Greg Professor Francis
5/27/08
Language
Language development
IIE 269: Cognitive Psychology
Instinctive
your brain is wired to work with grammars, words,
phrases
Greg Francis
Lecture 30
Learning
you do have to learn some specifics for your
native tongue
When should you learn a foreign
language?
rules
words
Learning
Babies and phonemes
What is learned?
How does a child learn?
How much about language does a child
babies are interested in new things
know?
attach a tape player to a pacifier
When have you mastered language?
each suck causes the player to play a sound
How do you learn a second language?
What do babies do?
Babies
When the syllable changes
babies suck more often
ba, ba, , pa, pa, pa, pa, pa,
Moreover, they hear things the way adults do
you can change the pronunciation (timing) of b a and still hear it as
ba
Babies hear a ll phonemes, even ones their parents cannot
distinguish
BA
PA
Babies, even newborns, do show a
preference for what will become their
native tongue
occurs because they hear mothers voice
while in the womb
babies hear it the same way
Repetition of the same sound leads to
boredom and fewer sucks
ba, b a, ba, ba, ba, b a, ba, ba,
Babies and phonemes
Infants have linguistic skills as soon as they
are born
Mostly prefer the melody, stress, timing
French infants like French and Italian equally
well
playing language backwards keeps many
consonants but distorts melody (babies are
not interested)
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Professor Greg Francis
5/27/08
Language development
Physiological changes
Babbling
newborns larynx (voicebox) is up in the nasal passage
(lets them drink and breath at same time)
3 month olds l arynx is in the throat (like an adults)
lets tongue move around
patterns are common across languages
Between 7-8 months babies start babbling in
syllables
By the end of the first year babies combine syllables
to sound like words
neh-nee
Between 5-7 months, babies start making sounds
da-dee
clicks, hums, hisses, smacks,
Babbling sounds are the same in all languages
meh-neh
Babbling is important
children who do not babble show retarded speech
development
ba-ba-ba-ba-ba
neh-neh-neh
deaf children babble with hands, if parents use sign
language
da-da-da-da-da
Babbling
Babbling teaches child how sequences of muscle
combinations lead to different sounds
Language stages
1) Cooing (first several months)
necessary to produce speech
Nearly all children learn language in stages
2) Babbling (~6 months)
By about 10 months babies learn the sounds of their
native tongue
3) One word utterances (~1 year)
they can no longer distinguish phonemes that are not part of
the language
4) Two-word utterances and telegraphic speech
(1-3 years)
Part of learning is forgetting!
5) Basic adult sequences with grammar
(~4 years)
The rate of learning varies substantially
Learning words
Children learn words with ridiculous ease
An average 6 year old knows 13,000 words
Around 18 months
All dry.
The average high school graduate knows
about 60,000 different words (not counting
compound words and such)
means that in 17 years of life (not counting the first
one), they learned an average of 10 new words
each day (one word every 90 waking minutes)
All wet.
I shut.
No bed.
No pee.
this is without knowing how to read!
All messy.
I sit.
learned one new word every two waking hours
Children learn simple rules of syntax
S ee baby.
See pretty.
Content is similar for all languages
objects appear, disappear, move,
people do things, see things,
ask questions, who, what, where,...
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Professor Greg Francis
5/27/08
All hell breaks loose
language
Errors
After mastering 2-word strings, toddlers go crazy on
Three year olds make lots of grammatical
errors
Consider changes in language (year;month)
that is because there are lots of opportunities for
errors
(2;3) Play checkers. Big drum. I got horn.
(2;5) Now put boots on. Where wrench go? What that paper
clip doing?
but pick any particular grammatical rule and you
find most three year olds obey it most of the time
(2;7) Ursula has a boot on. Shadow has hat like that.
this is amazing because there lots of cases that you
would expect would be difficult to learn
(2;9) Where Mommy keep her pocket book? Show you
something funny.
(2;11) Why you mixing baby chocolate? I finishing drinking all
up down my throat.
(3;1) You went to Boston University? Doggies like to climb up.
Expected errors
Consider a child hearing adults talk and how
they might incorrectly apply what they learn
Errors
He did eat. -->
He didnt eat.
-ed to make the past tense of a verb
teacher My holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.
Hey, Horton heared a Who.
I finded R enee.
He is smiling. -->
Does he be smiling?
Once upon a time a alligator was eating a dinosaur and the
dinosaur was eating the alligator and the dinosaur was eaten
by the alligator and the alligator g oed kerplunk.
He did a few things. -->
He didnt a few things.
Overgeneralizations
Overgeneralization
These past tense forms sound wrong because English
has around 180 irregular verbs
If a child cannot remember (in its lexicon)
s/he defaults to the rule
These errors are for the most difficult parts of a
language to learn
Because they dont follow the normal rules
slay-slew
rend - rent
Irregular forms have to be memorized, word by word
strive -strove
dwell - dwelt
These past-tense forms are not derived from rules
Adults do the same thing
tread - trod
inherited from other languages
Children often over generalize a rule
-s to pluralize a noun
Mouses, leafs
Out of 66,000 sentences, children never made
these errors
He seems happy. -->
Does he seem happy?
Children d o make errors, but the errors are consistent
with rules of language
smite - smote
Sound weird because we do not often hear
them
many adults regularize the words
treaded, strived, dwelled, slayed, r ended, smited
thus language changes !
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Professor Greg Francis
5/27/08
Syntax errors
Children make similar mistakes in applying
grammatical rules
Syntax errors
Children over generalize application of the causative
rule to inappropriate verbs
In English there is a causative rule that applies to
some verbs and not others
I g o to the bathroom. --> G o me to the bathroom.
Aunt Jane died. --> The tiger will come and eat David and
then he will be died and I wont have a little brother anymore.
takes a verb meaning to do something and converts it to a
verb meaning to cause to do something
I d rink with a cup. --> Y awny Baby - you can push her mouth
open to drink her.
Thus you can say
The butter m elted. --> Sally melted the butter.
Many of these errors would be fine in other languages!
The ball bounced. --> Hiram bounced the ball.
The situation is similar to the special past tense verbs
But you cant say the second of each pair
This rule must be memorized as applying to some verbs and
not others
I like sausage. --> I am l iked of sausage.
I g iggled. --> Sally giggled me.
Syntax errors
Adults also misapply the causative rule
Motherese
Parents tend to talk differently to children than
to adults
Sparkle your table with Cape Cod classic glass-ware.
Well, that decided me.
slower
This new golf ball could o bsolete many golf courses.
more exaggerated in pitch
If she subscribes us up, shell get a bonus.
more directed to the here and now
Childrens errors tend to track the more difficult aspects
of a language, relative to other languages
Adults make the same kinds of mistakes for still more difficult
to remember cases
more grammatical
These properties may make it easier to learn
language
it is not critical, though, cultures vary widely!
Motherese
Lots of questions
Motherese
Moreover, m otherese is not simple
provides a framework on which to learn language
Wheres baby?
melodies
What happened?
What did he eat?
In terms of grammar, these are among the
most difficult sentences in English
require traces (which we did not discuss)
Motherese does provide an indication of meaning
rise-and-fall -> approving
set of sharp, staccato bursts --> prohibiting
rise pattern --> direct attention
smooth murmurs --> soothing
Possibly universal!
Think schemas
intransitive verbs, meaning auxiliaries, ...
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Professor Greg Francis
5/27/08
Second language
Second language
It is difficult (and rare) for an adult to
become fluent in a second language
High school and college is just about the worst
time to try to learn a second language
It should be in kindergarten or preschool
children do it easily
Immigrants who arrive after age 6 may never fully
What accounts for the difference?
learn a second language
most likely it is age
there seems to be a critical period during which
language can be learned
Children who fail to learn any language by age 6
never do
they might create a pidgin of some sort
beyond age six (or so) it is very difficult to learn
a language (first or second)
Conclusions
Next time
Brocas aphasia
Wernickes aphasia
Anomia
Language ability of chimps
Whats the big deal about Nim Chimpsky?
Language development
Language & brain
Stages of learning
Errors
Motherese
Second language
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