Week 8

1. Week 8 Outline • Evolution • Characteristics of Language • Children’s language development • (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics) • Theories of language acquisition • Bilingualism Part I

2. Evolution • Modern humans appeared 150 000 years ago • All technological advances appear to have occurred in the last 40 000 years

3. Brief History of Human Evolution Art Advances in stone tools Fire Cities Earliest Homonid Fossils Earliest stone tools Brain expansion 4 3 2 1 Present Neanderthal Australopethicus Africanus Homo Erectus Homo Sapiens

4. Evolution • Modern humans appeared 150 000 years ago • All technological advances appear to have occurred in the last 40 000 years • Appearance of speech may have been related to sudden changes in vocal apparatus • Short, rounded tongue • Larynx is lower in throat than in other previous species These changes allow for greater control over vocal apparatus, and hence more sounds can be made

6. Evolution Con’d Two theories of the evolution of language: • Discontinuity Theory • Believe that language is unique to humans, didn’t evolve over time, but happened abruptly, reflected by sudden changes in the vocal apparatus that allowed speech • Continuity Theory • Believe that language occurred very gradually, is evolved from calls and gestures of ancestors, and came from gradual increase in brain size; changes in VA just allowed it to happen

7. Attempts to teach our relatives language • Vicki • Tried to get her to speak; Failed • Washoe • Learned a small number of signs • Nim Chimpsky • Failed to do anything but imitate and repeat same signs • Kanzi • Successfully acquired Yerkish • Chantek • Successfully learned sign

8. Primate Language, con’d • Attempts at teaching primates language are moderately successful • Takes A LOT of time • Typical communication involves reinforcers like food (Chantek e.g.) • Does not appear to be a natural acquisition for primate species

9. Characteristics of Language (Hockett, 1961) • Semanticity • Symbols convey meaning • Arbitrariness • No resemblance between word and referent • Discreteness • Signals don’t vary continuously

10. Characteristics of Language con’d • Duality of Patterning • Contingent on discreteness, words have both a whole form, and can be broken down • Productivity • Highly creative, can make new sentences all the time • Displacement • Talk about things not in front of us • Reflect on past or future events

11. Honeybees: yes, a waggle indicates a food source, so it has meaning to the members of the hive Vervets: yes, their calls mean something to the kin and group mates Does anyone else have language?Semanticity

12. Honeybees: No, the dance is at an angle relative to food source and sun Vervets: yes, calls have nothing to do with predators they refer to Arbitrariness

13. Honeybees: yes and no: waggles for near and far are discrete, but waggle more for certain amounts Vervets: yes: one call indicates one thing, and another call another thing Discreteness

14. Honeybees: no Vervets: no Duality of Patterning

15. Honeybees: Yes, can signal new locations, and different kinds of location Vervets: No, productivity would endanger kin! Productivity

16. Honeybees: yes, but in a limited way Vervets: no, calls are never made in absence of predator Displacement

17. Other species? • African Elephants • Whales • Dolphins

19. Children’s Language Development Stages of Phonological Development

20. Phonological development con’d • Notice overlap of phases in infancy • Children make mistakes in phonology • Deaf infants stop after stage 3 • Receptive VS Expressive Language

21. Role of Intentionality • Must to intend to communicate in order to communicate • Earliest intention is non-specific and not goal-related, like play, joint attention • By 8 months, communicative gestures are in place, which are gradually replaced by words

22. Language Perception • Problem of segmentation” • “Do you want some mango?” • “What’s a semmango?” • Infants very good at separating sounds of speech (Aslin’s work) • Prosodic Bootstrapping Hypothesis • Motherese

23. Morphological Development • When speech begins it is “holophrastic” • Morpheme = smallest unit of meaning • Relatively universal acquisition order of morphology (e.g. present tense 1st, possessives later, contractions last) • Ways to measure: MLU, conjugation • Mistakes: Overregularization (goed, wented, feets)

24. Syntactic Development • Initially, speech is telegraphic but gets more complex, and eventually we need… • Syntax = knowledge of sentence structure and how things go together • Sentences get bigger between 2 and 4 • Syntax development in predictable • Start using Wh- questions (where first, then why and how) • Use more negations • Produce more complex sentences

25. Semantic Development • Children acquire words rapidly • At 18 months have about 50 words • By 24 = 200 words (37 words/month)

26. Patterns of lexical growth

27. Lexical growth from 10-50 words

28. Semantic Development • Children acquire words rapidly • At 18 months have about 50 words • By 24 = 200 words (37 words/month) • Seem to use fast-mapping (Ability to learn new words based on very little input) • Earlier words very context-bound; this changes in second year • Overextension and underextension • Problem of mapping (knowing “shoes” doesn’t just refer to laces) • Seem to have strategies for assigning meaning to words:

29. Processing constraints used to assign meaning to words • Object Scope Constraint • Word refers to whole object and not parts • Taxonomic Constraint • Words label categories of similar objects with similar perceptual features • Mutual Exclusivity • Each word has one label and that different words refer to separate non-overlapping categories

30. Can you show me a dax?

31. Semantic Development • They use Syntactical Bootstrapping: they will use word order to assume meanings of words

32. This person is nissing.

33. Can you show someone else nissing? Children will use the syntactic cue from the sentence to determine which part of the picture was “nissing”

34. Pragmatic Development • By the age of 3, children are adept with their audience • They know to phrase requests in a certain way: • 3 year old: “Every night I get an ice cream” • Babysitter: “That’s nice” • 3 year old: “Even when there’s a babysitter I get an ice cream” They understand that not everything is literal, and that some questions are rhetorical By 4, they adapt their speech when speaking to younger siblings

35. Theories of Language Development: Nativism • Based on Chomsky’s linguistic theory • Surface VS Deep structure • Deep Structure = Universal Grammar • Posits the Language Acquisition Device to acquire surface structure • We have to learn principles and parameters of our own specific language • E.g. Head-first VS head-last • Pro-drop languages

36. Lenneberg points out features of language that make it uniquely human: • Species Specific • Species Uniform • Difficult to Delay • Regular Sequence • Anatomical Structures related to language • Genetically based language disorders (disorders that run in family)

37. “Speech is Special” hypothesis • Different areas light up during auditory vs. speech tasks • Critical period for language but not hearing • Dissociation between speech and language and hearing functions in aphasics • Right ear advantage in humans • Phonetic mode of perception • Acoustic trading • Categorical perception • Audiovisual speech perception and intermodal integration • Symmetry between production and perception

38. More evidence… • We are able to create language from nothing • Pidgins • Structurally simple communication systems arising from 2 people who share no common language • Hawaiian Pidgin • Creoles • Languages formed when pidgin is developed into a complex, true grammatical language • Children of above • Deaf e.g. • Nicaraguan Sign Language

39. The Critical Period Hypothesis • Children appear to learn language better than adults 4 lines of evidence: • Feral or socially deprived children • Never acquire language properly • The case of Second Language Acquisition (Johnson & Newport) • Deaf Children • Can never learn traditional signing systems • Brain Plasticity • If injured when young, other areas of the brain will take over

40. Potential Problems with Critical Periods • Feral children? • Johnson & Newport VS Bialystok & Miller • Results depend on languages tested (Spanish VS Korean) • Results vary when modality is varied • Problems with nativism in general • Categorical perception of phonemes AND signs AND colour, and other animals do it • Not enough explanatory power

41. Theories of Language Development 2:Social-Interaction Hypothesis • Most common name associated: Bruner • No innate mechanisms • rather language arising from our social interactions, and out of social necessity • Parents use the Language Acquisition Support System • This allows adults to speak more slowly, simpler, fewer words • Suits the limited information processing capacity of younger children

42. Social Interaction Hypothesis Lines of evidence: • Pre-linguistic turn-taking: promotes and encourages language acquisition • Child-directed speech (main features) • We use higher frequencies • More various frequencies (highs and lows) • More rising frequency contours (going from low to high) • Regulates baby’s mood, behaviour, and attention, and relays mom’s mood • Restricted vocabulary, paraphrasing, limited to context

43. Social Interaction Hypothesis • As we mature the people around us will speak faster, and in more complex sentences • Same phenomenon as when we speak English to a presumed foreigner • Language comes about from social interaction and out of social necessity

44. Theories of Language Development 3:Locke’s Neurolinguistic Theory • Vocal Learning (onset prenatal) • Hear sounds, learn them, prefer them • Revolves around social cognition • Utterance acquisition (onset 5 to 7 months) • Utter words and short phrases, but really hold no meaning • Again, revolves around Social Cognition • Grammatical Analyses (onset 20-37 months) • Acting on info stored from previous phase, try to extract rules • Focus on analysis • Elaboration and Integration (onset 3 years+) • Processing both social and grammatical info • Can take in new info and organize it

45. Neurolinguistic Theory • Posits an internal innate grammatical module that kicks in in the third phase, and is able to interpret a lot of info • Some supporting evidence: • Correlation between vocabulary size and correct grammar usage in preschoolers • Explains impoverished L2 acquisition: Missing too much info from phases 1 and 2 to be able to get to phase 3 See bidirectional relationship of structure and function, where innate module won’t kick in without having a need to function Problem: Black box, innate mechanism

46. Bilingualism Part 1 • What are effects of speaking 2 languages from birth? • Does not appear to be at a linguistic level • Some languages are better at some tasks (E.g. Spanish with phonological tasks) • No reliable advantage in aspects of language development

47. Bilingualism, con’d • How do we assess whether a child is bilingual? • Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Receptive) • Video or Storytelling (Expressive) • Parental report

48. Bilingualism con’d • Metalinguistic awareness: what we know about language, grammar, etc… • Perhaps learning 2 languages will increase awareness of language generally • Tasks: • Piagetian Sun-Moon Task • Grammaticality Judgments • Moving Word

49. Sun – Moon Problem • If everyone agreed to change the names for the sun and the moon, so we would call the sun, the moon, and the moon, the sun, what would be up in the sky when we go to bed at night? • Answer: the sun • What would the sky look like? • Answer: dark

50. Scores on Sun-Moon Type tasksBialystok, 1988