Introduction to the Study of Language Development

• Components of language

  
• A simple model of speech perception

  
• Phonemes

  • The smallest element of speech sound
  • i.e the word ‘ship’ has 3 sounds: /sh/ + /i/ + /p/
• Voice Onset Time

  • The delay between the initial sound of a voiced consonant and the onset of vibration of the vocal cords
  • i.e ‘pa’ VOT tends to be about 50 ms slower than ‘ba’ VOT.
• Morphemes

  Smallest unit of language that has meaning.

  • Root words, prefixes and suffixes.

  Comprises three morphemes:

  • un- (a morpheme signifying "not")
  • break- (the root, a free morpheme)
  • able (a morpheme signifying "can be done")

  
• Syntax

  Concerns how words are put into sequences to form grammatical sentences.

  For example:

  • The sentence “You could help them” is a grammatical English sentence
  • But the sentence “Help them you could” is not
• Yoda-speak syntax

  We can still understand a sentence not following English grammar.

  • “Help them you could”
  • “Take you to him I will”

  Rules

  • Just because Yoda-speak does not follow the rules of English syntax, it does not mean that it lacks structure.
  • It is the grammatical rules underlying what Yoda says and, because we implicitly learn these rules and apply them, we can understand what he says.
  • Because Yoda-speak uses the same words as English, it is quite easy to see this structure and become aware of the rules for making a grammatical sentence in Yoda-speak.
• Methods of researching language development: High amplitude sucking procedure (2-3 months):

  • Used in very young infants to investigate what babies perceive in regard to speech sounds and visual stimuli:
  • Differences infants perceive between speech sounds.
  • How babies attend to different information in speech sounds.
  • What information they remember.
  • Infants enjoy novelty. Sucking on pacifier leads to a sound playing, they habituate to this. A new speech sound is then introduced – if infant recognises this as novel, they will suck on the pacifier to hear it more
• Methods of researching language development: Head turn preference (4 – 24 months):

  • Provides indication of how interesting infants find speech sounds.
  • Interest measured by how long infants attend to stimuli.
  • Principle is that infants pay more attention to familiar speech sounds.

  
• Methods of researching language development in infancy (2)

  Preferential looking procedure:

  • Provides indication children’s understanding of words.
  • A word is played whilst visual stimuli are displayed. If infant understands the word, it is expected that they will look at the stimuli that matches the meaning of the word.

  
• Theoretical perspectives on language development