Slide 1 10 Language Development What

Slide 1 10—Language Development • • • What Is Language? How Language Develops Biological and Environmental Influences Language and Cognition Summary Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 2 What Is Language? • Defining Language – Language • A form of communication, whether spoken, written, or signed, that is based on a system of symbols. – Infinite Generativity • The ability to produce an endless number of meaningful sentences using a finite set of words and rules. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 3 What Is Language? • Language’s Rule Systems – Phonology • A language’s sound system. • Provides a basis for constructing a large and expandable set of words out of two or three dozen phonemes. – Morphology • Units of meaning involved in word formation. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 4 What Is Language? • Language’s Rule Systems (continued) – Syntax • The ways words are combined to form acceptable phrases and sentences. – Semantics • The meaning of words and sentences. – Pragmatics • The appropriate use of language in different contexts. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 5 What Is Language? The Rule Systems of Language • Refer to Figure 10. 1 Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 6 Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 1 • Define language and describe its rule systems – Review • What is language? • What are language’s five main rule systems? Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 7 Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 1 – Reflect • How good are your family members and friends at the pragmatics of language? Describe an example in which one of the individuals showed pragmatic skills and another in which he or she did not. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 8 How Language Develops • Infancy – Babbling and Other Vocalizations • The purpose of early communications is to attract attention from caregivers and others in the environment. – The first year sequence of sounds and gestures: • Crying • Cooing • Babbling • Gestures Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 9 How Language Develops • Infancy (continued) – Recognizing Language Sounds • Long before they learn words, infants make fine distinctions among the sounds of language. • From birth to about 6 months of age, infants recognize when sounds change despite the language that is being spoken. • By about 6 months of age, infants have started to specialize in the speech sounds of their native language. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 10 How Language Develops From Universal Linguist to Language-Specific Listener • Refer to Figure 10. 2 Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 11 How Language Develops • Infancy (continued) – First Words • Infants indicate their first understanding of words between 8 to 12 months. • Spoken vocabulary begins when the infant utters its first word, usually at about 10 to 15 months of age. • The average 18 -month-old speaks about 50 words; children speak about 200 words by 2 years of age. • Overextension is the tendency to apply a word to objects that are not related to, or are inappropriate for, the word’s meaning; underextension is the tendency to apply a word too narrowly. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 12 How Language Develops Variations in Language Milestones • Refer to Figure 10. 3 Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 13 How Language Develops • Infancy (continued) – Two-Word Utterances • By the time children are 18 to 24 months of age, they usually utter two-word statements. • Telegraphic speech is the use of short and precise words without grammatical markers to communicate. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 14 How Language Develops Some Language Milestones in Infancy • Refer to Figure 10. 4 Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 15 How Language Develops • Early Childhood – Between ages 2 and 3 years, 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. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 16 How Language Develops • Early Childhood (continued) – 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. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 17 How Language Develops Stimuli in Berko’s Study of Young Children’s Understanding of Morphological Rules • Refer to Figure 10. 5 Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 18 How Language Develops • Early Childhood (continued) – Understanding Syntax • Preschool children learn and apply rules of syntax. They understand that to ask a question, they need to add a wh- word at the beginning of a sentence and need to invert the auxiliary verb. – Advances in Semantics • As children move beyond the two-word stage, their knowledge of meanings also rapidly advances. • The speaking vocabulary of a 6 -year-old ranges from 8, 000 to 14, 000 words. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 19 How Language Develops • Early Childhood (continued) – Advances in Pragmatics • Displacement: At about 3 years of age children improve their ability to talk about things that are not physically present. • 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. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 20 How Language Develops • Middle and Late Childhood – Vocabulary and Grammar • Children become less tied to the actions and perceptual dimensions associated with words, and they become more analytical in their approach to the words. • Metalinguistic awareness, the knowledge of language that allows children “to think about their language, understand what words are, and even define them” (Berko Gleason, 2005), improves during the elementary school years. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 21 How Language Develops • Middle and Late Childhood (continued) – Reading • Children who enter elementary school with a small vocabulary are at risk for developing reading problems. • Reading skills develop over many years and require a prior ability to use language to talk about things that are not present; learning what a word is; and learning how to recognize and talk about sounds. • Alphabetic principle: Letters represent sounds in the language. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 22 How Language Develops A Model of Developmental Stages in Reading • Refer to Figure 10. 6 Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 23 How Language Develops • Middle and Late Childhood (continued) – Reading (continued) • Whole-language approach—An approach that stresses that reading instruction should parallel children’s natural language learning. Reading materials should be whole and meaningful. • Basic-skills-and-phonetics approach—An approach that emphasizes that reading instruction should teach phonics and basic rules for translating written symbols into sounds. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 24 How Language Develops • Middle and Late Childhood (continued) – Writing • Children’s writing emerges out of their early scribbles, which appear at around 2 to 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 lots of practice. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 25 How Language Develops The Relation of Reading Achievement to Number of Pages Read Daily • Refer to Figure 10. 7 Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 26 How Language Develops • Bilingualism – Bilingualism, the ability to speak two languages, has a positive effect on children's cognitive development. • Bilingual children perform better than their singlelanguage peers on tests of control of attention, concept formation, analytical reasoning, cognitive flexibility, and cognitive complexity (Bialystok, 1999, 2001). • They also have better formal language skills. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 27 How Language Develops • Bilingualism (continued) – Learning a Second Language: Children in many developed countries (except the U. S. ) learn a second language in school. – Learning a second language, and learning correct pronunciation of the language, is easier for children than for adolescents or adults. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 28 How Language Develops • Bilingualism (continued) – Bilingual education teaches academic subjects to immigrant children in their native language while slowly teaching English. • Advocates: Children who do not know English will fall behind in academic subjects that are taught to them in English. • Critics: The programs are counterproductive; OR, existing programs are too brief; immigrant children are not learning English, which puts them at a disadvantage. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 29 How Language Develops Grammar Proficiency and Age at Arrival in the United States • Refer to Figure 10. 8 Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 30 How Language Develops • Adolescence – Language development during adolescence includes increased sophistication in the use of words; development of abstract thinking goes along with analyzing the function a word plays in a sentence. – Metaphor: An implied comparison between unlike things. – Satire: The use of irony, derision, or wit to expose folly or wickedness. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 31 How Language Develops • Adolescence (continued) – Adolescents are better than children at organizing ideas, distinguishing between general and specific points, stringing together sentences that makes sense, and organizing their writing. – Young adolescents often speak a dialect of their own with their peers (a dialect is a variety of language distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, or pronunciation). Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 32 Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 2 • Describe how language develops – Review • What are some key milestones of language development during infancy? • How do language skills change during early childhood? • How does language develop in middle and late childhood? • How does language develop in adolescence? Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 33 Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 2 – Reflect • Should children in the United States be required to learn more than one language? Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 34 Biological and Environmental Influences • Biological Influences – Linguist Noam Chomsky (1957) believes humans are biologically prewired to learn language at a certain time and in a certain way. • Children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD). – Children are prepared by nature with the ability to detect the sounds of language and to detect and follow language rules. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 35 Biological and Environmental Influences • Biological Influences (continued) – Aphasia: A language disorder, resulting from brain damage, that involves a loss of the ability to use words. – Broca’s area: An area of the brain’s left frontal lobe that directs the muscle movements involved in speech production. – Wernicke’s area: An area of the temporal lobe in the brain’s left hemisphere that is involved in language comprehension. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 36 Biological and Environmental Influences Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area • Refer to Figure 10. 9 Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 37 Biological and Environmental Influences • Is There a Critical Period for Learning Language? – Critical Period • A fixed time period in which certain experiences can have a long-lasting effect on development; beyond this period, learning is difficult or impossible. • Young children’s proficiency in language does not seem to involve a biologically salient critical period that older children and adults have passed. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 38 Biological and Environmental Influences • Lessons from Genie – Children who are abandoned, abused, and not exposed to language for many years rarely speak normally. – Some language experts argue that cases such as Genie’s support the existence of a critical period for language development, but other issues such as possible neurological deficits and severe emotional trauma cloud the case. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 39 Biological and Environmental Influences • Environmental Influences – The Behavioral View • Language represents chains of responses acquired through reinforcement. • Language is a complex, learned skill. • Criticisms: Children learn the syntax of their native language even if they aren’t reinforced; there is an extensive orderliness of language not explained by the behaviorist view. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 40 Biological and Environmental Influences • Environmental Influences (continued) – Interaction with people: The support and involvement of caregivers and teachers facilitate a child’s language learning. – The quantity of talk that parents direct to their children is linked with the child’s vocabulary growth. • The quantity of talk is linked to the family’s socioeconomic status. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 41 Biological and Environmental Influences Language Input in Professional Welfare Families and Young Children’s Vocabulary Development • Refer to Figure 10. 10 Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 42 Biological and Environmental Influences Amount of Maternal Speech and Infant Vocabulary • Refer to Figure 10. 11 Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 43 Biological and Environmental Influences • Environmental Influences (continued) – Child-Directed Speech • The kind of speech often used by adults to talk to babies and young children—in a higher pitch than normal and with simple words and sentences. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 44 Biological and Environmental Influences • Environmental Influences (continued) – Strategies to enhance the child’s acquisition of language include: • Recasting: Rephrasing something the child has said. • Expanding: Restating, in a linguistically sophisticated form, something the child has said. • Labeling: Identifying the names of objects. – Encouragement, not drill and practice, is the key to language development. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 45 Biological and Environmental Influences • An Interactionist View of Language – 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). Although few aids are necessary for learning language, caregivers greatly facilitate a child’s language learning. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 46 Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 3 • Discuss the biological and environmental contributions to language. – Review • What are the biological foundations of language? • What are the behavioral and environmental aspects of language? • How does an interactionist describe language? Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 47 Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 3 – Reflect • How should parents respond to children’s grammatical mistakes in conversation? Should parents allow the mistakes to continue and assume their children will grow out of them, or should they closely monitor their children’s grammar and correct mistakes whenever they hear them? Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 48 Language and Cognition • Williams Syndrome: A genetic birth disorder that includes a unique combination of expressive verbal skills and competent interpersonal skills, with an extremely low IQ and limited spatial and motor control. This raises two 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 thought, but rather than being part of a single, automated cognitive system, each evolves as a separate, modular, biologically prepared component of the mind. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 49 Language and Cognition Disparity in the Verbal and Motor Skills of an Individual with Williams Syndrome • Refer to Figure 10. 12 Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 50 Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 3 • Evaluate how language and cognition are linked – Review • To what extent are language and cognition linked? Are they part of a single automated cognitive system? – Reflect • Do children always think in words? Explain. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 51 Summary • Language is a form of communication, whether spontaneous, written, or signed, that is based on a system of symbols. • Infinite generativity is the ability to produce an endless number of meaningful sentences using a finite set of words and rules. • Phonology is a language’s sound system. • Morphology refers to the units of meaning involved in word formation. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 52 Summary • Syntax is the way words are combined to form acceptable phrases and sentences. • Semantics involves the meaning of words and sentences. • Pragmatics is the appropriate use of language in different contexts. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 53 Summary • Among the milestones in infant language development are crying (birth), cooing (1 to 2 months), specializing in the speech sounds of one’s native language (6 months), using gestures (8 to 12 months), comprehension of words (8 to 12 months), first word spoken (10 to 15 months), vocabulary spurt (18 months), rapid expansion of understanding words (18 to 24 months), and twoword utterances (18 to 24 months). Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 54 Summary • Advances in phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics continue in early childhood. • In middle and late childhood, children become more analytical and logical in their approach to words and grammar and they make advances in metalinguistic awareness. • Current debate involving how to teach children to read focuses on the whole-language approach versus the basicskills-and-phonics approach. • Advances in children’s language and cognitive development provide the underpinnings for improved writing. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 55 Summary • Bilingual education aims to teach academic subjects to immigrant children in their native languages while gradually adding English instruction. • Researchers have found that bilingualism does not interfere with performance in either language. • In adolescence, language changes include more effective use of words, improvements in the ability to understand metaphor and adult literary works, and improvement in writing. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 56 Summary • Chomsky argues that children are born with the ability to detect basic features and rules of language, i. e. , they are biologically prepared to learn language with a prewired language acquisition device (LAD). • In evolution, language gave humans an edge over other animals and increased their chance of survival. • Important areas of the brain for processing language are Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 57 Summary • The notion of a critical period for language development remains controversial. • The behavioral view—that children learn language through reinforcement—has not been supported. • Adults help children acquire language through childdirected speech, recasting, expanding, and labeling, and by talking extensively with their babies, especially about what the baby is attending to. • The interactionist view emphasizes the contributions of both biology and experience in language. One interactionist view is that both Chomsky’s LAD and Bruner’s LASS are involved in language acquisition. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .

Slide 58 Summary • Two basic and separate issues are these: (1) Is cognition necessary for language? (2) Is language necessary for cognition? • There is increasing evidence that language and thought are not part of a single, automated cognitive system, but rather evolved as a separate, modular, biologically prepared components of the mind. Mc. Graw-Hill © 2007 The Mc. Graw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. .