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Language development is a process that starts early in human life, when a person begins to acquire language by learning it as it is spoken and by mimicry. Children's language development moves from simplicity to complexity. Infants start without language. Yet by four months of age, babies can read lips and discriminate speech sounds. The language that infants speak is called " gibberish".
Usually, language starts off as recall of simple words without associated meaning, but as children age, words acquire meaning, and connections between words are formed. In time, sentences start to form as words are joined together to create logical meaning. As a person gets older, new meanings and new associations are created and vocabulary increases as more words are learned.
Infants use their bodies, vocal cries and other preverbal vocalizations to communicate their wants, needs and dispositions. Even though most children begin to vocalize and eventually verbalize at various ages and at different rates, they learn their first language without conscious instruction from parents or caretakers. It is a seemingly effortless task that grows increasingly difficult with age. Of course, before any learning can begin, the child must be biologically and socially mature enough.
Biological Preconditions Linguists do not all agree on what biological factors contribute to language development, however most do agree that our ability to acquire such a complicated system is specific to the human species. Furthermore, our ability to learn language may have been developed through the evolutionary process and that the foundation for language may be passed down genetically.
Evidence that language is biological are: - there are proven areas of the brain that are responsible for language production (Broca's Area) and comprehension (Wernicke's Area) - during brain lateralization, there seems to be a sensitive period for speech production
Social Preconditions It is crucial that children are allowed to socially interact with other people who can vocalize and respond to questions. For language acquisition to develop successfully, children must be in an environment that allows them to communicate socially in that language.
There are a few different theories as to why and how children develop language. The most popular explanation is that language is acquired through imitation. However, this proves to be more of a folk tale than anything. The two most accepted theories in language development are psychological and functional. Psychological explanations focus on the mental processes involved in childhood language learning. Functional explanations look at the social processes involved in learning the first language.
There are four main components of language: - Phonology involves the rules about the structure and sequence of speech sounds. - Semantics consists of vocabulary and how concepts are expressed through words. - Grammar involves two parts. The first, syntax, is the rules in which words are arranged into sentences. The second, morphology, is the use of grammatical markers (indicating tense, active or passive voice etc.). - Pragmatics involves the rules for appropriate and effective communication. Pragmatics involves three skills:
- using language for greeting, demanding etc.
- changing language for talking differently depending on who it is you are talking to
- following rules such as turn taking, staying on topic
Each componenent has its own appropriate developmental periods.
Phonological Development From birth to around 1 year, the baby starts to make speech sounds. At around 2 months, the baby will engage in cooing, which mostly consists of vowel sounds. At around 4 months, cooing turns into babbling which is the repetitive consonant-vowel combinations. Babies, although it may not seem like it, can understand way more than they are able to say. From 1-2 years, babies can recognize the correct pronunciation of familiar words. Babies will also use phonological strategies to simplify word pronunciation. Some strategies include repeating the first consonant-vowel in a multisyllable word ("TV"--> "didi") or deleting unstressed syllables in a multisyllable word ("banana"-->"nana"). By 3-5 years, phonological awareness continues to improve as well as pronunciation. By 6-10 years, babies can master syllable stress patterns which helps distinguish slight differences between similar words.
Semantic Development From birth-1 year, comprehension (the language we understand)develops before production (the language we use). There is about a 5 month lag in between the two. Babies have an incredible innate preference to listn to their mother's voice. Babies can recognize familar words and use preverbal gestures. From 1-2 years, vocabulary grows to several hundred words. There is a vocabulary spurt between 18-24 months, which includes fast mapping. Fast mapping is the babies' phenomenal ability to learn a lot of new things quickly. The majority of the babies' new vocabulary consists of object words (nouns) and action words (verbs). By 3-5 years, children usually have difficulty using words correctly. Children experience many problems such as underextensions, taking a general word and applying it specifically (for example, "blankie")and overextensions, taking a specific word and applying it too generally (example, "car" for "van"). However, children coin words to fill in for words not yet learned (for example, someone is cooks is a cooker rather than a chef because a child will not know what a chef is). Children can also understand metaphors. From 6-10 years, children can understand meanings of words based on the definitions of them. They also are able to appreciate the multiple meanings of words and use words precisely through metaphors and puns. Fast mapping continues.
Grammatical Development From 1-2 years, children start using telegraphic speech, which are two word combinations, for example "wet diaper". At around 3 years, children engage in simple sentences, which are 3 word sentences. Simple sentences follow adult rules and gets refined gradually. Grammatical morphemes get added as these simple sentences start to emerge. By 3-5 years, children continue to add grammatical morphemes and gradually produce complex grammatical structures. By 6-10 years, children refine the compelx grammatical structures such as passive voice.
Pragmatics DevelopmentItalic text Birth-1 year, babies can engage in joint attention (sharing the attention of something with someone else). Babies also can engage in turn taking activities. By 1-2 years, they can engage in conversational turn taking and topic maintenance. At ages 3-5, children can master illocutionary intent, knowing what you meant to say even though you might not have said it and turnabout, which is turning the conversation over to another person. By age 6-10, shading occurs, which is changing the conversation topic gradually. Children are able to communicate effectively in demanding settings, such as on the telephone.
There are three major theories of language development.
The behaviorist theory, proposed by B.F. Skinner (father of Behaviorism) says that language is learned through operant conditioning (reinforcement and imitation). This perspective sides with the nurture side of the nature-nurture debate. This perspective is not widely accepted today because there are many criticisms. These criticisms include that the perspective is too specific, encourages incorrect phrases and is not entirely possible. In order for this to be possible, parents would have to engage in intensive tutoring in order for language to be taught properly.
The nativist theory, proposed by Noam Chomsky, says that language is a unique human accomplishment. Chomsky says that all children have whats called an LAD, an innate language acquisition device that allows children to produce consistent sentences once vocabulary is learned. He also says that grammar is universal. This theory, while there is much evidence supporting it (language areas in the brain, sensitive period for language development, childrens' abiltiy to invent new language systems), this theory also has much criticisms. His theory lacks comprehensiveness and the idea of a unviersal grammar is not believed by all researchers.
The last theory, the interactionist perspective, consists of two components. This perspective is a combination of both the nativist and behaviorist theories. The first part, the information-processing theories, tests through the connectionist model, using statistics. From these theories, we see that the brain is excellent at detecting patterns. The second part of the interactionist perspective, is the social-interactionist theories. These theories suggest that there is a native desire to understand others as well as being understood by others.
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- This page was last modified on 1 December 2008, at 01:39.
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