The Development of Language

1. The Development of
Language
Chapter 9
Language and Communication

2. How do we develop the ability
to communicate?
Module Objectives:
What are the elements of speech?
How do children develop speech?
How do children learn the meaning of
words?

3. Infants begin making sounds at
birth. They cry, coo, and
laugh…but in the first year they
don’t really do much talking
It could be argued that infants DO
communicate with others, but do not
have language

4. What is Language?
Think about your language…maybe you
even speak more than one! What makes
a language?
This is a broad concept…language is a
system that relates sounds or gestures to
meaning.
‐ Language is expressed through speech,
writing and gesture.

5. There are four distinct elements
to language
-Phonology refers to the sounds of a language
‐ Semantics is the study of words and their
meaning
‐ Grammar refers to the rules used to describe the
structure of a language
‐ Which involves syntax or rules that specify
how words are combined to form sentences
‐ Pragmatics is the study of how people use
language to communicate effectively

6. Children must learn to hear the
differences in speech sounds
and how to produce them; they
must learn the meaning of
words and rules for combining
them into sentences and they
must learn effective ways to talk
with others

7. Phonemes
The basic building blocks of language
‐ The unique sounds that can be joined to create
words
‐ The sound of “p” in pin, pet, and pat
‐ The sound of “b” in bed, bat, and bird
Infants can distinguish many of these sounds,
some of them as early as 1 month after birth
‐ Can discriminate sounds they have never heard
before such as phonemes from a foreign language

8. The language environment for
infants is not solely auditory.
Much language exposure
comes from face-to-face
interaction with adults

9. Infants use many tools to
identity words in speech. They
don’t understand the meaning of
the word yet, but they can
recognize a word as a distinct
configuration of sounds

10. Parents and adults help infants
master language sounds by
talking in a distinctive style
Think on your own…
In what distinctive way do adults talk to
infants? How can this help infants master
the language?

11. Language development
Infants are equipped for language even before
birth, partly due to brain readiness, partly
because of auditory experiences in the uterus
‐ Children around the world have the same
sequence of early language development
Newborns prefer to hear speech over other
sounds- they prefer to listen to “baby talk”- the
high pitched, simplified and repetitive was adults
speak to infants
The sound of a human voice, whether familiar or
strange always fascinates infants

12. Adults Use Infant-Directed
Speech
Adults speak slowly and with exaggerated
changes in pitch and loudness and elongated
pauses between utterances
‐ Also known as parentese, motherese, or
child-directed speech
Infant-direct speech may attract infants’
attention more than adult-directed speech
because its slower pace and accentuated
changes provide the infant with more salient
language cues
‐ Helps infants perceive the sounds that are
fundamental to their language

13. When talking to girls, adults
use more words like “doggie”
and “blankie” whereas with
boys, adults use more words
like “dog” and “blanket”.
Girls hear twice as many
diminutives.

14. If infant-directed speech helps
infants perceive sounds that
are essential to the
development of their
language…
What about children who
cannot hear?

15. Deaf Children
About 1 in every 1,000 American infants is born
deaf
‐ Over 90% of deaf children have hearing
parents
‐ These children are often delayed in language
and complex make-believe play
Mommy Daddy Baby

16. Deaf infants and toddlers seem to master
sign language in much the same way and
at about the same pace that hearing
children master spoken language.
‐ Deaf 10-month-olds often “babble” in signs:
they produce signs that are meaningless but
resemble the tempo and duration of real signs

17. Deaf Children
Compared to hearing children, babbling of deaf
children is delayed
‐ However, if they are exposed to sign language
development will be right on schedule with normal-
hearing children’s speech development
Hearing “dog”, infants in the middle of the first
year of life may first say “dod” then “gog” before
finally saying “dog” correctly
‐ The same gradual progression will occur with sign
language – infants will make mistakes at first before
making the correct sign for dog

18. Speech Production
At 2 months, infants begin making sounds
that are language-based
‐ Starts with cooing
They begin by producing vowel-like
sounds, such as “ooooo” and “ahhhh”
At 5 to 6 months, infants begin making
speech-like sound that have no meaning
‐ Cooing turns into babbling

19. “Baby Talk”
Babbling is the extended repetition of
certain single syllables, such as “ma-
ma-ma, da-da-da, ba-ba-ba” that begins
at 6-7 months of age.
Babbling is experience-expectant
learning
‐ All babies babble
‐ All babies gesture
‐ The sounds they make are similar no
matter what language their parents

20. “Babbling”
Over the next few months, babbling incorporates
sounds from their native language.
Even untrained listeners can distinguish between
babbling infants who have been raised in
cultures in which French, Arabic, or Cantonese
languages were spoken.
‐ Many cultures assign important meanings to
the sounds babies babble:
‐ “ma-ma-ma”, “da-da-da” and “pa-pa-pa” are
usually taken to apply to significant people in
the infant’s life

21. First Words
Infants first recognize words, then
they begin to comprehend words
At about 4 ½ months of age, infants
will listen longer to a tape repeating
their own name than to a tape of
different but similar name
At about 7-8 months of age, infants
readily learn to recognize new words
and remember them for weeks

22. At 6 months – if an infant hears
either “mommy” or “daddy”, they
look toward the appropriate
person.

23. By their 1st birthday, infants
usually say their first words,
usually an extension of
babbling.
By the age of 2 most children have a
vocabulary of a few hundred words, and by
age 6 the vocabulary includes over 10,000
words!

24. The Importance of Symbols
Children begin using gestures, which are
symbols shortly before their first birthday.
Gestures and words convey a message equally
well…sometimes gestures pave the way for
language
‐ In one study, 50% of all objects were referred
to first by gesture and, about 3 months later,
by word (Iverson & Meadow, 2005)

25. After children know
that objects have
names, a gesture is
a convenient
substitute for
pronouns like “it” or
“that” and often
cause the adult to
say the object’s
name

26. Names for everything!
Once an infant’s vocabulary reaches
about 50 words it suddenly begins to
build rapidly, at a rate of 50-100+
words per month, mostly nouns.
This language spurt occurs around
18 months and is sometimes called
the Naming explosion.

27. Productive Vocabulary
Early productive vocabularies of
children in the US include names for
people, objects, and events from the
child’s everyday life.
‐ Frequent events or routines are also
labeled, such as “up” or “bye-bye”
‐ Nouns predominate the early
productive vocabularies of children

28. The rate of children’s
vocabulary development is
influenced by the amount of talk
they are exposed to
The more speech that is
addressed to a toddler, the
more rapidly the toddler will
learn new words

29. Word Comprehension
Fast Mapping is the process of rapidly
learning a new word simply from the
contrastive use of a familiar word and an
unfamiliar word
The children’s ability to connect new
words to familiar words so rapidly that they
cannot be considering all possible
meaning for the new word

30. Example of Fast Mapping
In a preschool classroom, an experimenter drew
a child’s attention to two blocks – asking the child
to “get the celadon block not the blue one”
From this simple contrast, the child inferred that
the name of the color of the requested object
was “celadon”
After a single exposure to this novel word, about
half the children showed some knowledge of it a
week later by correctly picking the celadon color
child from a bunch of paint chips

31. Give Fast-Mapping a
try…
Answer the following questions on you
own.

32. 1. This is a snurk. It walks on its flaxes. How many flaxes
does a snurk have?
2. Snurks have twice as many flaxes as ampolinks.
Where are the amopolinlks?
3. Snurks are covered with garslim. Garslim is like
__________?
4. Like dogs, snurks can wag their pangeers. Where is
the pangeer?
5. Do you think snurks can bispooche? Why or why not?

33. These questions put you back in
toddlers shoes listening to adults
speak. Like toddlers, you all must
rely on context to comprehend the
strange vocabulary to describe the
snurk.
In absence of adequate context,
comprehension is impossible (as you
experienced in question #5).

34. Early Errors in Language
One common inaccuracy is
underextension –using a word too
narrowly.
‐ Using the word “cat” to refer only to
the family cat
‐ Using the word “ball” to refer only to
a favorite toy ball

35. Sarah refers to the blanket she
sleeps with as “blankie”. When
Aunt Ethel gives her a new
blanket Sarah refuses to call
the new one a “blankie” – she
restricts that word only to her
original blanket.

36. Overextension
The use a given word in a broader
context than is appropriate
‐ Common between 1 and 3 years of age
‐ More common than Underextension
Toddlers will apply the new word to a
group of similar experiences
‐ “Open” – for opening a door, peeling fruit, or
undoing shoelaces

37. Language Errors
Children overextend because they have
not acquired another suitable word or
because they have difficulty remembering
a more suitable word
Examples:
‐ Ball referring to ball, balloon, marble, egg, or
apple
‐ Moon referring to moon, half-moon shaped
lemon slice, or half a Cheerio
‐ Car referring to a car, bus, truck, or tractor
‐ Daddy referring to dad or any man
‐ Doggie referring to dog or any four-legged
animal

38. Making Sentences
Most children begin to combine words into
simple sentences by 18 to 24 months of age
Children’s first sentences are two-word
combinations referred to as Telegraphic speech
‐ Words directly relevant to meaning
Words not critical to the meaning are left out –
similar to the way telegrams were written such
as:
‐ Function words: a, the in
‐ Auxiliary words: is, was, will be
‐ Word endings: plurals, possessives, verb
tenses

39. These sentences are brief and
to the point, containing only vital
information
“More cookie”, “Mommy go”, “Daddy juice”,
“Sue dogs”

40. By about 2 ½ years of age, children have
the ability to produce more complex
sentences (four or more words per
sentence).
The longer sentences are filled with
grammatical morphemes (words or
endings of words that make sentences
more grammatical).
A 1 ½-year-old might say “kick ball” but a
3-year-old would be more likely to say “I
am kicking the ball”

41. Overregularization
Speech errors in which children treat irregular
forms of words as if they were regular.
‐ Applying rules to words that are exceptions to the
rule
‐ This leads young children to talk about foots, tooths,
sleeps, sheeps and mouses.
Although technically wrong, Overregularization
is a sign of verbal sophistication because it
shows children are applying the rules to
grammar.

42. Between 3 and 6 Years of Age
Children learn to use negation
‐ “That isn’t a butterfly”
Children learn to use embedded sentences
‐ “Jennifer thinks that Bill took the book”
Children begin to comprehend passive
voice as opposed to active voice
‐ “The ball was kicked by the girl” as opposed to
“The girl kicked the ball”
By the time most children enter
kindergarten, they use most of the
grammatical forms of their native language

43. The development of language
in children is amazing, but how
do they do it?
There are several theories that attempt to
explain how we develop language

44. Infants Are Conditioned to Speak
Behaviorist’s believe that all learning is
acquired step-by-step, through associations
and reinforcements
According to this view, the reinforcement of the
quantity and quality of talking to child affect rate
of language development.
When a 6 month-old says, “ma-ma-ma” they
are showered with attention and praise. This is
exactly what the baby wants and will make the
sounds again to get the same rewards.

45. Say Ma-Ma…..
Children who are spoken to more and praised
by caregivers tend to develop language faster.
Parents are great intuitive teachers- we name
items for infants and praise infants when they
repeat our words.
For instance, parents typically name each
object when they talk to their child, “Here is
your bottle”, “There is your foot”, “You want
your juice?”
Parents name the object and speak clearly and
slowly, often using baby talk to capture the
infant’s interest (Gogate et al., 2000).

47. What Do the Linguist’s say?
Noam Chomsky believes language is a product
of biology and is too complex to be mastered so
early and easily by conditioning.
Chomsky noted that children worldwide learn the
rudiments of grammar at approximately the same
age because the human brain is equipped with a
language device.
‐ including intonations and structure of language

48. Our Brain is Specialized for
Language
LAD (language acquisition device) is an area of
our brain which facilitates the development of
language.
Chomsky believes that the LAD facilitates
language and enables children to derive the
rules of grammar from everyday speech,
regardless of the native language.
Language is experience-expectant, words are
expected by the developing brain-Chomsky
believes that children are pre-wired for
language

49. Think about a successful
conversation
What factors influence
effective communication?

50. Using Language to Communicate
For effective oral communication:
‐ People should take turns, alternating as
speaker and listener
‐ A speaker’s remarks should relate to the
topic and be understandable to the listener
‐ A listener should play attention and let the
speaker know if his or her remarks do not
make sense

51. Taking Turns
Soon after 1-year-olds begin to speak,
parents encourage their children to
participate in conversational turn-taking
By age 2, spontaneous turn-taking is
common in conversations between children
and adults
By age 3, children have progressed to the
point that if a listener fails to reply promptly,
the child repeats his or her remark in order to
elicit a response

52. Taking Turns
Parent: Can you see the bird?
Infant (cooing): oooooh
Parent: It is a pretty bird.
Infant: oooooh
Parent: You’re right, it’s a cardinal.
Parents having a conversation with a 6-
week-old infant still involve taking turns. To
help children along, parents often carry both
sides of the conversation to demonstrate
how the roles of speaker and listener
alternate.

53. Initiating a Conversation
The first attempt to deliberately communicate typically
emerges at 10 months
‐ Usually by touching or pointing to an object while
simultaneously looking at another person
At 1 year, infants begin to use speech to communicate
and often initiate conversations with adults
‐ First conversation are about themselves but this
rapidly expands to include objects in their world
By preschool, children begin to adult their messages to
match the listener and the context
‐ School-age children speak differently to adults and
peers
‐ Preschool children give more elaborate messages to
listeners who are unfamiliar with a topic than to
listeners who are familiar with it

54. Click on the picture for an
interesting article on language
development

55. What’s Next?
How Do Our Emotions Develop?