Language Development Scott Merkley Jake Erikson Language Language

Language Development Scott Merkley & Jake Erikson

Language - Language is a form of communication, either spoken, written, or signed, that is based on a system of symbols used to display experiences, concepts, and emotions

Language - Infinite Generativity: the ability of language to produce an endless number of meaningful sentences - Phonology: a languages sound system - - Language is made up of basic sounds or phonemes like /k/, c, r Morphology: a languages rule for word formation - Morpheme is the smallest unit of language, help + er

Language - Syntax: a languages rules for combining words to form acceptable phrases and sentences - Semantics: the meaning of words and sentences in a particular language - Pragmatics: The useful characteristics of language and the ability of language to communicate even more meaning than is verbalized

Language and Cognition - Language is a vast system of symbols capable of expressing most thoughts - Although we do not always think in words, our thinking would be greatly impoverished without words - Language is a tool for representing ideas

Cognition in Language - Dyslexia: a learning disability characterized by difficulty with learning to read fluently and with accurate comprehension, despite normal intelligence - Many gifted individuals have had dyslexia including Steve Jobs, Tom Cruise, and Mohammed Ali

Biological Influences on Language - Scientists believe that human language originated around 100, 000 years ago beginning with grunting and shrieking as an abstract form of speech - Noam Chomsky has argued that humans are born biologically prewired to learn language at a certain time in a certain way - Evidence is based on children around the world reach language milestones at about the same time

Environmental Influences - Genie, 13 years old - Locked away in almost total isolation during her childhood.

Language Development over the Life Span - 0 -6 months: cooing, discrimination of vowels, babbling 6 -12 months: babbling includes sounds of spoken words, first words around 10 -13 months 12 -18 months: understands 50+ words on average 18 -24 months: vocabulary of 200 words, 2 word combination 2 years: vocab rapidly increases, past tense, some prepositions 3 -4 years: yes and no, wh- questions, increased awareness of pragmatics 5 -6 years: vocab of 10, 000 words, simple sentences 6 -8 years: vocab increases, conversational skills improve 9 -11 years: word definitions include synonyms 11 -14 years: understand metaphor and satire, complex grammar forms 15 -20 years: understand adult literary works

New Languages - Special kind of cognitive exercise Learning to ignore sounds that aren't important to your first language Overriding old habits with new ones