Language development
Language development is a process starting early in human life. Infants start
without language, yet by 4 months of age, babies can discriminate speech sounds
and engage in babbling. Some research has shown that the
earliest learning begins in utero when the fetus starts
to recognize the sounds and speech patterns of its mother's voice.
Usually, productive language is considered to begin with a
stage of preverbal communication in which infants use gestures and
vocalizations to make their intents known to others. According to a general
principle of development, new forms then take over old functions, so that
children learn words to express the same communicative functions which they had
already expressed by preverbal means.
Theoretical frameworks of language
development
Language
development is thought to proceed by ordinary processes of learning in which
children acquire the forms, meanings and uses of words and utterances from the
linguistic input] The method in which we develop language skills is
universal however, the major debate is how the rules of syntax are acquired. There are two major
approaches to syntactic development, an empiricist account by which children
learn all syntactic rules from the linguistic input, and a nativist approach by which some principles of syntax are innate and
are transmitted through the human genome
The
nativist theory, proposed by Noam Chomsky, argues that language is a unique human accomplishment.
Chomsky says that all children have what is called an innate language
acquisition device (LAD). Theoretically, the LAD is an area of the brain that
has a set of universal syntactic rules for all languages. This device provides
children with the ability to construct novel sentences using learned
vocabulary. Chomsky's claim is based upon the view that what children hear -
their linguistic input - is insufficient to explain how they come to learn
language. He argues that linguistic input from the environment is limited and
full of errors. Therefore, nativists assume that it is impossible for children
to learn linguistic information solely from their environment However, because
children possess this LAD, they are in fact, able to learn language despite
incomplete information from their environment. This view has dominated
linguistic theory for over fifty years and remains highly influential, as
witnessed by the number of articles in journals and books
The
empiricist theory suggests, contra Chomsky, that
there is enough information in the linguistic input children receive and
therefore, there is no need to assume an innate language acquisition device
exists (see above). Rather than a LAD which evolved specifically for language,
empiricists believe that general brain processes are sufficient enough for
language acquisition. During this process, it is necessary for the child to be
actively engaged with their environment. In order for a child to learn
language, the parent or caregiver adopts a particular way of appropriately
communicating with the child; this is known as child-directed speech (CDS). CDS
is used so that children are given the necessary linguistic information needed
for their language. Empiricism is a general approach and sometimes goes along
with the interactionist approach. Statistical
language acquisition,
which falls under empiricist theory, suggests that infants acquire language by
means of pattern perception. Other researchers embrace an interactionist perspective, consisting of social-interactionist
theories of language development. In such approaches, children learn
language in the interactive and communicative context, learning language forms
for meaningful moves of communication. These theories focus mainly on the
caregiver's attitudes and attentiveness to their children in order to promote
productive language habits.
An
older empiricist theory, the behaviorist theory proposed by B. F. Skinner suggested that language is learned through operant
conditioning, namely, by imitation of stimuli and by reinforcement of correct
responses. This perspective has not been widely accepted at any time, but by
some accounts, is experiencing a resurgence. New studies use this theory now to
treat individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. Additionally,
Relational Frame Theory is growing from the behaviorist theory which is
important for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Some empiricist theory accounts today use behaviorist models.
Other relevant theories about language
development include Piaget's
theory of cognitive development, which considers the development of language as a
continuation of general cognitive development. and Vygotsky's social
theories that attribute the development of language to an individual's social
interactions and growth.
Biological preconditions
Evolutionary
biologists are
skeptical of the claim that syntactic knowledge is transmitted in the human
genome. However, many researchers claim that the ability to acquire such a
complicated system is unique to the human species. Non-biologists also tend to
believe that our ability to learn spoken language may have been developed
through the evolutionary process and that the foundation for
language may be passed down genetically. The ability to speak and understand
human language requires speech production skills and abilities as well as multisensory
integration
of sensory processing abilities.
One
hotly debated issue is whether the biological contribution includes capacities
specific to language acquisition, often referred to as universal grammar. For
fifty years, linguist Noam Chomsky has argued for the hypothesis that
children have innate, language-specific abilities that facilitate and constrain
language learning. In particular, he has proposed that humans are biologically
prewired to learn language at a certain time and in a certain way, arguing that
children are born with a Language Acquisition Device (LAD). However, since he
developed the Minimalist Program, his latest version of theory of
syntactic structure, Chomsky has reduced the elements of universal grammar
which are in his opinion to be prewired in humans to just the principle of
recursion, thus voiding most of the nativist endeavor.
Researchers
who believe that grammar is learned rather than innate, have hypothesized that
language learning results from general cognitive abilities and the interaction
between learners and their human interactants. It has also recently been
suggested that the relatively slow development of the prefrontal cortex in humans may be one reason that humans are able to learn
language, whereas other species are not. Further research has indicated the
influence of the FOXP2 gene.
Gender Differences
Children versus adults
It
seems as if during the early years of language development females exhibit an
advantage over males of the same age. When infants between the age of 16 to 22
months were observed interacting with their mothers, a female advantage was
obvious. The females in this age range showed more spontaneous speech
production than the males and this finding was not due to mothers speaking more
with daughters than sons. In addition, boys between 2 and 6 years as a group
did not show higher performance in language development over their girl
counterparts on experimental assessments. In studies using adult populations,
18 and over, it seems that the female advantage may be task dependent.
Depending on the task provided, a female advantage may or may not be present.
Lateralization effect on language
It
is currently believed that in regards to brain
lateralization
males are left lateralized, while females are bilateralized. Studies on
patients with unilateral lesions have provided evidence that females are in fact more
bilateralized with their verbal abilities. It seems that when a female has
experienced a lesion to the left
hemisphere she is
better able to compensate for this damage than a male can. If a male has a
lesion in the left hemisphere his verbal abilities are greatly impaired in
comparison to a control male of the same age without that damage. However,
these results may also be task dependent as well as time dependent.
Environmental Influences
The
environment a child develops in has influences on language development. The
environment provides language input for the child to process. Speech by adults
to children help provide the child with correct language usage repetitively. Environmental
influences on language development are explored in the tradition of social interactionist
theory by such
researchers as Jerome Bruner, Alison Gopnik, Andrew Meltzoff, Anat Ninio, Roy Pea, Catherine Snow, Ernest Moerk and Michael Tomasello. Jerome Bruner who laid the foundations of this
approach in the 1970s, emphasized that adult "scaffolding" of the child's attempts to master linguistic
communication is an important factor in the developmental process.
One
component of the young child's linguistic environment is child-directed
speech (also
known as baby talk or motherese), which is language spoken in a higher pitch
than normal with simple words and sentences. Although the importance of its
role in developing language has been debated, many linguists think that it may
aid in capturing the infant's attention and maintaining communication. When
children begin to communicate with adults, this motherese speech allows the
child the ability to discern the patterns in language and to experiment with
language.
Throughout
research done, it is concluded that children exposed to extensive vocabulary
and complex grammatical structures more quickly develop language and also have
a more accurate syntax than children raised in environments without complex
grammar exposed to them. With motherese, the mother talks to the child and
responds back to the child, whether it be a babble the child made or a short
sentence. While doing this, the adult is prompting the child to continue
communicating which may help a child develop language sooner than children
raised in environments where communication is not fostered.
Child-directed
speech will concentrate on small core vocabulary, here and now topics,
exaggerated facial expressions and gestures, frequent questioning,
paralinguistic changes, and verbal rituals. An infant is least likely to
produce vocalizations when changed, fed, or rocked. The infant will more likely
produce vocalizations when a nonverbal behavior such as touching or smiling is
directed at the infant.
Child-directed
speech will also catch the child's attention and in situations where words for
new objects are being expressed to the child this form of speech may help the
child recognize the speech cues and the new information provided. Data shows
that children raised in highly verbal families had higher language scores than
those children raised in low verbal families. Continuously hearing complicated
sentences throughout language development increases the child's ability to
understand these sentences and then to use complicated sentences as they
develop. Studies have shown that students enrolled in high language classrooms
have two times the growth in complex sentences usage than students in
classrooms where teachers do not frequently use complex sentences
Adults
use strategies other than child-directed speech like recasting, expanding, and
labeling: Recasting is rephrasing something the child has said, perhaps
turning it into a question or restating the child's immature utterance in the
form of a fully grammatical sentence. For example, a child saying "cookie
now" a parent may respond with "Would you like a cookie now. Expanding
is restating, in a linguistically sophisticated form, what a child has said.
For example, a child may say "car move road" and the parent may
respond "A car drives on the road. Labeling is identifying the
names of objects If a child points to an object such as a couch the mother may
say "couch" in response. Labeling can also be characterized as
referencing.
Some
language development experts have characterized child directed speech in
stages. Primarily, the parents will use repetition and also variation to
maintain the infant's attention. Secondly, the parent will simplify speech to
help in language learning. Third, any modifications in speech will maintain the
responsiveness of the child. These modifications develop into a conversation
that provides context for the development.
Cultural and Socioeconomic Effects
on Language Development
While
most children throughout the world develop language at similar rates and
without difficulty, cultural and socioeconomic differences have been shown to
influence development. An example of cultural differences in language
development can be seen when comparing the interactions of mothers in the
United States with their infants with mothers in Japan.Mothers in the United
States use more questions, are more information oriented, and use more
grammatically correct utterances with their 3-month-olds.Mothers in Japan, on
the other hand, use more physical contact with their infants, and more
emotion-oriented, nonsense, and environmental sounds, as well as baby talk,
with their infants. These differences in interaction techniques reflect
differences in "each society's assumptions about infants and adult-to
adult cultural styles of talking."
Specifically
in North American culture, maternal race, education, and socioeconomic class
influence parent-child interactions in the early linguistic environment. When
speaking to their infants, mothers from middle class "incorporate language
goals more frequently in their play with their infants," and in turn,
their infants produce twice as many vocalizations as lower class infants.
Mothers from higher social classes who are better educated also tend to be more
verbal, and have more time to spend engaging with their infants in language.
Additionally, lower class infants may receive more language input from their
siblings and peers than from their mothers.
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—and yet heavily debated—explanation is that language is acquired
through imitation.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
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
component has its own appropriate developmental periods.
Phonological development
From
shortly after birth to around one year, the baby starts to make speech sounds.
At around two months, the baby will engage in cooing, which mostly consists of
vowel sounds. At around four months, cooing turns into babbling which is the repetitive consonant-vowel combinations. Babies understand more than they are able to
say. In this 0–8 months range, the child is engaged in vocal play of
vegetative sounds, laughing.
Once
the child hits the 8-12 month range the child engages in canonical
babbling ie. dada as well as variegated babbling. This jargon babbling with
intonational contours the language being learned. From 12–24
months, 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'). Within this first year, two word utterances and
two syllable words emerge. This period is often called the holophrastic
stage of development, because one word conveys as much meaning as an entire
phrase. For instance, the simple word "milk" can imply that the child
is requesting milk, noting spilled milk, sees a cat drinking milk, etc. By 24–30
months awareness of rhyme emerges as well as rising intonation
By
36–60 months, phonological awareness continues to improve as well as
pronunciation. By 6–10 years, children can master syllable stress
patterns which helps distinguish slight differences between similar words.
Semantic development
From
birth to one 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 innate preference to listen to their mother's voice. Babies
can recognize familiar words and use preverbal gestures.
Within
the first '12–18 months semantic roles are expressed in one word speech
including agent, object, location, possession, nonexistence and denial. Words
are understood outside of routine games but the child still needs contextual
support for lexical comprehension.
18–24 months Prevalent relations are expressed
such as agent-action, agent-object, action-location[18]
Also, there is a vocabulary spurt between 18–24 months, which includes fast
mapping. Fast mapping is the babies' 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).
30–36 months The child is able to use and understand why question and
basic spatial terms such as in, on or under.
36–42 months There is an understanding of basic color words and kinship
terms. Also, the child has an understanding of the semantic relationship
between adjacent and conjoined sentences, including casual and contrastive
42–48 months When and how questions are comprehended as well as basic
shape words such as circle, square and triangle
48–60 months Knowledge of letter names and sounds emerges, as well as
numbers.
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 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 their
definitions. They also are able to appreciate the multiple meanings of words
and use words precisely through metaphors and puns. Fast mapping continues Within
these years, children are now able to acquire new information from written
texts and can explain relationships between multiple meaning words. Common
idioms are also understood.
Grammatical development
From
1–2 years, children start using telegraphic speech, which are two word
combinations, for example 'wet diaper'. Brown (1973) observed that 75% of
children's two-word utterances could be summarised in the existence of 11 semantic relations:
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|
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Eleven important early semantic relations and examples based
on Brown 197
At
around 3 years, children engage in simple sentences, which are 3 word
sentences. Simple sentences follow adult rules and get 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 complex
grammatical structures such as passive voice.
Pragmatics development
From
birth to one 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]
- By 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
- The Consequences of Bilingualism on Language Development
There
is a large debate regarding whether or not bilingualism is truly beneficial to children. Parents of children often
view learning a second language throughout elementary and high school education
beneficial to the child. Another perspective dictates that the second language
will just confuse the child and prevent them from mastering their primary
language. Studies have shown that American bilingual children have greater
cognitive flexibility, better perceptual skills and tend to be divergent
thinkers than monolingual children between the ages of five to ten. However, studies
comparing Swedish-Finnish bilingual children and Swedish monolingual children
between the ages of five to seven have also shown that the bilingual children
have a smaller vocabulary than monolingual children. In another study
throughout America, elementary school English-monolingual children performed
better in mathematics and reading activities than their non-English-dominant
bilingual and non-English monolingual peers from kindergarten to grade five.
Learning two languages simultaneously can be beneficial or a hindrance to a
child’s language and intellectual development. Further research is necessary to
continue to shed light on this debate.
Language Disorders
A
language disorder is the impaired comprehension and
or use of a spoken, written, and/or other symbol system. A disorder may involve
problems in the following areas:
1. The form of language ie. phonology,
morphology, or syntax
2. The content i.e. semantics
3. The function of language in
communication. Pragmatics.
Olswang
and colleagues have identified a series of behaviors in children in the 18-36
month range that are predictors for the need of language intervention.
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