Child Development - Chapter 07.pdf - po ang - Januszek66

307673_ch_07.qxd pp5 2/25/03 3:10 PM Page 228

CHAPTER 7

Language

THE COURSE OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Phonology

A TYPICAL D EVELOPMENT : Language-Impaired Children

Semantics

Grammar

Pragmatics

Metalinguistic Awareness

EXPLAINING LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

The Role of Biology

The Linguistic Perspective

Learning and Cognition

The Social Interaction Perspective

R ESEARCH A PPLIED TO P ARENTING : Reading to Children

THE FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE

Language and Cognition

C ONTROVERSY : How Should Bilingual Education Programs

Be Structured?

Language and Self-regulation

Language and Cultural Socialization

CHAPTER RECAP

Summary of Developmental Themes

Summary of Topics

. . .

307673_ch_07.qxd pp5 2/25/03 3:10 PM Page 229

Key Themes in Language

Nature/Nurture What roles do nature and

nurture play in language development?

Continuity/Discontinuity Is language develop-

ment continuous or discontinuous?

■

Sociocultural Influence How does the socio-

cultural context influence language development?

Individual Differences How prominent are

individual differences in language development?

■

Child’s Active Role How does the child play an

active role in the process of language development?

Interaction Among Domains How does

language development interact with development

in other domains?

■

T he family reunion had been scheduled for months, and Jennifer and Bill were looking

forward to showing off their one-year-old son, Devon, to aunts, uncles, and cousins

who had not yet met him. They were especially eager to compare notes with Jennifer’s cousin

Gayle, who had a little girl born two days after Devon. Although they had seen pictures of

little Meagen on e-mail, they hadn’t yet officially met her. As they pulled into the driveway

of the family cottage, they could see a distant figure holding a child in her arms. Sure

enough, it was Gayle walking carefully down the driveway with Meagen. As they got closer,

Jennifer rolled down her window and was met with Meagen’s eager squeals, “Baby! Mama!

Baby!” as she pointed to Devon in the back seat. Jennifer was surprised, to say the least.

Their own son Devon, while a real pro at walking, was not saying much more than a few

“Dadas.” Could two children the same age really be so different in their ability to speak?

P arents often compare their children’s latest feats with other parents, and, aside from

walking, there are few accomplishments they focus on more than their baby’s first

use of language. At about one year of age, most children make their formal entrance into

the world of human communication by saying their first words, and parents respond

with equal delight and amazement. As in many domains of development, there can be

noticeable differences in the accomplishments of two children who are the same age.

Nonetheless, by age five, most children have moved from Meagen’s effective but rudimen-

tary mix of verbal and nonverbal messages to more complex achievements. They have

mastered the bewildering variety of sounds in their native language to produce thousands

of recognizable words, and they understand the meanings of words reasonably well. They

also become aware of the interactive and sociocultural rules of communication.

By age five, in fact, most children have become highly proficient listeners and

speakers, a marvel indeed given the overwhelming abundance of sounds, vocabulary

words, grammatical rules, and social conventions that go into producing mature,

adult-sounding speech. You probably do not have a vivid memory of how you

learned to speak; most of us have little specific recall of this extremely complex, yet

entirely natural process. But if you have ever tried to learn a foreign language, you

probably have some sense of how remarkable children’s mastery of communication

is. How do infants and children manage such a seemingly overwhelming task?

In this chapter, we will first examine the major milestones in the acquisition of

communication and language skills from infancy through childhood, the sequence

of events that unfolds as the child comes to comprehend and produce language.

Next, we will look at the most important theories of language development and how

they account for our observations of children’s language attainments. Of all the

themes of development, none has been more central to theories of language develop-

ment than the nature-versus-nurture debate, the extent to which either biological

predispositions or environmental influences dictate the child’s developing linguistic

229

. . .

307673_ch_07.qxd pp5 2/25/03 3:10 PM Page 230

230

Chapter 7

Language

competence. Finally, we will briefly examine the functions of language, particularly

as they interact with children’s growing cognitive skills and ability to regulate their

own behavior.

The Course of Language Acquisition

A baby’s contact with language is—initially, at least—noticeably one-sided. Al-

though she may gurgle or coo, most of her experience is as a listener. Among

her first tasks is to learn to identify the myriad sounds that make up her native lan-

guage. That is, she must distinguish specific sounds in the stream of spoken language,

note the regularities in how they are combined, recognize which combinations consti-

tute words, and eventually, when she makes the transition from listener to speaker,

form the consonant-vowel combinations that are the building blocks of words and

sentences. The fundamental sound units and the rules for combining them in a given

language make up that language’s phonology. If you have studied a foreign language,

you will recognize that some sounds appear only in certain languages, such as the pro-

longed nasal n sound in Spanish and the French vowel that is spoken as though e and

u are combined. Furthermore, each language has its own rules for combining sounds.

In English, for example, the sr combination does not occur, whereas sl and st appear

frequently. An important task for the child is to absorb the sounds and combinations

of sounds that are acceptable in her native language and, eventually, to detect which of

these sounds form words.

Another basic language skill the child must master is linking the combinations of

sounds he hears to the objects, people, events, or relationships they label. Semantics

refers to the meanings of words (sometimes called the lexicon ) or combinations of

words. For example, cookie is an arbitrary grouping of sounds, but speakers of Eng-

lish use it to refer to a specific class of objects. The child thus attaches words to con-

ceptual groups, learning when it is appropriate to use them and when it is not (for

example, cookie does not refer to all objects or edible goods found in the bakery). The

child also learns that some words describe actions ( eat ), whereas others describe re-

lationships ( under or over ) or modify objects ( chocolate cookie ). Mapping combina-

tions of sounds to their referents (that is, the things to which words refer) is a central

element of language acquisition.

As the child begins to combine words, she learns the principles of grammar, the

rules pertaining to the structure of language. Grammar includes two components,

syntax and morphology . Syntax refers to the rules that dictate how words can be com-

bined. The order in which words are spoken conveys meaning; for example, “Eat

kitty” and “Kitty eat” do not mean the same thing, even in the simplified language of

the young child. A word’s position in a sentence can signify whether the word is an

agent or the object of an action, for example. The rules of syntax vary widely from

one language to another, but within a given language they operate with consistency

and regularity. Morphology refers to the rules for combining the smallest meaning-

ful units of language to form words. For example, the word girl has one morpheme.

Adding -s to form girls makes the number of morphemes two and changes the mean-

ing from singular to plural. Similarly, morphemes such as -ed and -ing create a

change in the tense of words. One of the most remarkable features of language ac-

quisition is the child’s ability to detect the rules of syntax and morphology and use

them to create meaningful utterances of his own with little direct instruction.

The process of acquiring language also includes learning pragmatics, the rules for

using language effectively and appropriately according to the social context. The ef-

fective use of language includes a host of nonverbal behaviors, rules of etiquette, and

even changing the content of speech according to the identity of the listener and the

situation surrounding the communication. How do you ask someone for a favor?

Not, the child soon learns, by saying, “Hey, you, get me that ball!” The child also

learns that if someone did not hear what she said, she can sometimes add a gesture

to complete the communication. And the proper way to speak to an adult who has

phonology Fundamental sound

units and combinations of units in

a given language.

semantics Meanings of words

or combinations of words.

grammar Rules pertaining

to the structure of language.

syntax Grammatical rules

that dictate how words can

be combined.

morphology Rules for how to

combine the smallest meaningful

units of language to form words.

pragmatics Rules for using

language effectively within a

social context.

. . .

307673_ch_07.qxd pp5 2/25/03 3:10 PM Page 231

231

The Course of Language Acquisition

some authority will probably include more polite forms and fewer terms of familiar-

ity than when speaking to a peer. As they acquire language, then, children also absorb

the equally important sociocultural dimension of pragmatics.

Clearly, language is a multifaceted skill with many overlapping dimensions, from

understanding and uttering sounds to appreciating the sometimes subtle rules of so-

cial communication. Despite the complexities, by the time they are four or five years

old, most children speak much as adults do. Their progress in mastering vocabulary,

syntax, and pragmatics continues during the school years and thereafter, but they ac-

quire the essential elements of the language system in an impressively brief period.

Phonology

What does it take to learn a language? The infant’s first steps consist of attending to

the sounds of speech as a special type of auditory stimulation, deciphering the units

of sound that occur in her language, and discerning which clusters of sounds consti-

tute words, clauses, and phrases. Thus, during much of the infant’s first year, the em-

phasis is on phonological development, both in receiving messages from others and

in being able to produce them on his own.

● Early Responses to Human Speech Right from birth, the human infant has a

special sensitivity to the sounds other human beings make. Newborns show a distinct

preference for human voices over other sounds and like to hear their own mothers’

voices more than a stranger’s (DeCasper & Fifer, 1980; Gibson & Spelke, 1983). Most

important, however, infants respond in specific ways to small acoustic variations in

human speech that distinguish one word or part of a word from another.

As we discuss in the chapter titled “Basic Learning and Perception,” the basic

building blocks of spoken language are called phonemes, the smallest units of sound

that change the meanings of words. In the words pat and bat, for example, the

phonemes / p / and / b / make a big difference in the meaning of the word. Recall also

that infants as young as one month can discriminate different phonemes and do so

categorically, ignoring small acoustic variations in a sound unless the sound pattern

crosses a phonemic boundary (Aslin, Pisoni, & Jusczyk, 1983; Kuhl, 1987). At two

months of age, infants add to their repertoires the ability to discriminate vowels

(Marean, Werner, & Kuhl, 1992). Remarkably, young infants show an ability to detect

phonemes and vowel sounds from a variety of languages. However, by six to ten

months of age, infants show a decline in the ability to distinguish those basic sounds

that do not appear in their native language (Kuhl et al., 1992; Polka & Werker, 1994;

We rker & Tees, 1984). That is, their experiences with the language spoken around

them quickly begin to constrain the small units of sound to which they are sensitive.

Infants also show an early sensitivity to prosody, the patterns of intonation, stress,

and rhythm that communicate meaning. One example of a prosodic feature is the

pattern of intonation that distinguishes questions from declarative statements. When

you raise your voice at the end of a question, you are signaling a different commu-

nicative intent than when you let your voice fall at the end of a declarative sentence.

Researchers have found that infants prefer the prosodic features associated with the

high-pitched, exaggerated, musical speech, often called “baby talk,” that mothers typ-

ically direct to their young children. Figure 7.1 illustrates some of the acoustical

properties of mothers’ speech to infants. In one study, Anne Fernald (1985) trained

four-month-olds to turn their heads to activate a loudspeaker positioned on either

side of them. The infants were more likely to make this response if their “reward” was

a female stranger’s voice speaking as the woman would speak to a baby than if she

used normal adult speech. Other research has shown that it is the positive affective

tone of “baby talk” that infants are particularly attracted to (Singh, Morgan, & Best,

2002). In light of these preferences, it seems fitting that mothers from cultures as di-

verse as France, Italy, Germany, Britain, Japan, China, and the Xhosa tribe of south-

ern Africa have been found to raise their pitch when they speak to their young infants

(Fernald, 1991; Papousek, 1992).

KEY THEME

Nature/Nurture

prosody Patterns of intonation,

stress, and rhythm that communi-

cate meaning in speech.

. . .

307673_ch_07.qxd pp5 2/25/03 3:10 PM Page 232

232

Chapter 7

Language

FIGURE 7.1

The Acoustical Properties of

Maternal Speech to Infants

500

Yea it has

it's been a

big change

and her dad

also hadda

change part ...

his job so that he

was workin' a

lotta overtime

she's very

devoted to

her dad

These two samples of maternal

speech show the special

acoustical qualities that make

speech to infants (bottom)

distinct from speech to adults

(top). The vertical axis repre-

sents fundamental frequency,

a measure of auditory pitch.

Note the frequent use of mod-

ulation of pitch and the pre-

dominance of high pitch in

maternal speech to infants.

Babies seem to be especially

responsive to the qualities of

this type of speech.

300

100

500

You gonna

suck ya

finger?

How many

fingers

d'ya have?

300

One

100

You want that?

Two

Three Four Five

Time (sec)

Adult talking to adult

Adult talking to baby

Source: Adapted from Fernald, 1985.

Infants’ sensitivity to the prosodic features of speech prepares them for the more

complex aspects of language learning that lie before them. As early as two days of age

they show a clear preference for hearing a stream of speech from their native lan-

guage as opposed to a foreign language (Moon, Cooper, & Fifer, 1993). Sometime be-

tween six and nine months of age, infants begin to show a preference to listen to

unfamiliar isolated words from their native language. For example, American infants

prefer unfamiliar English words over Dutch words. At ten months of age, they also

prefer words with a strong-weak stress pattern (e.g., crossing versus across ) that are

more common in English (Jusczyk, Cutler, & Redanz, 1993; Jusczyk, Friederici, et al.,

1993). Young infants thus seem to be especially tuned in to the rhythmic properties

that distinguish one language from another (Nazzi, Bertonciui, & Mehler, 1998).

Perhaps most impressive is the finding that by about eight months of age, infants

show that they can detect the beginnings and endings of specific words in a stream

of their native speech (Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995), a skill that should strike you as re-

markable if you have ever tried to detect the presence of particular words when lis-

tening to someone speak a foreign language. To explore this ability, Sven Mattys and

Peter Jusczyk (Mattys & Jusczyk, 2001) first familiarized infants with a single word

such as dice .Next, infants heard the target word within a passage, such as “Two dice

can be rolled without difficulty,” or they heard the same sound pattern but across two

different words, as in “Wired ice no longer surprises anyone.” Infants showed a clear

preference for the first type of correctly segmented passage, probably using rhythmic

cues, as well as noting the different acoustic properties that phonemes have at the be-

. . .

Child Development - Chapter 07.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: