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Lecture 13:Language development in children- Dr.Reem AlSabah
- 1. Language development in children Dr. Reem Al-Sabah Dept. of Community Medicine & Behavioral Sciences
- 2. Why is languageimportant? • Language is our primary means of communicating thought. • Language is universal (all human cultures). • Every human being of normal intelligence acquires his or her native language and uses it effortlessly.
- 3. Levels of language Sentence units ↓ Words ↓ speech sounds Language: a multilevel system for relating thoughts to speech by means of word and sentence units.
- 4. The two aspectsof language • Production: thought → sentence → sounds • Comprehension: sounds → words → sentence → meaning Two of the basic properties of language • Structured • Productive
- 5. Language Units andProcesses • Speech sounds (phonemes): discrete speech categories • In English, all speech sounds are divided into about 40 phonemes. • Example: • ee (sweet, heat, thief, these) • ur (burn, first, term heard, work) • f (field, photo)
- 6. • Word units(morphemes): •The smallest unit of language that carries meaning. • Most morphemes are words (e.g., house, class). •Others are prefixes and suffixes added to words (e.g., prefix un; suffix ing and ed).
- 7. Morphemes: • Grammaticalmorphemes: make a sentence grammatical (e.g., a, the, in, on, ed, ing) • Most important aspect of a word is its meaning, or the name of a concept. • Ambiguous words: name more than one concept.
- 8. • Sentence units:include sentences and phrases. • They correspond to parts of a thought or proposition allowing us to extract propositions from sentences. • Propositions can be divided into: • Subject- noun • Predicate (description)- verb • Syntactic rules: structure the parts of a sentence so we can tell what is related to what. • Example: “the green bird ate a red snake”
- 9. Effects of Contexton Comprehension and Production Figure 9.3 Levels of Understanding and Producing Sentences. In producing a sentence, we translate a propositional thought into the phrases and morphemes of a sentence and translate these morphemes into phonemes. In understanding a sentence, we go in the opposite direction-we use phonemes and phrases of a sentence and from these units extract the underlying propositions
- 10. Language and theBrain • Two regions of the left hemisphere of the brain critical for language: • Broca’s area- controls speech • Wernicke’s area– language understanding
- 11. • Damage toeither of these areas leads to specific kinds of aphasia (breakdown or deficit in language) • Broca’s aphasia: (expressive aphasia) • difficulty pronouncing words correctly. • Speak in a slow, labored way. • Their speech makes sense but includes only key words. • Disruption at level of syntax (syntactic deficit)
- 12. Wernicke’s aphasia: (receptiveaphasia) Unable to comprehend words Can hear words, but don’t know their meanings. Disruption at level of words and concepts (Conceptual deficit). Conduction aphasia: problems in repeating a spoken sentence.
- 13. The Development ofLanguage • Infants appear to be preprogrammed to learn phonemes, but need years to learn the rules. • Children are able to discriminate among different sounds which correspond to different phonemes in any language.
- 14. The Universal Sequence •First noises and gestures • Make a variety of sounds even in the first weeks of life. • Newborns prefer to listen to high-pitched, simplified, and repetitive adult speech (baby-talk, motherese/parentese, child-directed speech) • Babbling • 6-9 months, babies begin to repeat certain syllables (ma-ma-ma, da-da-da, ba-ba-ba) accompanied by rhythmic gestures (waving of arms). • Deaf babies make babbling sounds later and less frequently, but are advanced in their use of gestures (manual babbling).
- 15. • First Words • About 1 year of age, the average baby speaks (or signs) a few words. • Children learn words that name concepts familiar in their environment (family members, food, body parts). • Over the first years of life, children learn which phonemes are relevant to their language and lose the ability to discriminate between sounds that correspond to the same phoneme in their language (e.g., Japanese children and /l/ and /r/)
- 16. • Overextend: applyingwords to similar concepts (12-30 months) . • vocabulary development speeds up. • Next children learn sentences, one word utterances, next telegraphic speech, and then elaborate their noun and verb phrases.
- 17. Best Time tolearn any language When is the best time? • Childhood (ages 2-6yrs) appears to be a sensitive period for many language skills. • Vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation are rapidly and easily learned.
- 18. Why is earlychildhood the best time to learn language? 1.The developing brain: dendrites and neurological areas for language learning grow rapidly during these years. 2. The social context: young children are motivated to be social. Want to communicate, not embarrassed to be wrong.
- 20. How do childrenacquire language? • Learning • Innate factors Learning • Imitation and conditioning • Hypothesis testing: children learn a rule, test it, and retain it if it works. • Example: adding ed to regular verbs to form the past tense of a word (cook-cooked). Irregular verbs (go-went, break-broke).
- 21. Innate factors • Allchildren go through the same sequence of language development. • Deaf children • Critical periods. Especially for acquiring sound systems of a new language. • First few months of life critical for learning phonemes of native language.
- 22. Critical Periods • Learningthe sound system of another language (speech sounds). • Learning syntax. Native ASL speakers were better at understanding and producing words with multiple morphemes (e.g., untimely). • Children exposed to extreme isolation (e.g., the case of Genie).
- 23. • Can otherspecies learn human language? • They have communication systems different from humans. • Apes are able to develop human-like vocabulary but cannot combine their signs in the way humans do.
- 24. Teaching Children toRead Fluently Talking (without too many commands) and reading to young children. An extensive vocabulary and awareness of sounds are more important than memorizing the alphabet and recognizing the letters. An extensive vocabulary and awareness of sounds develop naturally if child is read to at least daily and discusses what is read.
- 25. Learning to Read AB C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
- 26. あ ば せ だ え ふ が は い じゃ か りゃ ま な お ぱ きゅ ら さ て う ふ わ きゃ や び
- 27. あ ば せ だ え ふ が は い A B C D E F G H I じゃ か りゃ ま な お ぱ きゅ ら J K L M N O P Q R さ て う ふ わ きゃ や び S T U V W X Y Z
- 28. The importance ofreading Reading aloud to young children is not only one of the best activities to stimulate language and cognitive skills; it also builds motivation, curiosity, and memory. Bardige, B. Talk to Me, Baby!(2009), Paul H Brookes Pub Co.
- 29. Reading aloud tochildren • linked to young children’s emergent literacy ability. • Phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge. • Stimulate oral language skills (vocabulary, syntactic and semantic processes, and narrative discourse processes such as memory, storytelling and comprehension and reading ability). • involves parents and other important adults to the child in a focused interaction. Duursma, Augustyn, & Zuckerman (2008)