Language development

Language development is a process starting 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 simple to complex. 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 babbling

Usually, language starts off as recall of simple words without associated meaning, but as children grow, words acquire meaning, with connections between words being formed.these skill help to break up and analyze the relative unbroken speech stream of mature speakers.

By 5 months infants can discriminate thier own language even among others with the same prosodic pattern .

By 8 months children began to store the sound patterns for words although meaning---beyond this sound pattern goes with this entity----- is attached

By 9 months,children are using both the prosodic and phonotactic clues,to discern individual speech sounds.

Most words spoken to the infant by caregivers occur in context in the presence of entities and people to whom the caregivers refers.As a result,the infants hear the word while experiencing the entity or person.Up through age 2,comprehension is highly contex-dependant.

In short,infants may use semantic,syntactic,phonological,stress-pattern and contextual cues in combination to break the speech stream and intrpretation.

TODDLER’S LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

A toddler is a young child, usually defined as being between the ages of one and four.

  Toddler development refers to

the change that occur in children aged

between 1 and 4 years

Change may occur as a result of

genetic processes known as maturation,

or may be due to environmental

factors and learning. Usually it involves

an interaction between the two.

 

 

Early language development is characterized by single-word utterances and by early multiword combination .Learning strategies may differ from children who produce individual words,mostly nouns,to those who produce unanalyzed phrases,such as i don't know.these phrases are called formulas represent a whole-to-part strategy of learning that seems to be less efficient than learning words and building to longer utterances.

First words fill the intentions previously served by gestures or vocalization.

A toddler's first word most often occurs around 12 months, but again this is only an average. The child will then continue to steadily add to his or her vocabulary until around the age of 18 months when language increases rapidly. He or she may learn as many as 7-9 new words a day. Around this time, toddlers generally know about 50 words. At 21 months is when toddlers begin to incorporate two word phrases into their vocabulary, such as "I go", "mama give", and "baby play". Before going to sleep they often engage in a monologue called crib talk in which they practice conversational skills. At this age, children are becoming very proficient at conveying their wants and needs to their parents in a verbal fashion.

It is important to note that toddlers not only imitate others or name objects.They use their language to influence others,to obtain information,to give information,and to engage in conversational give and take.

Toddler seem to make 6 assumptions about the words they hear

  Words refer to entitiesWords are extendable to similar

appearing entitiesWords refer to the whole entity not to the

parts Words can be grouped categoricallyNovel words go with previously unamed

entitiesWords are used consistently

In toddlers most words are learned receptively and then produced expressively.

 Word learning can be influenced by many variabels

.In general girls seem to begin to aquire words earlier and have faster initial learning than boys.

The childs's first words are simple.Most contain one or two syllables;syllabic constructions usually consist of VC (vowel-consonent) (EAT) .CV (key),CVCV(mama) or CVCV (baby) .

 Frequently used words would be recognized by the

child more quickly and accurately and produced more rapidly than infrquent ones.On the other hand high density or lots of neighbours can resut in more confusion and slower less accurate recognition and production

 

Words are not built phenome by phenome but are percieved,learned,and produced as a whole and patterned units(beckman and Edward)

 

The toddler operate with several constraints of attentions ,memory, and knowledge.

The child's meaning encompasses a small portion of adults' full defination.

 FoR Example : The child might hear an adult say

Won't fit,when the child tries to pull her wagon through the door.She may later uses the word fit to mean too big,i can't do it.or as a general negation of an action.

overextentions/underextentions

In the proces of refining meanings the child forms hypothesis and underlying concepts and extends his current meaning to include new examples.Some of his concepts are restricted,while others are extended widely.

overly restricted meanings are called underextentios,in contrast,overextentions are meanings that are too broad.

Two word combination

Children organize their early words by semantic or meaning,categories.At the two-word stage,children follow simple linear word-order patterns of constructionthat indicates these semantic categories.

Within early two word combination,meaning ia signaled by word order.Relationship are expressed by simple word order rules rather than through syntactic relationship.The childs' initial words reflect her rules for each individual word involved.

With the increasing memory and processing skills,the child is able to produce longer utterances by recombining the semantic patterns.When approximately half of the child's utterances contain two words he began to use three words recombinations.

The typical child produce some four-word utterance by age 2.

Several learning stretgiesThe toddler's language knowledge

is incresed through the use of several learning strategeies:

Selective imitation evocative uterance hypotheses testinginterogative uterance 

Toddlers do immitate the all that the hears,and imitation is not random.In general imitaion serves to stablilize forms being learned and thus is highly selective.

New information is gained by :attempting new words or forms awaiting feed backtesting possible names askin question

Example:

By seing a hourse , the toddler might say any of the following

horsie . (evocative uterance,awaites are response ) horsie ? (hypothesis testing ' awaites confirmation) what ? that ? wassat ?

( introgative uterance , awaits answer )  

  KNOWLDGE IS GAINED IN THIS WAY NOT AS A RESULT OF DIRECT PARENTAL INSTRUCTION

   

“Preschool language development”

“The principle is that the shape of a building or object should be primarily based upon its intended function or purpose”

In the same way the communication

function or use is established first and the child learns the language form to convey this function more effectively

Example: Children ask question very early,and the

function is well etablished.

Hypothesis testing---a word stated with rising intonation ,as in horsie?----becomes yes no interogative.

Interogative utternaces -----wassat----becomes wh--introgatives(what--where---who?)

In general introgatives becomes longer more complex and more specific.

 

Negative statement : Negative statement offer 2nd

example of Form Following function.Infants will protest over actions they do not like and may make a stronger statement by tantrumming(stuborness).

 

IT IS NOT SURPRISING THEN THAT NEGETIVE WORDS SUCH AS "NO" ARE OFTEN PRESENT IN THE FIRST 50 WORDS OF

TODDLER.

At first ,the negetive word is placed at the begining of the utternace.Around the age of 2 the child begans placing the negetive element between the subject and predicate as in daddy dont ride bike . By the next few year other negetive forms such as isn't aren't doesn't couldn't wasn't shouldn't are added gradually.

  

Bootstrapping:

Bootstrapping or booting refers to a group of metaphors that share a common meaning: a self-sustaining process that proceeds by itself.

Bootstrapping refers to the question of how language acquisition "gets started”

" A child gradually acquires a great deal of interlocking knowledge about the structure and vocabulary of his or her language. It has sometimes been proposed that some specific type of linguistic knowledge can be acquired early, and that this enables the child to analyze words or sentences well enough to acquire further knowledge from them. Metaphorically, this early knowledge would serve as bootstraps by which the child pulls himself or herself up.

Before their 2nd birthday,toddlers use form such as action+agent(daddy eat) and action+object (eat cookei)this information is used to interpret dominant english sentance form of subject+verb+object(SVO)

The child assume that the first noun in the sentence is causing some action and so on.This strategy will aid in the interpretation some but not all english sentences.

In the sentence i am healthy , there is no action and therefore, no agent.

 

Semantic bootstrapping: Semantic bootstrapping in

linguistics refers to the hypothesis that children utilize innately-known conceptual knowledge to create grammatical categories when acquiring their first language.

Active involvement:

Preschoolers are actively analyzing incoming information,searching for patterns,hypothesizing language rules,and synthesizing there own sentences based on these rules. As a restult,preschoolers often use the full form of structure first, even thought the adult model may be contracted.

Example: Most childern will use the

doggiee is running before the doggiee’s running .

 

Fast mapping : Word are added rapidly by a

process called fast mapping in which the child assume the meaning from context and then produce the word in a similar context gradually the meaning is refined

Words may be fast mapped using one or more stratgies 1. the range of possible meaning may be constraint by

the situation and also by the meaning already possed by the child. The child may assume that the new word’s definition cannot be the same as one already possesed.

2.  possibility is that the child uses an association startegies in which the regularity in the language, such as word order and bound morphemes, give the child clues as to the meaning.

3.  the child may use phonetectic probablity or the likelyhood of accurance of different sound seqences to aid rapid re-call of newly learned words.

4. hypothesized meanings come from both the linguistic and non lingustic context

Contrast and Conventionality :These two strategies can be used to

determine word meaning.Using a contrast stragetity child asume

that each word is differerent from or contrast with every other , this strategy occur concurruntly with the conventially stratgegy.

  In conventially strategy child assume that

certain forms will be used to convey certain meanings.

Using both,the child assume that speaker will use conventional forms that clearly contrast with eachother.

 Complexity And Utterance Length Relation :

Childerens begin to speak in single word utterance whice expand at 18 months of age into two words. In quick succession two word utterances are combined to form three and four words utterances. By the age of two the pre-schooler is begning to add more morphological endings,articels and auxilary verbs.

 

Embedding and Conjoining :Conjoining and embedding also

demonstrate the length complexity relationship.

Embedding is a placement of a phrase or a clause with another clause.(kuch nahi )

In conjoining two independent clauses are joind.(i went to school but my sister stayed at home with flu.)

 

Obviously the two processes of embedding and joining will lengthen

the indiviual sentence and increase complexity.

Avoid Exceptions :

Anyone who has taken a foreign language knows that rules are easier to learn then exceptions this is also true for preschoolers.

Preschoolers seem to follow a rule that when you find a form that works , use it .

It takes time for preschoolers to learn to invert the verb in interogative.

Example:i know what are you doing.i remember where we went.  overgeneralizing from interrogatives,the

child may produce the following. I know what are you doing.I remember where did we go.

Finally around age five the child learn severals indefinate negitive forms such as nobdy, no one , nothing .

Word Order is A Guide

In english the predominat SVO word order is very important and severs as a guide for sentence comprehension and formation.

The order of mention is order of accurance in other words those things mentioned first , occured first.

Avoid deviation from intruption of standard word order Rearrangement of the word as in

interrogatives or additions that may interrupt the sequence as in negetives and embedding are restricted.

Caregivers modify conversations to maximize child participation:

Caregivers facilitate participation in conversation for the child in general care giver discuss topics of interest to the child and encourage the to participate .

There is a corresponding increase in talkativeness of childern at around 36 months.

 

A turnabout is usually a comment or reply to the child’s utterance , followed by a question that serves as a cue.

 Example:

Child: I got a bike for my birthdayAdult: Oh,how special . can u ride all by

urselgf ?Child: No , dady helps me.Adult: That’s probablly good until you get use

to it , does he let go every onece in a while?

The adult provide an opertunity for the child and gives the signal that it is the child’s turn. In this way the child learn to develop a topic in conversation.

All aspects of language are intertwined indevelopment

Language features are not learned in a context that include all elements of language.narratives or stories also illustrate this interrelationship.