Language Development

Language Development

1. Language

   • Communication
   • Vocalisation
   • Body language (70%)
   • Arbitrary system of symbols (Brown, 1965)
   • Sharing of knowledge & emotions
     • Essential for survival
   • Looks, touch, sounds smells
   • Preceded by thinking (Piaget)

2. Speech development

   • 3-9 months: Prelinguistic babbling (oooh and aaah)
   • 5 months: Consonants (ma-ma da-da)
   • 10-13 months: Single worlds
     • Comprehends language twice as fast as they produce it
     • Understands more words than can speak
   • 18 months: Combining two words (Where's daddy?)
   • 2-3 years: Multi-word sentences
   • 5 years: 10 000 words or more
     • Basic language skills in place
   • IMPORTANT: Social imput - teaching, echoing, learning meaning

3. How do we learn?

   • Behaviourist
     • Language = slow shaping through Operant Conditioning
   • Nativist
     • Noam Chomsky
       • Learning = not just imitation because language spoken around is highly irregular
       • Critical period for language learning
     • LAD = Language Acquisition Device
       • Inherited ability to learn any human language
       • Helps form sentences
       • Major principles of language & grammatical structures encoded in brain
       • Evaluation
         • Evidence in support
           • If adult says grammatically incorrect sentence, child notices
           • Children often say grammatically incorrect things - can't have learnt passively
           • Mistakes like "I runned" not learnt through imitation alone
         • Evidence against
           • 'More than imitation' doesn't prove LAD - could just be general learning and interactions with people
           • No evidence of innate device
     • Language = Innate - inborn mental structure that enables the acquisition of language

4. Lennenberg (1967)

   • Language = innate process, biological factors
   • Ability to acquire language = dependent on critical periods
   • Critical period = Limited time span when certain skills can be acquired.
   • After puberty, brain organisation no longer adapted to learning language structure.

5. Bernstien (1964)

   • Elaborated speech vs Restricted speech
   • Social structure dictates linguistic code