Chapter 9: Language Development

I.                   What is language

A.               Symbolic – uses arbitrary symbols that are not related to the concept they represent

B.               Grammatical – uses a system of rules that can produce communications that are unique; can express things never before expressed

C.               Language is rooted in biology (universality) and also requires experience (great diversity)

II.                Describing children’s language development

A.               Phonology – language sounds

1.                 Babbling – initial includes variety of language sounds, becomes increasingly limited to those of their home language

2.                 Produce increasing number of sounds from 18 months to 8/9 years

3.                 Phonemic awareness, important for later reading skill

B.               Morphological development – combination of sounds into meaningful units

1.                 Mean Length of Utterance (MLU), the average number of morphemes per sentence, is an indicator or language development

2.                 Children learn the rules for attaching bound morphemes, and apply them inappropriately to irregular words (overregularization) as demonstrated by the “wug test.”

C.               Syntactic development – knowledge of grammatical rules

1.                 From 2 years on children can recognize correct word order

2.                 Complex sentences emerge 2-4 years of age

3.                 Most grammatical rules demonstrated by age five

D.                     Semantic development – learning the meaning of words

1.                 Vocabulary development

a.     The word spurt

1.                 after about 50 words are acquired, child goes through period of rapid learning

2.                 may be due to process of fast-mapping

3.                 Early words often familiar people, toys, food, words of social interaction

2.                 Constraints on word-learning (lexical constraints) – limits on possible word meanings

a.   whole-object assumption

b.  taxonomic assumption

c.   mutual exclusivity assumption

d.  use of constraints and social cues suggest that children are prepared to acquire language

3.                 Overextensions and underextensions – over- or under-applying a word

E.                Pragmatics – socially appropriate use of language; how language can be modified in response to different circumstances

1.                 Rules of conversation

2.                 Speech registers

F.                Communicative competence

1.                 Other children as well as adults shape early language development

2.                 Communication and egocentricism

3.                 Metacommunication

4.                 Newer work suggests less geocentricism in preschoolers’ language; (as evidenced by verbal repairs, changing speech patterns when talking to younger children)

III.             Some theoretical perspectives of language development – explanations of how language (in particular, syntax) is acquired

A.               Behaviorists:  language acquired by conditioning, imitating models

B.               Nativist perspectives:  Chomsky rejected the idea that language is driven strictly by the environment

C.               Children are better at language acquisition because of their limited cognitive ability

D.               Social-interactionist

IV.            Bilingualism and second language learning

A.               Bilingualism may be simultaneous (learn two languages at the same time) or sequential (learn one after the other)

1.                 May be some early confusion when learning languages simultaneously, but these disappear by around age 8

2.                 Benefits for bilingualism:  recognize more phonemes, greater sensitivity to cultural values and speakers of both languages, greater metalinguistic awareness, enhanced executive control (perhaps seen as early as infancy)

B.               Semilingualism – lack of mastery in both languages. 

V.               Gender differences in language acquisition

A.                     Evidence of a female advantage varied; mothers talk more and used more supportive speech with daughters

B.                     Gender difference may be cultural, reflecting culture’s gender-specific expectations

C.                     Some differences in early language demonstrated that appear unrelated to socialization

VI.            Language and thought – does thinking determine the development of language, or does using language promote cognitive changes?

A.               Many language theorists would say that language simply expresses thought

B.               Others (such as Bruner) suggest that language is a tool that affects thinking

C.                     Vygotsky proposed that speech and thought initially have different origins and later merge

D.                     Egocentric speech (talking to one’s self) guides children’s behavior and later becomes inner speech

E.                      Berk found young children used externalized speech to help solve math problems; brighter children used external speech early and switched to covert speech earlier

F.                      Private speech more likely to be used on difficult rather than easy tasks