The document summarizes language development from birth through three years old. It notes that infants begin with crying and cooing, then progress to babbling consonant sounds by 6 months. By their first birthday, infants say their first words, usually names. Exposure to language helps development, as toddlers learn 50-100 new words per month after 50 words are acquired. Their vocabularies grow from a few hundred words at age 2 to over 10,000 words by age 6.

1. THE DEVELOPMENT OF
LANGUAGE

2. 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

3. 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
PHONEMES

4. THE LANGUAGE ENVIRONMENT FOR
INFANTS IS NOT SOLELY AUDITORY. MUCH
LANGUAGE EXPOSURE COMES FROM FACE-
TO-FACE INTERACTION WITH ADULTS

5.  Think on your own…
 In what distinctive way do adults talk to infants? How can
this help infants master the language?
PARENTS AND ADULTS HELP INFANTS
MASTER LANGUAGE SOUNDS BY
TALKING IN A DISTINCTIVE STYLE

6.  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 has no meaning
Cooing turns into babbling
SPEECH PRODUCTION

7.  Prior to producing speech, infants’ vocal tracts are prepared
for speech through crying, sneezing, sighing, burping etc.
 Infants are sensitive to prosody – the characteristic rhythm,
tempo, melody, intonation patterns, etc… with which a
language is spoken
 Babies that are exposed to a language with different patterns
of intonation (such as Japanese and French) reflect their
language’s intonation in their babbling. So, babbling is
influenced by the characteristics of the speech they hear.
POINTS TO PONDER

8. 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
speak
“BABY TALK”

9. 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
“BABBLING”

10. 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
FIRST WORDS

11. AT 6 MONTHS – IF AN INFANT HEARS
EITHER “MOMMY” OR “DADDY”, THEY
LOOK TOWARD THE APPROPRIATE
PERSON.

12.  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!
BY THEIR 1ST BIRTHDAY, INFANTS
USUALLY SAY THEIR FIRST WORDS,
USUALLY AN EXTENSION OF BABBLING.

13. 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)
THE IMPORTANCE OF SYMBOLS

14. 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

15. 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.
NAMES FOR EVERYTHING!

16. 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
PRODUCTIVE VOCABULARY

17. 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

18.  There are several theories that attempt to explain how we
develop language
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE IN
CHILDREN IS AMAZING, BUT HOW DO
THEY DO IT?

19. 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.
INFANTS ARE CONDITIONED TO
SPEAK

20.  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).
SAY MA-MA…..

21. 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
WHAT DO THE LINGUIST’S SAY?

22. 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
OUR BRAIN IS SPECIALIZED FOR
LANGUAGE

23. SUMMARY

24. LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT BIRTH
THROUGH THREE:
( O W E N S , 1 9 9 6 )
 Children’s first words are used to fulfill specific intentions.
They can be used for:
Labelling Repeating
Answering Requesting
(action or answer)
Calling Greeting
Protesting (NO!) Practicing

25. A REPRESENTATIVE LIST OF EARLY
WORDS:
 Juice Mama All Gone
 Cookie Dada More
 Baby Doggie No
 Bye-Bye Kitty Up
 Hi Dirty Go
 Car Hot Do
 Water Shoe Milk
 Eye Nose Hat

26. 6 MONTHS
 Vocalization with intonation
 Responds to his name
 Responds to human voices without visual cues by turning his
head and eyes
 Responds appropriately to friendly and angry tones

27. 12 MONTHS
 Uses one or more words with meaning (this may be a
fragment of a word)
 Understands simple instructions, especially if vocal or
physical cues are given
 Is aware of the social value of speech

28. 18 MONTHS
 Has vocabulary of approximately 5-20 words
 Vocabulary made up chiefly of nouns
 Some echolalia (repeating a word or phrase over and over)
 Is able to follow simple commands

29. 24 MONTHS
 Can name a number of objects common to his surroundings
 Is able to use at least two prepositions, usually chosen from
the following: in, on, under
 Combines words into a short sentence-largely noun-verb
combinations (mean) length of sentences is given as 1.2
words
 Vocabulary of approximately 150-300 words
 Volume and pitch of voice not yet well-controlled
 Can use two pronouns correctly: I, me, you, although me and
I are often confused
 My and mine are beginning to emerge
 Responds to such commands as "show me your eyes (nose,
mouth, hair)"

30. 36 MONTHS
 Use pronouns I, you, me correctly
 Is using some plurals and past tenses
 Knows at least three prepositions, usually in, on, under
 Knows chief parts of body and should be able to indicate these
if not name
 Handles three word sentences easily
 Has in the neighborhood of 900-1000 words
 Verbs begin to predominate
 Understands most simple questions dealing with his
environment and activities
 Relates his experiences so that they can be followed with
reason
 Able to reason out such questions as "what must you do when
you are sleepy, hungry, cool, or thirsty?“

31. THAT’S ALL FOR TODAY. SEE YOU NEXT
WEEK AS ACTIVE LEARNERS!