H C   10   -   J U N I   2 0 2 3

Language development

What is language?

• A human system, used for communication. We use it to convey meaning, to express our thoughts and to transmit these thoughts and meanings to other people
• Language is more then communication, it’s the primary method by which we do things together
• Language is the accumulation of shared meaning – of common ground
• Symbolic and arbitrary » he form of the word doesn’t tell anything about the meaning
  
  • Symbolic: the word is a symbol for the meaning
  • Arbitrary: there’s no relationship between form and meaning

Languages across the world

• +/- 7000 languages in the world
• Around 230 languages spoken in Europe
• Vast differences
  
  • Number of consonants (6-122)
  • Word construction
  • Free or fixed word order

Components of language

• Phonology: rules of speech sounds
  • Each individual speed sound is a phoneme (unit of sound) » often can be represented by one letter
  • Different pronunciation of a single phoneme are not different phonemes
• Morphology: rules of word structure
  
  • Smallest unit of meaning » they represent a single meaning
• Syntax: rules of sentence structure
  
  • Combination of words and morphemes into sentences
  • Example: word-order rules
• Semantics: rules of language meaning
• Pragmatics: rules of social language use

Phases in development

• Prelingual period (0-12) months » learning the foundation of language, but not speaking yet
  • Phoneme inventories differ across languages
  • Until 8-10 months babies can distinguish phonemes, irrespective of which language
  • After this period, they can only distinguish phonemes in mother tongue
  • Tested with the habituation experiment
    
    • Training: different sounds = visual and verbal praise = learning association sound/praise
    • Test: different sounds » does the child predict the praise? If so, they can distinguish between sounds
• First words, telegraphic (12-30 months) » they start to acquire their vocabulary
• Complex sentences (30 months – 5 years) » grammar development, making full sentences
• Completion stage (5 years and older)

Learning words

• Recognize form (thus sounds) but also learn that the combination of sounds form a single word and that it refers to a certain referend in the real world
• Word segmentation: learning to distinguish single sounds in a continuous word stream
  
  • Tested with statistical learning segments
    
    • Training: continuous speech stream of trisyllabic words, while focusing on transitional probabilies (the likelihood that certain syllables follow one another)
    • Test: familiar words vs. non-words » can 8 month old babies discriminate between words and non-words?
• When learn children words:
  
  • 10-15 months » first words
  • 15-20 months » 50 words
  • 18-24 months » vocabulary spurt
  • There is a large individual variation » every child learns at its own pace
  • Difference between receptive (understanding) and productive (actually being able to use the words)
• Way in which children might learn words quickly: fast mapping (mechanism to map form onto meaning)
• Learning principles when learning words (with fast-mapping):
  
  • Mutual exclusivity: one label refers to one meaning and visa versa
  • Whole object: new labels (probably) refer to a whole object, not parts
  • Principle of contrast: if there’re two labels, they probably contrast in meaning

Learning grammar

• Early/telegraphic phase: language without grammatical morphemes (e.g. ‘want ball’ or ‘doggy sleep’)
• Next phase: productive grammatical system, demonstrated by growing sentences
• Errors: Overregularization » applying a regular rule to a word that should change irregular

How do we acquire language?

• It’s an interplay with different factors (inborn mechanisms and contextual factors
• Two opposing theories:
  
  • Children are tabula rasa (‘a blank canvas’), they learn through stimulus-response (Skinner) » the input plays a big role
  • Children are born with innate language knowledge » universal grammar (Chomsky) » the input plays a very small role
  • Social mechanisms, general mechanisms (not specific to language learning), rich input (Tomasselo, Saffran) » we can apply the general mechanisms to language learning

Interactions with other domains

• Social cognition:
  • Prelingual phase: gaze following and joint attention » babies look at gaze direction of interlocutors » supports language development
• Cognitive mechanisms:
  
  • General mechanisms of word learning
  • Statistical learning: the extraction of distributional properties from sensory input across time
    
    • It’s a domain-general learning mechanism, which means that it’s also been used to detect regularities in non-language input
    • Supports language acquisition
    • acquisition of the literacy rules (e.g. ‘c’ can be pronounced as ‘k’ and ‘s’) is facilitated by statistical learning
    • Difficulties with statistical learning means often difficulties with learning to read and write
  • Mechanisms that facilitate input processing
  • Phonological short-term memory = the ability to temporarily maintain speech related information » a smaller phonological short-term memory is associated with a smaller vocabulary size
• Individual differences:
  
  • For some children the acquisition of language is very difficult » developmental language disorder (DLD) » there’s no obvious cause for these problems
  • The age of which learning begins differs » critical period (in the first few years of life you can develop language, but after that time language acquisition is much more difficult) » There’s a genetically encoded predetermined time window to learn something
  • Explanations for age effects (brain maturation is not the only difference):
    
    • Environmental and input differences (external)
    • Having a first language and length of first language entrenchment (internal)
    • There are also late learners who acquire native-like mastery (it’s not impossible)

Interaction with contextual factors

• Socioeconomic status
  • Thirty million word gap: children with a low SES learn around 30 million words less than children with a normal/high SES
  • SES is not only related to language input and vocabulary learning, but also to literacy skills later in life » higher SES = higher literacy skills
• Parents role
  
  • Parents with higher level of education will be more engaged in children’s education.
  • Important question: is it possible to change parental behavior and interactions between parent and child, in particular in low-SES families?
• Multilingualism
  
  • The input to a bilingual child is divided over two languages » what are the implications for their language development
  • The two languages are both active in the bilingual brain » what are the implications for their cognitive development?
  • There’s a huge amount of variation across bilinguals
    
    • Age of acquisition: simultaneous bilingualism (exposure to two languages from birth) vs. sequential bilingualism (exposure to two languages later in life)
    • Language exposure
    • Language distance, influence » how much support does the second language learner get from already knowing a first language? This support is called ‘positive transfer’
  • Relative amount of input in each language predicts development in that language
  • Cognitive development: Using multiple languages trains executive functions (regulating actions and thought, used for flexible behavior and adapt to current and changing goals in situations, etc.)

Take home message:

• Language is a multicomponent construct
• There are phases of language development but there is also much individual variation due to internal and external factors
• Bilingualism may affect language and cognitive development