• May be (in part) why production lags behind
  comprehension

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Early speech production

• The progression of cooing and babbling follows a
  universal pattern.

• Role of both nature and nurture
• Nature/Biology plays an important role in the
  emergence of cooing babbling.
• The form of the childs vocalization is also
  affected by the linguistic environment.

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Early speech production

• The progression of cooing and babbling follows a
  universal pattern.
• Babies, until around 6 months old, can produce
  sounds/phonemes that their parents cannot produce
  or distinguish

• 6 - 8 weeks cooing
• 4 - 6 months babbling

• Clear consonants and vowels are produced
• da, gi

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Early speech production

• The progression of cooing and babbling follows a
  universal pattern.
• Babies, until around 6 months old, can produce
  sounds/phonemes that their parents cannot produce
  or distinguish

• 6 - 8 weeks cooing
• 4 - 6 months babbling

• 6 - 7 months Reduplicated babbling
• dada, gigi

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Early speech production

• The progression of cooing and babbling follows a
  universal pattern.
• Babies, until around 6 months old, can produce
  sounds/phonemes that their parents cannot produce
  or distinguish

• 6 - 8 weeks cooing
• 4 - 6 months babbling

• 6 - 7 months Reduplicated babbling

• 8 - 9 months CVC clusters may appear
• bod, tat

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Early speech production

• The progression of cooing and babbling follows a
  universal pattern.
• Babies, until around 6 months old, can produce
  sounds/phonemes that their parents cannot produce
  or distinguish

• 10 or 11 months Variegated babbling
• Combining incomprehensible words
• dab gogotah
• Intonation patterns
• May reflect phonological rules of spoken language
  context

• By 12 to 14 months some evidence of language
  specific phonological rules

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Early speech production
Of course he said arf. What else did you
expect his first word to be?
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Language Sponges

• Learning words

• About 3,000 new words per year, especially in the
  primary grades
• As many as 8 new words per day
• Production typically lags behind comprehension

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Language Sponges

• Lots of individual differences
• But there is also a consistent pattern

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Vocabulary growth

• Methods used to study this
• Observational data (60s to present)
• Diary studies
• Parents record their kids language development
• Taped language samples (Roger Brown)
• Small numbers of children (Eve, Adam, Sarah)
• Went to home every month made tape recordings
• Extensive study needed
• Hard to kids to say all the words you know or
  say a question
• Early phonological production isnt like adult
  production, often need to take great care
  deciding what the child meant
• Large database CHILDES
• Many kids, many languages, including children
  with language difficulties

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Early speech production

• Transition to speech

No. my fis.
No. My fis!
This is your fis?
Yes, my fis.
Your fis?
Oh, your fish.
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Early speech production

• Transition to speech

• This is your fis?

No, my fis.

• Cant hear the difference?
• Rejects adult saying fis
• Cant produce the correct sounds?
• Sometimes, but evidence suggests not always the
  case
• More general process of simplification
• frees up resources for concentrating on other
  aspects of language learning

Your fis.
No, my fis.
Oh, your fish.
Yes, my fis.
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Early speech production

• Transition to speech

• Early words
• Common Phonological processes
• Reduction
• Delete sounds from words
• Coalescence
• Combine different syllables into one syllable
• Assimilation
• Change one sound into a similar sound within the
  word
• Reduplication
• One syllable from a multi-syllabic word is
  repeated

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Early speech production

• First words
• Around 10-15 months (lots of individual
  differences)

• Emergence of systematic, repeated productions of
  phonologically consistent forms
• Idiomorphs - personalized words

• Developed in systematic ways
• Sometimes simplifications of adult speech
• Or relate to sounds of the objects
• Demonstrate
• Creative, not simply imitation
• Learned importance of consistency of names