PSY210 – Week 8 – Language and Communication

Part 1: Language and Its Development in the First Year of Life

Language
Language is a defining human characteristic. It allows us to share information with a level of
precision not found in other species and is key to complex human culture. It is a multi-faceted
developmental process.
What is Language?
Broad Definition: a system that relates sounds (or gestures) to meaning. Features:
➢ Arbitrary units that are symbolic referents
➢ Structured and meaningful
➢ Displacement: can communicate about events distant in time and space
➢ Generativity: can produce an infinite number of utterances from a language’s vocabulary
○ Example: “Yesterday at the park, a dog frightened me.”

Elements of Language
(1) Phonology: sounds of a language
○ Each unit of sound is a phoneme
○ approximately 200 phonemes in all known languages
○ 45 phonemes in English
(2) Morphology: Rules of meaning within language
○ Smallest unit of meaning is a morpheme
○ Free morphemes:
■ Units of meaning that stand alone
■ E.g., “dog”, “table”, “jump”
○ Bound morphemes:
■ Units of meaning that are paired with free morphemes to alter the
meaning of words
■ Includes prefixes (e.g., un-) and suffixes (e.g., -ing, -s)
(3) Semantics: Study of words and their meanings
(4) Syntax: Rules specifying how words are combined in sentences
○ E.g., Noun followed by verb in English (“ball rolls”)
(5) Pragmatics: How people use language to communicate effectively
○ E.g., speakers should be clear in their comments; make comments that are
relevant to the conversation; take turns

Perceiving Speech
One-month-olds can distinguish different phonemes. Sucking paradigm:
➢ Infant will suck to hear a phoneme
➢ They will habituate after a few minutes and suck less
➢ If a new phoneme is played, they will increase sucking to continue hearing the novel
phoneme

Hindi: /b/ /bh/ English: /b/

Both phonemes are present in Hindi, but only one is present in English. By 10-12 months of
age, the ability to discriminate between the two is diminished in English infants.

Identifying Distinct Words

Patterns that help infants learn words (not meaning)...
● Repetition
○ E.g., words heard frequently, words mentioned over and over during a
conversation
● Stressed syllables help identify beginnings of words
○ E.g., dough nut, tooth paste, bas ket
● Words in more salient positions in sentences are noticed more
○ E.g., Pauses at the beginning and end of sentences cue words
● Using articles to break up a stream of phonemes
○ E.g., aballabataglove becomes “a ball”, “a bat”, “a glove”
● Noticing syllables and phonemes that often go together
○ Syllables: syllables that often go together are perceived as the same word
(“dah-bah” is less common than “bay-bee”)
○ Phonemes: s + t more likely to cue the same word (stink, first), whereas s + d
more likely to cue different words (this dog)

Part 2: Building Vocabulary and Speaking in Sentences

Understanding Words as Symbols – By 12 months, infants understand words are symbols
that stand for something else
➢ Objects (e.g., kittens) and their properties (e.g., soft)
➢ Actions (e.g., pet)
Gestures are symbols that children start to use around the time they begin to talk. This is
communication, but not yet language.Minimal information; focus on here and now

The Naming Explosion and Fast Mapping Meanings to Words

Fast mapping: Learning word meanings so rapidly that the child can’t be considering all
possible meanings. Children use a number of heuristics to infer word meanings

Joint attention - Caregivers label objects that their children are interacting with. Aided by the
caregiver pointing or gazing toward the object

Constraints/Biases on Word Name Learning

➢ Unfamiliar words refer to objects that do not yet have a name
➢ A name refers to a whole object
➢ If an object has a name already and a new name is given, then the new name denotes a
subcategory (e.g., dinosaur, T-Rex)
➢ Given many similar category members, a word applied consistently to only one of them
is a proper noun (e.g., Dino the dinosaur)
○ How does the child learn to label “dinosaur” vs. “T-Rex” vs. individual dinosaurs?
Sentence Cues - Children hear unfamiliar words embedded in sentences with words they
already know, allowing for a process of elimination. Using familiar language cues
E.g., A suffix such as –ing cues that the new word refers to an action such as “The man
is juggling.”

Common Errors
➢ Underextension: defining a word too narrowly
○ E.g., using “ball” to refer to only a favorite ball
➢ Overextension: defining a word too broadly
○ E.g., using “doggie” to refer to all four-legged animals

Speaking in Sentences
Speech is often telegraphic in 18-24 month-olds in that it consists of only words relevant to
meaning with little or no grammar.

From Two-Word Speech to Complex Sentences

Gradually, children add grammatical morphemes
● Words (e.g., a, the, at)
● Endings of words (e.g., -s, -ing)
● Make sentences grammatical
Over-regularization – Children master grammar by learning grammatical rules, which are
evident when children fail to use language in accordance with exceptions to the rules.
Examples: “two mans”, “grandma taked me to the candy store”

Part 3: Acquiring Grammar

How Do Children Acquire Grammar?
Behaviourist Perspective: Aspects of language are learned via imitation and reinforcement
Limitations:
➢ Cannot account for novel sentences
➢ Children often do not imitate adult grammar
○ E.g., “I am drawing a picture” is repeated by a child as “I draw picture”
○ B.F. Skinner
Linguistic Perspective
➢ Processes that guide grammar learning are built into the nervous system. We are born
prepared to learn grammar
➢ Semantic Bootstrapping Theory argues humans are born knowing nouns refer to
people/objects and verbs are actions. This information is used to infer grammatical rules.
○ e.g., hearing sentences like “Susan sleeps” children infer English grammar
involves noun + verb
○ Noam Chomsky

Linguistic Perspective - Evidence

★ Line of Evidence #1: Neuroanatomy
○ Broca’s area appears to be specialized neural region for processing of grammar
 ★ Line of Evidence #2: Humans Are Unique
○ Only humans learn grammar readily
○ Imitation and reinforcement are not sufficient to teach grammar to closely related
species. Chimpanzees can only learn simple grammar rules for two-word speech
following extensive training

★ Line of Evidence #3: Little to No Formal Input Needed

○ A deaf child will spontaneously produce gestural communication similar in
grammatical structure to a hearing child’s verbal language

★ Line of Evidence #4: Critical Period

○ Early on, we lose the ability to distinguish phonemes not used in our language
○ Birth to age 12 years is critical for learning grammar
■ Second language learning
■ Extreme cases of early language deprivation

★ Line of Evidence #5: Vocabulary-Grammar Link

○ The size of children’s vocabulary, not their age, is most closely linked with the
level of grammatical sophistication. Suggests vocabulary and grammar are part
of the same language system

Cognitive Perspective
➢ Grammar is learned through cognitive skills. Information obtained from language
exposure is treated as though it were a massive “data set”
➢ Children detect recurring patterns in the data to infer grammatical rules
○ E.g. Learn to use “-s” on the end of a word when there are multiple instances of
objects associated with that word
➢ Implies a central role for memory

Social-Interaction Perspective
➢ Combines ideas of the learning, linguistic and cognitive perspectives
➢ Emphasizes that language is mastered in a social context. Children are motivated to
learn language so they can communicate more efficiently. Caregivers are motivated to
understand their children and support their language development
○ 12 month old…
■ Child: Points to cookie
■ Parent: “Here’s the cookie.”
○ 24 month old…
■ Child:“Gimme cookie, please?”
■ Parent: “Yes, I’ll give you the cookie.”