Dr Sharon Preston's lecture discusses the development of language from birth to age 5. It covers the key elements of language including phonetics, semantics, syntax and pragmatics. The lecture also examines stages of language development such as babbling, the one word stage and two word stage. Regarding theories of language acquisition, the lecture compares the learning theory of Skinner, the nativist view of Chomsky, and the social interaction perspective of Bruner. The lecture concludes that language develops through an interaction between innate capabilities and environmental input such as social interaction and child-directed speech.

1. Language Development
Dr Sharon Preston
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2. Lecture
overview
Elements of language
Critical period
Stages in development of language
Theories
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3. What is language?
Set of arbitrary symbols combined and used to
convey meaning
Production of an infinite number of messages
Novel sentences – communication
Rule system
Linguistics – study of the structure and rules of
language
Psycholinguistics – study of the processes involved
in producing language
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4. Are we equipped from birth to process sounds to
form language?
Yes?....Chomsky – innate language acquisition device
No?....Skinner – environmental input and learning
Pragmatics – our aim is to communicate our deeper
meaning and intentions; using language effectively in
a social context
From birth to about 5 yrs we develop an amazing
command of our language
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5. A ‘chat’ with a one-year old!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
annotation_id=annotation_400161&feature=iv&src_v
id=IQZ5azy0HoU&v=bq2T7jP7dpQ
(Dad having a little fun here…!)
Clearly there is a lot to learn in language.
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6. Elements of language
Phonetics – basic sound units and combinations
of units in a given language
Semantics – meanings of words or combinations
of words
Syntax – grammatical rules that dictate how
words can be combined
Pragmatics – understanding the true intention of
the utterance; social context important
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7. phonetics
the sound units and rules for combining them in a
given language
…st…o…p
combined these form the word ‘stop’
Phonemes – basic speech sounds
English language has 46 phonemes
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8. Blending phonemes to make words:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEzfpod5w_Q
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9. semantics
The meaning: can be individual words but greater
meaning is conveyed by combining words to form
sentences
Morphemes – basic unit of meaning
Can be a single word e.g. dog
Can be a suffix e.g. ‘s’ to denote a plural ‘dogs’
Bound morphemes have grammatical meaning but only when
attached to words e.g. the plural ‘s’
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10. syntax
Rules for combing words into sentences and phrases
Word order:
Noun, verbs in correct order
Important for semantic understanding
- Same word order but different meanings:
The dog bit the postman
The postman bit the dog
- Syntactically correct but no meaning:
The goalpost scored a banana
- Syntactically correct and correct meaning:
The player scored a goal
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11. pragmatics
Using language effectively within a social context
Understanding the true intention of the utterance
E.g. child to another child: ‘gimme that’
Child to teacher: ‘Can I please have that toy’
‘can you pass the salt?’ – ‘yes, I am fully able to do
this’ (meaning: ‘please pass me the salt’)
Understanding rhetorical questions
Understanding sarcasm
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12. Rhetorical question
Used to stress a point rather
than expecting an answer
Sarcasm:
Sensitive children more likely to identify sarcasm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coBBfe_-uOo
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13. Critical periods for language
development
Lenneberg (1967):
-To speak and comprehend normally, children must
acquire all language basics by adolescence
-Physiological changes in the brain make language
learning more difficult after this time
-Scanning techniques demonstrate localisation of brain
activity during speech and comprehension
-Lateralisation – left hemisphere dominant for
language in most people
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14. Evidence:
Isolation from social contact
- Genie : reared in isolation until age 13 yrs. Extensive
therapy resulted in some learning of words but she
never learned to speak normally
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15. Evidence…
Deaf children: learning sign language after the age
of 12 shows consistent errors in the use of grammar
– normal course of development when learned from
birth (Newport, 1990)
Learning a second language: older = more
grammatical errors shown in a ‘grammar test’ for the
second language (Johnson & Newport, 1989)
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16. Neuropsychological findings:
Weber-Fox and Neville (1996). Bilingual speakers
-Chinese speakers acquiring English as a second
language at different points in their lifetimes
-Asked to read sentences that were either correct or
violated semantic or syntactic rules
-Brain wave activity monitored
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17. Results:
If English was acquired after 4 yrs of age, electrical
activity in the left hemisphere showed a different
pattern than if English had been acquired earlier in
childhood.
Conclude:
The brain seems to respond, and perhaps become
organised, differently depending on when the second
language was learned.
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18. What do such studies suggest?
- The existence of a critical period for language
acquisition
Newport (1990):
‘in language…the child, and not the adult,
appears to be especially privileged as a learner’.
(Newport, 1990, p 12)
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19. Stages in language
development
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20. Prelinguistic stage
Cooing (6 – 8 weeks)
- vowel-like utterances that characterise the infant’s
first attempts to vocalise
- usually made when feeling contented
- also interactive with parent
- Early sounds of ‘g’ or ‘k’ formed at the back of the
mouth
- Then later weeks ‘m’ or ‘b’ formed at front of mouth
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21. 11 weeks old – cooing baby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXJfTNgcpik
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22. The development of babbling
- Major development in first year
- Spontaneous babbling – will make babbling sounds
alone in the cot
- Intonation patterns identified – rising inflection,
speech-like rhythms
- Babbling apparent in all cultures and around the
same age
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23. Babbling
3 – 6 months
The production of consonant/vowel combinations -
phonemes
‘da’ ‘ba’ ‘ ma’
Characterise the infant’s first attempts to vocalise
Mutually coordinated with caregiver interactions
7 months
Canonical babbling – repeating syllables
‘baba’ ‘dada’ ‘mama’
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24. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITQftYfK408
above is a young infant ‘talking’ with her father on
the phone.
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25. 9 – 10 months
Increasing complexity in phonemes
Variations in intonation
Phoneme production now restricted to baby’s native
language
Different ‘native tongues’ are identifiable now –
phonemes reflecting the native language
Deaf babies tend to stop babbling at this age
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26. Gestures (late in first year)
Non-verbal communication
- Pointing
- Showing
- Giving
A gesture may symbolise a request – turning motion
to symbolise turning door knob as a wish to go out
Sniffing gesture to signify a flower
- Major cognitive advance – symbolism: one thing
representing something else
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27. One word stage
About 1 year of age
Utter first meaningful words
mama dada bye
- First words often reflect things that are important in
their lives – people, pets, toys, milk
Regularity in first words between cultures:
- Mummy, daddy, bye, hi, woof-woof
These words were most frequently found in the first 10
words used by young children from U.S., Beijing, and
Hong Kong (Tardif et al.,2008)
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28. Young children comprehend far more words and
sentences than they can actually say
– receptive vocabulary far greater than
expressive vocabulary vocabulary
The use of holophrases demonstrates this:
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29. Holophrases
- one word may be used to convey a full sentence
Example:
‘milk’ – I want some milk
- I have split my milk
- teddy wants some milk
Holophrases often contain a word and a gesture –
precursor to the 2-word stage
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30. Two word stage
Universal (although individual differences are apparent)
From about 18 mths – vocabulary spurt
Can learn as many as 20 new words (mostly nouns) in each
week of the vocabulary spurt (Goldfield & Reznick, 1990).
The vocal melody / intonation characteristic of a specific
language is now linked to the child’s native language
Typically 4 – 5 word sentences are demonstrated by
about 24 mths.
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31. Grammar (Stage 1)
18 – 30 mths child’s speech is essentially telegraphic
– only those words conveying the most information are
used
Tend to leave out verbs and plurals
Example:
 Utterance = ‘there dog’
 Meaning = ‘there is a dog’
Many verbs denote the actions or motions of nouns;
child has to become familiar with the object (noun)
before they understand its motions.
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32. Grammar (Stage 2)
30 mths – 4/5 yrs
Gradual inclusion of grammatical words –
demonstrates appreciation of the syntactic rules of a
language
Hence:
‘daddy hat’
‘daddy wear hat’
‘daddy is wearing a hat’
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33. Over-generalisation of rules:
Plural – add ‘s’
Not appropriate for ‘mouse’ - child may say ‘mouses’
Past tense – add ‘-ed’
Not appropriate for ‘go’ – child may say ‘goed’
The child is unlikely to have heard these types of
errors and therefore this evidence strongly suggests
they are acquiring the rules of grammar but sometimes
over-generalise.
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34. So, what do we have so far?
Specific elements of speech reflects the complexity
of language
Infants demonstrate remarkable abilities in acquiring
language
Critical period
Stages of development
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35. Theories of language
development
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36. Learning theory – Skinner
Linguistic perspective - Chomsky
Social interaction - Bruner
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37. B.F. Skinner
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38. Skinner (1957)
‘A child acquires verbal behaviour when
relatively unplanned vocalisations,
selectively reinforced, assume forms which
produce appropriate consequences in a
given verbal community’
(Gross, 2010; p293)
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39. Learning theory – operant conditioning
B.F. Skinner – selective reinforcement
Cooing and babbling basic vocalisations
Adults selectively reinforce desired sounds
- adult may repeat them
- child likely to imitate
- adult likely to smile, vocalise and interact
Child likely to learn that specific sounds will result in
rewards
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40. Evaluation of Skinner
Selective reinforcement can be beneficial – aid
language development of developmentally delayed
children
Difficult to explain the ‘creativity’ of language.
- Our sentences tend to be innovative: we combine
words to form sentences to convey meaning but it is
unlikely the same sentences are used repeatedly –
descriptive accounts are never exactly the same
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41. Continued…
Grammatical errors made by young children cannot
be explained by operant conditioning or imitation
- The acquisition of the complex ‘rule system’ of
language is difficult to account for using only operant
conditioning and imitation
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42. Noam Chomsky
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43. Linguistic perspective
Chomsky – Nativist approach
Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
- innate mechanism
- through the LAD the child is hardwired to recognise
the grammar of whatever language they are exposed
to in infancy
- It underpins the ability to transform surface structure
to deep structure
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44. Chomsky cont…
Each language has it’s own set of rules – phrase
structure rules – language is ‘rule-governed’
Syntax of language reflects these rules
Adding ‘s’ to denote plural; adding ‘-ed’ to denote
past tense (basic examples)
Other rules demonstrate how complex sentences
are formed – nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc in certain
positions within a sentence
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45. Deep structure and surface structure
Surface structure:
-Refers to syntactic structure – word order
Deep structure:
-Refers to the semantics – meaning - of the sentence
We do not retain surface structure, it is the actual
deeper meaning that is understood and stored
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46. The creativity of language
We do not recall the story of a book, for example, by
remembering each of the words of the book. We
remember, and recall to others, the deeper meaning,
plots, characters etc.
We transform the words into meaning
When constructing sentences we choose words to
convey meaning enabling an infinite number of
meaningful sentences
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47. Evaluation of Chomsky
Linguist – focus on the rules of language
Proposes an innate language acquisition device
Theory lacks appreciation of the social context
Does not give much (if any) information on the
cognitive processes – focus on rules rather than
processing
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48. Jerome Bruner
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49. Social interaction
Bruner – interactional framework
- Suggests there must be a ‘language acquisition
support system’ (LASS)
- This reflects the features of early relationships e.g.
turn-taking between caregiver and child
- Distinctive speech patterns in early interactions.
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50. Joint-action formats (Bruner 1995)
Shared activities within a social context
Early turn-taking
Peek-a-boo
One-to-one play interactions
Feeding with spoon
Pointing – reading a book
Above provide a social context in which the meaning
of language can be learned - mapping of object
names
Child’s first words reflect the social context of the
child – own name, family members, pets, etc
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51. Speech patterns (child directed speech)
Phonological
characteristics
Semantic
characteristics
Higher pitch
Exaggerated and more
varied intonation
Lengthened vowels
Clear enunciation
Limited range of words
‘baby talk’ words
More words with concrete
referents
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52. These distinctive speech patterns are noted in a
range of cultures (Fernald, 1985)
- Kung Bushmen of the Kalahari
- Forest dwellers of Cameroon
- Yanomami of the Amazon Basin
- Eipo of New Guinea
Child directed speech is not universal. However,
cultures that demonstrate this also show language
development to be quicker than cultures that do not.
Child-directed speech therefore useful but not
essential.
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53. Social interaction - evaluation
Bruner suggests it is the reciprocal and affective
nature of language that Chomsky neglects.
Development happens as a result of an interaction
between the environment and the child’s innate
predispositions
General consensus on the interaction between the
environment and a genetic base
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54. Conclude theories:
Operant conditioning (Skinner) – proposes language
develops through reinforcement; stress the
importance of the environment
Linguistic perspective (Chomsky) – innate learning
device enabling processing from birth (L.A.D)
Interactive perspective (Bruner) – proposes there is
an interaction between innate capabilities to process
information and environmental input
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55. Overall Summary
Language is complex – specific features
Critical period – suggested from birth to adolescence
Identifiable developmental path to acquiring
language
Stages in development
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56. Interesting issue
Does the foetus have the ability to learn and
distinguish sounds? (30 mins)
The Kavli Foundation
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhNngnT9_Eg
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57. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2XBIkHW954
The linguistic genius of babies (10 mins)
Neuroscience demonstration of early language
learning
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58. Fernald, A. (1985). Four-month-old infants prefer to listen to
motherese. Infant Behaviour and Development, 8: 181-195.
Gross, R. (2010). Psychology: The science of mind and behaviour.
U.K: Hodder Education.
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