week 7 How children learn language Dr' Somsri Jansom

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??????????????? (week 7)How children learn
language Dr. Somsri Jansom
EG 4753 Language Acquisition
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Overview of Week 7

• Language development of children
• Midterm Exam

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Psycholinguistics

• the study of the connections between language
  and mind
• Its emergence is promoted by the insistence at
  the time of the linguist Chomsky that
  linguistics should be regarded as a part of
  cognitive psychology.
• Also, by the growing interest in the question of
  language acquisition by children

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Steinburg (1993) discussed two psychological
processes

• 1. Speech production
• 2. Speech understanding

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1. Speech production

• 1. Vocalization
• 1.1 (First few months) Children make variety
  of natural sounds which are not speech sounds.
  However, the production gives the children
  exercise in articulation and control.
• 1.2 (6-10mths) Babbling. Children use speech
  sounds mainly vowels and consonant.

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• Babies first acquire the intonation (melody)
  patterns of their language, even before producing
  any words.
• - Around 6 mths of age, English-exposed children
  start to sound somewhat English.
• - By 10-11 mths. Children will often babble in
  pseudo non-word sentences using the intonation
  patterns.

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1. Speech production

• 2. One-word utterance
• First words have been reported during the age of
  4-18 mths. (average 10 mths)
• Despite the great differences in the onset of
  speech, by 3 years of age, differences have
  largely disappeared.
• No known relationship btw intelligence and the
  onset of speech.
• slow to talk doesnt mean slow to understand.

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• We consider that a child knows the word only when
  we can see the meaningful use of the sounds.
• A single word can be used for many purposes e.g.
  to name, to request, etc. because the child lacks
  the knowledge and ability to form proper
  sentences.
• Called holophrastic stage use a single word
  to express a whole sentence.

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1. Speech production

• 3. Two- and Three-word utterances
• At 18 mths, children start to produce two- and
  three-word utterances.
• The most striking features about the utterances
  are the variety of purposes and the complexity of
  ideas which they show. (Table 1.1)
• Mainly use content words (N, V, Adj) and rarely
  use function words (articles, prep, aux, modal)

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• Lack of inflections (-s, -ed, -ing, Jays car)
• When listening to speech, the child seeks out the
  essence of words, discarding extra which are
  burdensome to figure out.
• The extra features can be learned later, but this
  must wait until basic words are learned first.
• Called telegraphic stage use only content
  words, no function words.

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1. Speech production

• 4. Function words and inflections
• Roger Brown conducted a long-term study with 3
  children focusing on the acquisition of different
  function words and inflections (grammatical
  morphemes).
• Plural and possessive before third person
• Present before past
• Past irregular before past regular
• Aux be regular before contracted

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1. Speech production

• 5. Complex sentences
• The acquisition of Negation (Bellugi and Klima)
• Period 1 No money.
• Period 2 I dont want it, He no bite you
• Period 3 Paul cant have one. I am not a doctor,
  You didnt caught me.
• Took 6 mths to pass through the three periods

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2. Speech understanding

• 1. The basis of speech production
• Children are exposed to the language to learn it
  and the speech to which they are exposed must be
  related to objects, events, and situations in the
  environment and to experiences in their mind.
• To be regarded as having knowledge of the words,
  one must know the meaning of what is uttered.

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How a child learn the meaning?

• The child must first hear the word spoken by
  others
• At the same time that the word is spoken, some
  relevant environmental experience must occur.
• Speech understanding precedes speech production.
• Speech comprehension develops in advance of
  speech production.

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2. Speech understanding

• 2. Learning Abstract Words
• Children observe speech, along with situations
  and events in the physical environment and then
  relate them to experiences and processes in the
  mind.
• E.g. hungry

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3. Parentese and Baby Talk

• Parentese speech that children received when
  they are young.
• - generally about whats happening/ not about
  abstract or remote objects/ slower / pauses/ high
  pitch
• - grammatically correct
• Baby Talk The use of vocab and syntax that is
  overly simplified and reduced.
• - modifications to foster communication/
  own family words/ -iy words