Language development

FACULTY OF EDUCATION
Shahnaz Memon
2K18/BEDS/77
Language Development
Assigned by: Dr. Amjad Ali
Arain

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
 Babies cannot talk as they do not have the physical
ability to make speech when they are born.
 Vocal chords, oral cavity and muscle control
needed to make speech are not sufficiently
developed until the baby is 6 months old.
 The language areas of the brain take two years to
develop fully (Goldman-Rakic, 1987).

 A key component of learning to speak is the ability
to hear oneself speak.
 All babies babble and coo to themselves at around
2 months old. However, hearing impaired children
will stop doing it by around 4 months old. Hearing
impaired children can learn to speak, but will
require specialist training to do so.

 Another key component in language development
is cognitive development.
 For example, a child has to have object
permanence to understand the word “gone”.
 Other concepts such as “more than one” need to be
understood so that the child can use plural words.

 As we have seen before each of our areas of
development is linked with the other areas. Just as
a child needs the necessary physical and
intellectual development to take place to develop
language, so also does s/he need social
development.
 Language is a form of communication – we need
other people to make it meaningful for us.

 A case was recorded of a normal hearing child with
deaf parents, the child was at home all of the time,
with the only spoken language being on TV.
 The child was fluent in sign language but by the
age of 3 could not speak or understand English.
(Moskowitz, 1978).
 What do you think was the reason for this?

 Early vocalisations – crying, cooing, babbling.
(Birth to 1 year old)
 First words – words used on their own.
(1 year to 18 months)
 Telegraphic Speech – two word sentences.
(18 months to 2 years old)
 Multiple word sentences – longer sentences.
(2 to 2 and a half years old)
 Adult-like speech – complete sentences.
(4 years old)
(Wood, 1981)

 When babies babble they are practising using
different intonations and pitches of voice that they
will use later to convey meaning.
 By 3 months of age babies will take turns in
“conversation” with their caregiver.

 With first words babies begin to label the things
around them.
 Overextension occurs when babies attach a label to
something and then use it to all things they think
belong to that category – for example, calling all
four legged animals “dog”.
 After a few months of one word sentences babies
start to add words together and use telegraphic
speech.

 Telegraphic speech – a bit of an outdated concept
now that we don’t use telegrams. In a telegram,
people were charged by the word and so tried to
give a message in as few words as possible. In
telegraphic speech children use the key words they
need to get their message across. “Daddy work”
means Daddy is gone to work, it is short, but it gets
the meaning across.

 The amazing thing about telegraphic speech is that
it follows the syntax – which is the grammatical
rules which make sentences.
 If a person is performing the action they will come
first – so “Mammy throw” means Mammy throws
the ball.
 If a thing is being acted upon it will come last so
“throw ball” means “throw the ball”.

 By about 2 and a half, children are using multi-word
sentences. They begin to learn the rules of their
language. For instance, they say “I goed to the
park” – they have not heard this, they are applying
the rule “ed” to make the past tense. This is called
overregularisation, as children learn the rules for
irregular verbs they stop making these mistakes,
usually by age 5 or 6.

 From 4 years onwards children are fluent speakers.
 They acquire new words at an astounding speed.
 By the age of 6 they have an average vocabulary of
14,000 words (Carey, 1978).
 They learn 22 new words a day. Miller (1981) says
that “No one teaches them 22 words a day. Their
minds are like little vacuum pumps designed by
nature to suck up words.”

 There are 3 basic schools of thought on how
children acquire language: the behaviourist
approach, the nativist approach, and the cognitive
approach.
 The behaviourist approach was put forward by B.F.
Skinner in his 1957 book Verbal Behavior. He
believed that reinforcement and punishment were
responsible for all learning, including learning
language. He said the parents reinforced babbling
by giving the baby attention and then reinforced
word sounds in the babbling. He also said that
children learned language by observation. Almost
immediately his ideas came under criticism from
other psychologists.

 The nativist approach. Noam Chomsky wrote a
stinging review of Skinner’s book in 1959.
 He asked how could children learn language by
observation and reinforcement when they often say
something that they have never heard before? Also, he
asked where is the punishment part of the equation?
Parents don’t punish their children for bad usage of
words.
 In fact, Chomsky noted that parents mostly correct
children’s speech when the facts are wrong, not the
grammar.
 This has been supported by subsequent research which
has shown that parents view conversation with their
children as interactions, not as teaching opportunities
(Miller, 1981).

 Chomsky argued that when children use
overregularisation they are obviously not using
what they have observed, but are putting in place
rules they are working out.
 Furthermore, he showed that attempts by adults to
get children to correct such errors are usually futile.
 Chomsky proposed that language learning is pre-
wired into the brain by a language acquisition
device or LAD. He showed that language learning
progresses through the same processes in all
languages and cultures.

 Studies with hearing impaired children supported
Chomsky’s theory. A 9 year old boy reared by deaf
parents had perfect signing grammar even though
both his parents had incorrect grammar in their sign
language (Kolata, 1992). This supports Chomsky’s
belief that children can learn rules of grammar that
they are never specifically shown.

 The cognitive approach. Some psychologists
believe that language development is totally
dependent on cognitive development. They also
believe that social interaction is key to this cognitive
and language development. Bruner (1983) posits
that language development is built on the
interaction between baby and adult.

 So which theory is right?
 Current thinking is that Skinner and Chomsky are
opposite extremes, both go some way to explaining
language development, but neither fully develops it.
“Language development is propelled by inborn
biological forces combined with reinforcement,
punishment, and imitation and nurtured by the
constant communication that occurs between
parents and their children”(Goldstein, 1994).

REFERENCES
 Bruner, J. (1983) Child’s talk: Learning to use language. New
York: Norton
 Carey, S. (1978) The child as word learner. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press
 Chomsky, N. (1959) Review of Verbal Behaviour by B.F. Skinner,
Language, 35, 26-58
 Goldman-Rakic, P.S. (1987) Development of cortical circuitry and
cognitive function. Child Development, 58, 601-622
 Goldstein, E.B. (1994) Psychology. California: Brooks Cole
 Kolata, G. (1992, September 1) Linguists debate study
classifying language as innate human skills. New York Times,
pB6
 Miller, G.A. (1981) Language and Speech. New York: W.H.
Freeman
 Moskowitz, A.B. (1978) The acquisiton of language. Scientific
American, pp 92-98, 103-108
 Skinner, B.F. (1957) Verbal Behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall

Language development

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