Language Development
Defining Language
Language: a form of communication, whether spoken, written, or signed, that is based on a system of symbols
Language consists of the words used by a community and the rules for varying and combining them.
Infinite Generativity: ability to produce an endless number of meaningful sentences using a finite set of words and rules
Language’s Rule Systems
Phonology: a language’s sound system provides basis for constructing large and expandable set of words out of 2 or 3 dozen phonemes
Morphology: units of meaning involved in word formation
Syntax: ways words are combined to form acceptable phrases and sentences
Semantics: meaning of words and sentences
Pragmatics: appropriate use of language in different contexts
How Language Develops:
Infancy
Whatever language they learn, infants all over the world follow a similar path in language development.
Recognizing Language Sounds
Long before they begin to learn words, infants can make fine distinctions among the sounds of the language (Hollich & Houston, 2007).
Kuhl’s (2007) research has demonstrated that from birth up to about 6 months of age, infants recognize when sounds change no matter from what language the syllables come.
Over about 6 months, infants get even better at perceiving the changes in sounds from their “own” language, the one their parents speak, and they gradually lose the ability to recognize differences that are not important in their own language.
Infants must fish out individual words from the nonstop stream of sound that makes up ordinary speech (Jusczyk, 2000).
Babbling and Other Vocalizations
Long before infants speak recognizable words, they produce a number of vocalizations (Jaswal & Fernald, 2007).
The functions of these early vocalization are to practice making sounds, to communicate, and to attract attention (Lock, 2004).
Babies' sounds go through this sequence during the first year:
crying
cooing
babbling
Gestures
Infants start using gestures, such as showing and pointing, at about 8-12 months of age.
Pointing- considered by language experts as important index of social aspects of language
follows this developmental sequence:
pointing without checking on adult gaze
pointing while looking back and forth between an object and the adult
Lack of pointing is a significant indicator of problems in the infant’s communication system.
First Words
Infants understand words before they can produce or speak them.
The infant’s first spoken word usually doesn’t occur until 10-15 months of age and at an average of about 13 months.
The appearance of first words is a continuation of this communication process (Berko Gleason, 2005).
A child’s first words include those that name important people (dada), familiar animals (kitty), vehicles (car), toys (ball), food (milk), body parts (eye), clothes (hat), household items (clock), and greeting terms (bye).
Above were the first words of babies 50 years ago.
They are the 1st words of babies today.
Children often express various intentions with their single words, so that “cookie” might mean, “That’s a cookie” or “I want a cookie.”
Infants understand about 50 words at about 13 months but they can’t say this many words until about 18 months (Menyuk, Liebergott, & Schultz, 1995).
Infants’ receptive vocabulary (words the child understands) considerably exceeds spoken vocabulary (words the child uses).
average 18 month-old can speak about 50 words
average 2 year-old can speak about 200 words
rapid increase in vocabulary that begins at approximately 18 months is called the vocabulary spurt (Bloom, Lifter, & Broughton, 1985).
Two-Word
By the time children are 18-24 months of age, they usually utter two-word utterances.
To convey meaning with just two words, the child relies heavily on gesture, tone, and context.
In every language, a child’s first combinations of words have an economical quality; they are telegraphic.
Telegraphic speech: the use of short and precise words without grammatical markers such as articles, auxiliary verbs, and other connectives
Early Childhood
Between 2-3 years old, children quickly move into three-, four-, and five-word combinations, and transition from simple sentences/single ideas to complex sentences.
As children go through their early childhood years, their grasp of the rule systems that govern language increases.
Understanding Phonology and Morphology
During the preschool years, most children gradually become sensitive to the sounds of spoken words (National Research Council, 1999).
There is clear evidence that as they move beyond two-word utterances, children know morphological rules.
Children overgeneralize morphological rules, applying them to words that do not follow the rules.
Changes in Syntax and Semantics
Preschool children learn and apply rules of syntax (Marchman & Thal, 2005).
They understand that to ask a question, they need to add a wh- word at the beginning of a sentence and invert the auxiliary verb.
Gains in semantics also characterize early childhood.
As children move beyond the two-word stage, their knowledge of meanings also rapidly advances.
Between 18 months and 6 years of age, young children learn about one new word every waking hour (Carey, 1978; Gelman & Kalish, 2006)!
By the time children enter 1st grade, it is estimated they know about 14,000 words (Clark, 1993).
Children who enter elementary school with a small vocabulary are at risk for developing reading problems (Berko Gleason, 2005; Berninger, 2006).
Why can children learn so many new words so quickly?
One possibility is fast mapping, which involves children’s ability to make an initial connection between a word and its referent after only limited exposure to the word (Woodward, Markman, & Fitzimmons, 1994).
Researchers have found that exposure to words on multiple occasions over several days results in more successful word learning than the same number of exposures in a single day (Childers & Tomasello, 2002).
Children benefit from hearing the words mature speakers use to test and revise their word-referent connections (Gershkoff-Stowe & Hahn, 2007).
Advances in Pragmatics
As children get older, they become increasingly able to talk about things that are not here and not now.
At about 4 years of age, children develop a remarkable sensitivity to the needs of others in conversation and begin to use the article “the”; by 5 they sometimes use the article “a.”
Around age 4 or 5, they change their speech style to suit the situation.
Middle and Late Childhood
Children gain new skills as they enter school that make it possible to learn to read and write, or to advance the reading and writing skills they have developed in early childhood.
These new skills include using language to talk about things that are not physically present, learning what a word is, and learning how to recognize and talk about sounds (Berko Gleason, 2005).
They have to learn the alphabetic principle:
letters of the alphabet represent sounds of the language.
Vocabulary , Grammar, and Metalinguistic Awareness
Changes occur in the way children’s mental vocabulary is organized.
Categorizing becomes easier as children increase their vocabulary.
Vocabulary increases from an average of about 14,000 words at 6 years of age to an average of about 40,000 words by 11 years of age.
Children make similar advances in grammar.
Children's improvement in logical reasoning and analytical skills helps them understand such constructions as the appropriate use of comparatives (shorter, deeper) and subjectives (“If you were president . . .”).
Advances in vocabulary and grammar during the elementary school years are accompanied by the development of metalinguistic awareness:
knowledge about language, such as knowing what a preposition is or the ability to discuss the sounds of a language
Reading
Vocabulary development plays an important role in reading comprehension (Berninger, 2006; Paris & Paris, 2006).
Children who begin elementary school with a small vocabulary are at risk when it comes to learning to read (Berko Gleason, 2003).
Education and language experts continue to debate how children should be taught to read.
Debate focuses on the phonics approach versus the whole-language approach (Reutzel & Cooter, 2008).
The Phonics Approach
emphasizes that reading instruction should focus on phonics and basic rules for translating written symbols into sounds
Early reading instruction should involve simplified materials.
The Whole-language Approach
stresses that reading instruction should parallel children’s natural language learning
Reading materials should be whole and meaningful.
Children can benefit from both approaches, but direct instruction in phonics needs to be emphasized especially in kindergarten and 1st grade (Mayer, 2008; Mraz, Padak, & Rasinski, 2008).
Reading, like other important skills, takes time and effort (Pressley & others, 2007a).
Writing
Children’s writing emerges out of their early scribbles, which appear at around 2-3 years of age.
Most 4 year-olds can print their first name.
Most 5 year-olds can reproduce letters and copy several short words.
Becoming a good writer takes many years and much practice (Jalongo, 2007).
A recent meta-analysis (use of statistical techniques to combine the results of studies) revealed that the following interventions were the most effective in improving 4th through 12th grade students’ writing quality:
1) strategy instruction
2) summarization
3) peer assistance
4) setting goals (Graham & Perin, 2007).
Bilingualism and Second Language Learning
Learning a second language is more readily accomplished by children than adolescents or adults.
Researchers have found that early exposure to a second language is optimal and ensures the least amount of damage to the home language and to the new language (Lessow-Hurley, 2005; Petitto, Kovelman, & Harasymowycz, 2003).
Some aspects of children’s ability to learn a second language are transferred more easily to the second language than others.
Bilingualism
The ability to speak two languages has a positive effect on children’s cognitive development (Gibbons & Ng, 2004).
Children who are fluent in two languages perform better than their single-language counterparts on tests of control of attention, concept formation, analytical reasoning, cognitive flexibility, and cognitive complexity (Bialystok, 2001). In the United States, many immigrant children go from being monolingual in their home language to bilingual in that language and in English, only to end up monolingual speakers of English.
This is called subtractive bilingualism and it can have negative effects on children, who often become ashamed of their home language.
What is the best way to teach children whose primary language is not English?
for the last two decades, the preferred strategy has been bilingual education, which teaches academic subjects to immigrant children in their native language while slowly teaching English (Diaz-Rico & Weed, 2006; Ovando, Combs, & Collier, 2006)
Advocates of bilingual education programs argue that if children who do not know English are taught only in English, they will fall behind in academic subjects.
Critics of bilingual programs argue that too often it is thought that immigrant children need only one year of bilingual education.
Research supports bilingual education in that:
Children have difficulty learning a subject when it is taught in a language they do not understand.
When both languages are integrated in the classroom, children learn the second language more readily and participate more actively (Gonzales, Yawkey, & Minaya-Rowe, 2006; Hakuta, 2005).
Adolescence
Language development during adolescence includes increased sophistication in the use of words.
Adolescents also develop more subtle abilities with words.
Development of abstract thinking goes along with analyzing the function a word plays in a sentence.
Metaphor: implied comparison between unlike things
Satire: the use of irony, derision, or wit to expose folly or wickedness
Adolescents are better than children at:
organizing ideas
distinguishing between general and specific points
stringing together sentences that makes sense
organizing their writing
Young adolescents often speak a dialect of their own with their peers (a variety of language distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, or pronunciation).
Biological Influences
Some language scholars view similarities in how children acquire language all over the world as strong evidence that language has a biological basis.
Evolution and the Brain’s Role in Language
The nervous system and vocal apparatus of humanity’s predecessors changed over hundreds of thousands or millions of years (Fisher & Marcus, 2006).
With advances in the nervous system and vocal structures, Homo sapiens went beyond the grunting and shrieking of other animals to develop speech.
Many experts believe that humans acquired language about 100,000 years ago.
Language gave humans an enormous edge over other animals and increased the chances of human survival (Lachlan & Feldman, 2003; Pinker, 1994).
There is evidence that particular regions of the brain are predisposed to be used for language (Imada & others, 2006).
Two regions involved in language were first discovered in studies of brain-damaged individuals:
Broca’s area
- an area in the left frontal lobe of the brain involved in speech production and grammatical processing
Wernicke’s area:
a region of the brain’s left hemisphere involved in language comprehension
Damage to either of these areas produces types of aphasia:
a loss or impairment of language processing
Individuals with damage to Broca's area have difficulty producing words correctly.
Individuals with damage to Wernicke’s area have poor comprehension and often produce fluent but incomprehensible speech.
Chomsky’s Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
Linguist Noam Chomsky (1957) proposed that humans are biologically prewired to learn language at a certain time and in a certain way.
Chomsky said that children are born into the world with a language acquisition device (LAD):
a biological endowment that enables the child to detect certain features and rules of language, including phonology, syntax, and semantics
LAD is a theoretical construct, not a physical part of the brain.
Environmental Influences
Behaviorists opposed Chomsky's hypothesis and argued that language represents nothing more than chains of responses acquired through reinforcement (Skinner, 1957).
According to behaviorists, language is a complex learned skill, much like playing the piano or dancing.
The behavioral view of language learning has several problems:
It does not explain how people create novel sentences —sentences that people have never heard or spoken before.
Children learn the syntax of their native language even if they are not reinforced for doing so.
The behavioral view is no longer considered a viable explanation of how children acquire language.
Many language experts argue that a child's experiences, the particular language to be learned, and the context in which learning takes place can strongly influence language acquisition (Snow & Yang, 2006; Tomasello, 2006).
Child-directed speech:
language spoken in a higher pitch than normal with simple words and sentences (Zangl & Mills, 2007)
Adults often use strategies other than child-directed speech to enhance the child’s acquisition of language, including recasting, expanding, and labeling.
Recasting
rephrasing something the child has said, perhaps turning it into a question or restating the child’s immature utterance in the form of a fully grammatical sentence
Expanding
restating, in a linguistically sophisticated form, what a child has said
Labeling
identifying the names of objects
The encouragement of language development, not drill and practice, is the key.
Language development is not a simple matter of imitation and reinforcement.
Caring for Children
How Parents Can Facilitate Infants’ & Toddlers’ Language Development
Infants
Be an active conversational partner.
Talk as if the infant understands what you are saying.
Use a language style with which you feel comfortable.
How Parents Can Facilitate Infants’ & Toddlers’
Language Development
Toddlers
Continue to be an active conversational partner.
Remember to listen.
Use a language style with which you are comfortable, but consider
ways of expanding your child’s language abilities and horizons.
Adjust to your child’s idiosyncrasies instead of working against them.
Avoid sexual stereotypes.
Resist making normative comparisons.
An Interactionist View of Language
emphasizes that both biology and experience contribute to
language development (Tomasello, 2006).
Jerome Bruner (1983, 1996) proposed that the sociocultural
context is extremely important in understanding children’s
language development.
Bruner stresses the role of parents and teachers in constructing a
language acquisition support system (LASS).
Most language acquisition researchers believe that children from
a wide variety of cultural contexts acquire their native language
without explicit teaching.
Language and Cognition
Williams Syndrome
genetic birth disorder that includes:
unique combination of expressive verbal skills and competent
interpersonal skills
extremely low IQ
limited spatial and motor control
This raises 2 basic issues concerning the connection between language
and cognition:
Is cognition necessary for language?
Is language necessary for (or important to) cognition?
Thought can influence language, and language can influence though, but rather than being part of a single automated cognitive system, each evolves as a separate, modular, biologically prepared component of the mind.
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