Language

Development I:
Structures & Stages

Lecture 4
Dr. Emily Mather

Overview
1. What is language?
An organised system of speech sounds,
words, and sentences.

2. Do infants have any language skills?

Infants first become sensitive to the sounds
of their native language. At the end of the
first year, infants start producing words.

3. When do children build a vocabulary?

When do they form sentences?
Toddlers vocabulary expands during the
second year and then they start forming
sentences from 2 years onwards.

What is language?

Hierarchical Structure
PRAGMATICS
GRAMMAR
SEMANTICS
PHONOLOGY

The sounds of a language

The phonology of a language is the set of
sounds used to create spoken words. Each
constituent sound is known as a
phoneme.
Not to be confused with the written
alphabet 26 letters, but approximately
40 phonemes in English.
A change in a phoneme creates a change
in meaning.
PIN BIN TIN WIN
From this fixed set of phonemes, we

Words and meanings

WORDS are the meaningful (semantic) units of
a language.
A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning a
word
consists
of one or more
morphemes.
WALK
= 1 morpheme
WALK-ED
=2
morphemes
Our
mental vocabulary of words is known as
the lexicon.

Words are arbitrary

WHAL
E

MICROORGANISM

Rules and sentences

Grammatical rules govern how words are
combined to create sentences.
The meaning of a sequence of words
depends on its order:
NOUN VERB
NOUN
JOHN LOVES
MARY
MARY LOVES
JOHN

LOVES MARY
Syntax : Rules for word
order in sentences.
JOHN

Morphology: Rules governing morphemes, e.g., past

The first year: Phonology

Infants become tuned in to the sounds of
their native language:
a. Very young infants distinguish the sound of
their native language from foreign
languages.
b. Older infants lose the ability to distinguish
sounds which are not separate phonemes
in their native language.
e.g., r and l are separate phonemes in
English, but not in Japanese.
Japanese infants stop distinguishing r
and l.

The first year: Phonology

Babbling is the vocal repetition of syllables
e.g., mamamama, ba-ba-ba
Begins around 4 months of age.
Requires motor skills to co-ordinate tongue
and mouth.
Towards end of first year, babbling sounds
reflect native language.
Sounds become more word like
oohwow to express joy, dah when pointing

The first year: Early words

Around 10 12 months of age, infants have
learnt a small vocabulary of words.
Infants first words tend to be for things which
are salient or important:
Mama, Dada, car, doggy, cup, etc...
These words are usually proper names (e.g. the
pets name) and object names (nouns).
More general or specific nouns are acquired
later:
Animal
vs.
Dog
vs.
Poodle
Infants comprehension of words exceeds their
production of words.

The first year: Early words

Early productions are not adult-like:
Words may get shortened
duh for duck, and mih for milk
Some phonemes are easier to articulate
than others.
Infrequent sounds in English, like v, are
spoken later.
Words get over-extended to compensate
for limited vocabulary.
e.g., use ball for moon and wheel
Overextension clip

The second year: More words...

During the second year, infants become increasingly skilled at
learning new words. Word learning is initially slow, and then
there is a vocabulary spurt at around 18 months of age.

Comprehen
sion

Producti
on

UK parental vocabulary

The second year: More words...

Infants use different kinds of information
to associate words with their correct
meanings.
Social cues e.g., pointing, eye gaze...
Lexical cues Assumptions about how
language works.
e.g., nouns refer to whole objects, not
parts of objects.
Fast-mapping Towards the end of the
second year, infants can connect a new
word with an object even after very limited
exposure.

Learning words with mutual

exclusivity
Each object can only have
one name
The Ball
cannot also
be a Wug

Look at
the Wug!

The second to third year

From around 2 years of age, toddlers shift from
using individual words to constructing
miniature sentences.
Telegraphic speech Two-word utterances
designed to efficiently convey meaning,
e.g., give book, mummy shoe.
The child next forms three-word sentences,
e.g. mummy make food.
Then, grammatical markers such as -s
(plural) and -ed (past tense) appear in
sentences.

The second to third year

Adult-like grammar? Three-word sentences conform
to the basic subject-verb-object structure of English
sentences.
mummy make food

NOUN VERB
NOUN

HOWEVER Errors can occur when children discover

grammatical regularities.
For example children over apply the regular past
tense:
It braked instead of It broke
I eated instead of I ate

Conclusions
1. Language consists of different levels of
units and rules. Makes language very flexible
and uniquely human.
2. During the first year of life, infants process
the sounds of a language phonemes. Learn
to only recognise phonemes relevant to their
native language.
3. Language development is rapid during the
second year, when toddlers learn hundreds of
words. Eventually start to form sentences.