Disorders in language development 2
HC 1: Typical language development
Nature vs. nurture debate
Nature (inside-out)
- Language is a faculty specific to humans (genetic disposition to learn and use language)
- Neurocognitive and motor architecture allows language development
- Argument Chomsky: poverty of the stimulus
- Generativist/nativist/UG approach
o UG -> innate language device that determines path of acquisition
Nurture (outside-in)
- Interaction between input and developing cognitive abilities determines acquisition
- Constructivist/functionalist/usage-based approach
Coalition model (Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 1996)
- Children try to use all the pieces of information at their disposal
General agreement: ability to acquire language is innate
Not agreed:
- Born with built-in, structured knowledge
- Born with expectations/parameters regarding language structures
- An innate device specific to language
Developmental milestones
Phonology
- Children can recognize speech sounds in utero
o Measured by heartrate
o After birth: High Amplitude Sucking
- Newborns prefer:
o Mother’s voice
o Stories they’ve been read by mother in utero
- Newborns have very good speech discrimination skills based on Voice Onset Time (VOT)
- Can do this for all languages until +/- 1 yo
Identifying words in speech stream
- Prosodic or phonological bootstrapping
- After 6 months: pauses in speech, syllable length, distributional regularities and phonotactic
patterns
Bootstrapping
Using available knowledge to extract/guess another type of information
- Phonologic bootstrapping -> using phonology to identify words in speech stream
- Syntactic bootstrapping -> using syntactic functions to guess meaning
- Semantic bootstrapping -> using meaning to guess syntactic function
, Language production development (phonological and semantic)
age phonological development lexical-semantic development morphos-syn. development
0-2 vegetative sounds pre-locutionary stage pre-syntactic period
m
2-4 cooing and laughing pre-locutionary stage pre-syntactic period
m
4-6 quasi-resonant nuclei, vocal pre-locutionary stage pre-syntactic period
m play (primitive vowel-like
sounds with muffled
resonance
6- early babble: canonical, pre-locutionary stage pre-syntactic period
10 reduplicated babbling (CV
m syllables /a/, /ae/
8- later babble: jargon, -understanding of 3-50 words pre-syntactic period
12 variegated babble with -produce proto-words (made-
m prosody of language that’s up words) consistently
being learned -produce first words (over-
consonant and vowel generalize)
diversity increases, CVC -semantic rules/notions
structure ((dis)appearance, recurrence)
12- first 50 words, CV structure, vocab: 50-100w (18 months) Brown’s stage 1: basic
18 prototypical errors awareness of semantic roles semantic roles and relations
m (typically outgrown by understands words outside -first role relations expressed
3yoa): routine games, but still needs in 2-word utterances
-reduplication (daddy -> contexts -telegraphic utterances
dada, bottle -> baba) vocab spurt 16-18m, or when -aware of some syntactic
-syllable deletion (banana - vocab reaches 50 words (in 1 requirements: word order,
> nana) out of 5 children) sensitivity to null subject
-assimilation (cup -> cug,
dog -> dod)
-final consonant deletion
(dog -> do)
18- -emergence of CVC and 24 months: 200-300 words still Brown’s stage 1
24 two-syllable words understands single words
m -9-10 initial consonants and without context
5-6 final consonants understands and expresses 2-
-70% of consonants are word semantic relations
correct
-speech is 50% intelligible
24- awareness of rhyme understands and starts using Brown’s stage 2:
30 questions about: people, grammatical morphemes
m objects, events -first markers: -ing, P in/on,
plural -s
-negation
-semi-auxiliaries gonna/
gotta/wanna/hafta +V
-questions marked only by
intonation
30- speech is 75% intelligible understands and uses why Brown’s stage 3: modulation
36 (36 months) questions of simple sentences
m ability to produce rhymes understands basic spatial -present tense auxiliaries
HC 1: Typical language development
Nature vs. nurture debate
Nature (inside-out)
- Language is a faculty specific to humans (genetic disposition to learn and use language)
- Neurocognitive and motor architecture allows language development
- Argument Chomsky: poverty of the stimulus
- Generativist/nativist/UG approach
o UG -> innate language device that determines path of acquisition
Nurture (outside-in)
- Interaction between input and developing cognitive abilities determines acquisition
- Constructivist/functionalist/usage-based approach
Coalition model (Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 1996)
- Children try to use all the pieces of information at their disposal
General agreement: ability to acquire language is innate
Not agreed:
- Born with built-in, structured knowledge
- Born with expectations/parameters regarding language structures
- An innate device specific to language
Developmental milestones
Phonology
- Children can recognize speech sounds in utero
o Measured by heartrate
o After birth: High Amplitude Sucking
- Newborns prefer:
o Mother’s voice
o Stories they’ve been read by mother in utero
- Newborns have very good speech discrimination skills based on Voice Onset Time (VOT)
- Can do this for all languages until +/- 1 yo
Identifying words in speech stream
- Prosodic or phonological bootstrapping
- After 6 months: pauses in speech, syllable length, distributional regularities and phonotactic
patterns
Bootstrapping
Using available knowledge to extract/guess another type of information
- Phonologic bootstrapping -> using phonology to identify words in speech stream
- Syntactic bootstrapping -> using syntactic functions to guess meaning
- Semantic bootstrapping -> using meaning to guess syntactic function
, Language production development (phonological and semantic)
age phonological development lexical-semantic development morphos-syn. development
0-2 vegetative sounds pre-locutionary stage pre-syntactic period
m
2-4 cooing and laughing pre-locutionary stage pre-syntactic period
m
4-6 quasi-resonant nuclei, vocal pre-locutionary stage pre-syntactic period
m play (primitive vowel-like
sounds with muffled
resonance
6- early babble: canonical, pre-locutionary stage pre-syntactic period
10 reduplicated babbling (CV
m syllables /a/, /ae/
8- later babble: jargon, -understanding of 3-50 words pre-syntactic period
12 variegated babble with -produce proto-words (made-
m prosody of language that’s up words) consistently
being learned -produce first words (over-
consonant and vowel generalize)
diversity increases, CVC -semantic rules/notions
structure ((dis)appearance, recurrence)
12- first 50 words, CV structure, vocab: 50-100w (18 months) Brown’s stage 1: basic
18 prototypical errors awareness of semantic roles semantic roles and relations
m (typically outgrown by understands words outside -first role relations expressed
3yoa): routine games, but still needs in 2-word utterances
-reduplication (daddy -> contexts -telegraphic utterances
dada, bottle -> baba) vocab spurt 16-18m, or when -aware of some syntactic
-syllable deletion (banana - vocab reaches 50 words (in 1 requirements: word order,
> nana) out of 5 children) sensitivity to null subject
-assimilation (cup -> cug,
dog -> dod)
-final consonant deletion
(dog -> do)
18- -emergence of CVC and 24 months: 200-300 words still Brown’s stage 1
24 two-syllable words understands single words
m -9-10 initial consonants and without context
5-6 final consonants understands and expresses 2-
-70% of consonants are word semantic relations
correct
-speech is 50% intelligible
24- awareness of rhyme understands and starts using Brown’s stage 2:
30 questions about: people, grammatical morphemes
m objects, events -first markers: -ing, P in/on,
plural -s
-negation
-semi-auxiliaries gonna/
gotta/wanna/hafta +V
-questions marked only by
intonation
30- speech is 75% intelligible understands and uses why Brown’s stage 3: modulation
36 (36 months) questions of simple sentences
m ability to produce rhymes understands basic spatial -present tense auxiliaries
