PSY 369: Psycholinguistics

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PSY 369 Psycholinguistics

• Language Acquisition
• Learning words

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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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Language Sponges

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

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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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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
Of course he said arf. What else did you
expect his first word to be?
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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

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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

• Typically context bound (relevant to the
  immediate environment)
• Important people
• Objects that move
• Objects that can be acted upon
• Familiar actions
• Nouns before verbs

Charlies words
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Semantic Development

• 1-general names
• dog
• 2- specific names
• mommy
• 3-action words
• 4-modifiers
• red
• 5-personal/social
• yes, no, please
• 6-functional
• what

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Later words

• Then
• Children come to use words in more adult-like
  ways
• Words start to be used in wider range of contexts
• Children use wider range of word types
• referential words (ball, doggie, chair)
• proper names (Mummy, Spot)
• actions (open, wash, tickle)
• properties, states, qualities (more, gone, up,
  on, dirty)
• social-pragmatic words (no, please)
• few frozen phrases (all gone, whats that)

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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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Learning word meanings

• Learning words

• Fast mapping
• Using the context to guess the meaning of a word

• All got the olive tray
• Several weeks later still had some of the meaning

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Learning word meanings

• Learning words

• Extension
• Finding the appropriate limits of the meaning of
  words
• Underextension
• applying a word too narrowly
• Overextension
• applying a word too broadly

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Extensions of meaning
tee
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
googie
111,1
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
googie
111,1
111,2
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
googie
111,1
111,2
111,24
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
googie
111,1
111,2
111,24
tee/hosh
111,25
26
Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
googie
111,1
111,2
111,24
tee/hosh
111,25
hosh
111,26
27
Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
googie
111,1
111,2
111,24
tee/hosh
111,25
hosh
111,26
111,27
pushi
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
googie
111,1
111,2
111,24
tee/hosh
111,25
hosh
111,26
111,27
pushi
moo-ka
hosh
20,10
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Extensions of meaning
tee
19,11
110,18
googie
111,1
111,2
111,24
tee/hosh
111,25
hosh
111,26
111,27
pushi
moo-ka
hosh
20,10
20,20
biggie googie
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Strategies for learning
Things to notice

• One-word-per-referent
• If a new word comes in for a referent that is
  already named, replace it
• Exception to that was horse, but it only lasted
  a day here

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Strategies for learning
Things to notice

• Over and under Extension can occur at the same
  time

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Strategies for learning

• Things to notice

• Child tries different things, if a word doesnt
  work then try something else
• e.g., hosh didnt for for the large dog, switched
  to biggie doggie

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Learning word meanings

• Learning words
• Learning the meanings of words
• Quines problem
• Whole object
• Mutual exclusivity

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Indeterminacy Frog
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Quines gavagai problem

• The problem of reference
• a word may refer to a number of referents (real
  world objects)
• a single object or event has many objects, parts
  and features that can be referred to

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Constraints on Word Learning

• Markman (1989)
• Perhaps children are biased to entertain certain
  hypotheses about word meanings over others
• These first guesses save them from logical
  ambiguity, and keep them logical confusion, and
  get them started out on the right track

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Strategies for learning

• Object-scope (whole object) constraint
• words refer to whole objects rather than to parts
  of objects
• Taxonomic constraint
• words refer to categories of similar objects
• Mutual exclusivity constraint
• each object has one label different words refer
  to separate, non-overlapping categories of objects

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Language explosion continues

• The language explosion is not just the result of
  simple semantic development the child is not
  just adding more words to his/her vocabulary.
• Child is mastering basic syntactic and
  morphological rules.