LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Dr. Santhosh Areekkuzhiyil

Asst. Professor, Dept. of Educational Psychology

Govt. College of teaqcher Education, Thalassery

santhoshclt@gmail.com 

www.santhoshclt.20m.com

9447847053

Most humans develop their ability to create and exchange language easily and naturally. We learn our native language in the first years of life, without any special training. All normal humans in all cultures go through roughly the same stages of language development, which suggests the unfolding of a biologically guided process. On the other hand, the great variety of human language shows that much depends on experience. Normal language development, like virtually all human behavior, involves a complex interplay between learned and inherited factors.

Language development is a process starting early in human life, when a person begins to acquire language by learning it as it is spoken and by mimicry. Children's language development moves from simple to complex. Usually, language starts off as recall of simple words without associated meaning, but as children grow, words acquire meaning, with connections between words formed. In time, sentences start as words are joined together to create logical meaning. As a person gets older, new meanings and new associations are created and vocabulary increases as more words are learned.

Infants use their bodies, vocal cries and other preverbal vocalizations to communicate their wants, needs and dispositions. Even though most children begin to vocalize and eventually verbalize at various ages and at different rates, they learn their first language without conscious instruction from parents or caretakers. It is a seemingly effortless task that grows increasingly difficult with age. Of course, before any learning can begin, the child must be biologically and socially mature enough.

Language Learning in Babies

Language learning begins before birth. A baby in the mother's womb hears noises from the outside environment and becomes sensitized to language sounds. Newborns respond to language sounds from any language, not just their own. However, by the age of one year, a baby's response to phonemes becomes more selective. They stop responding to phonemes that are absent from their own linguistic environment. (Kuhl, Williams, Lacerda, Stevens and Lindblom, 1992). Babies who are born deaf do not show phoneme sensitivity, but they show all the other stages of language development when they learn to use sign language. This shows that language development is "built in" to humans, and it also shows that language does not depend on speaking or hearing words. The essence of human language is expression of meaning in a symbolic code.

Stages of Language Development

Language development typically goes through the following sequence of stages:

1. Phoneme perception: Babies who can hear become sensitive primarily to sounds in their own language.

2. Cooing: Babies produce soft vocalizations around 3 months of age

3. Babbling: The 6 month old begins to play with language sounds (for example, "Ba-ba-ba.") Deaf babies babble with their hands.

4: First words and holophrases: Around 9 months of age, toddlers use single words (holophrases) to make requests or express feelings. For example, "Doot!" might mean "Get me juice!" The same word might be applied to many things (which is called overextension ). Any animal might be called "doggie."

5. Protosentences: Around a year and a half of age (18 months) toddlers produce two-word sentences, such as "Mommy go" or "Daddy go." Vocabulary starts to grow rapidly at this age.

6. Telegraphic speech: Sentences increase in length, but small connective words like "and" or "the" are left out. Bigger words are simplified. A two year old might say, "You go bye-bye car?" instead of "Are you going bye-bye in the car?"

Language Development Chart

Age of Child	Typical Language Development
6 Months	Vocalization with intonation Responds to his name Responds to human voices without visual cues by turning his head and eyes Responds appropriately to friendly and angry tones
12 Months	Uses one or more words with meaning (this may be a fragment of a word) Understands simple instructions, especially if  vocal or physical cues are given Practices inflection Is aware of the social value of speech
18 Months	Has vocabulary of approximately 5-20 words Vocabulary made up chiefly of nouns Some echolalia (repeating a word or phrase over and over) Much jargon with emotional content Is able to follow simple commands
24 Months	Can name a number of objects common to his surroundings Is able to use at least two prepositions, usually chosen from the following: in, on, under Combines words into a short sentence-largely noun-verb combinations (mean) length of sentences is given as 1.2 words Approximately 2/3 of what child says should be intelligible Vocabulary of approximately 150-300 words Rhythm and fluency often poor Volume and pitch of voice not yet well-controlled Can use two pronouns correctly: I, me, you, although me and I are often confused My and mine are beginning to emerge Responds to such commands as "show me your eyes (nose, mouth, hair)"
36 Months	Use pronouns I, you, me correctly Is using some plurals and past tenses Knows at least three prepositions, usually in, on, under Knows chief parts of body and should be able to indicate these if not name Handles three word sentences easily Has in the neighborhood of 900-1000 words About 90% of what child says should be intelligible Verbs begin to predominate Understands most simple questions dealing with his environment and activities Relates his experiences so that they can be followed with reason Able to reason out such questions as "what must you do when you are sleepy, hungry, cool, or thirsty?" Should be able to give his sex, name, age Should not be expected to answer all questions even though he understands what is expected
48 Months	Knows names of familiar animals Can use at least four prepositions or can demonstrate his understanding of their     meaning when given commands Names common objects in picture books or magazines Knows one or more colors Can repeat 4 digits when they are given slowly Can usually repeat words of four syllables Demonstrates understanding of over and under Has most vowels and diphthongs and the consonants p, b, m, w, n well established Often indulges in make-believe Extensive verbalization as he carries out activities Understands such concepts as longer, larger, when a contrast is presented Readily follows simple commands even thought the stimulus objects are not in sight Much repetition of words, phrases, syllables, and even sounds
60 Months	Can use many descriptive words spontaneously-both adjectives and adverbs Knows common opposites: big-little, hard-soft, heave-light, etc Has number concepts of 4 or more Can count to ten Speech should be completely intelligible, in spite of articulation problems Should have all vowels and the consonants, m,p,b,h,w,k,g,t,d,n,ng,y (yellow) Should be able to repeat sentences as long as nine words Should be able to define common objects in terms of use (hat, shoe, chair) Should be able to follow three commands given without interruptions Should know his age Should have simple time concepts: morning, afternoon, night, day, later, after, while Tomorrow, yesterday, today Should be using fairly long sentences and should use some compound and some    complex sentences Speech on the whole should be grammatically correct
6 Years	In addition to the above consonants these should be mastered: f, v, sh, zh, th,1 He should have concepts of  7 Speech should be completely intelligible and socially useful Should be able to tell one a rather connected story about a picture, seeing relationships Between objects and happenings
7 Years	Should have mastered the consonants s-z, r, voiceless th, ch, wh, and the soft g as in George Should handle opposite analogies easily: girl-boy, man-woman, flies-swims, blunt-sharp short-long, sweet-sour, etc Understands such terms as: alike, different, beginning, end, etc Should be able to tell time to quarter hour Should be able to do simple reading and to write or print many words
8 Years	Can relate rather involved accounts of events, many of which occurred at some time in  the past Complex and compound sentences should be used easily Should be few lapses in grammatical constrictions-tense, pronouns, plurals All speech sounds, including consonant blends should be established Should be reading with considerable ease and now writing simple compositions Social amenities should be present in his speech in appropriate situations Control of rate, pitch, and volume are generally well and appropriately established Can carry on conversation at rather adult level Follows fairly complex directions with little repetition Has well developed time and number concepts

Factors Influencing Language Development

            Language development is influenced by many factors.

1. Biological preconditions

Linguists do not all agree on the biological factors contributing to language development, however most do agree that our ability to acquire such a complicated system is specific to the human species. Furthermore, our ability to learn language may have been developed through the evolutionary process and that the foundation for language may be passed down genetically. The ability to speak and understand language requires a certain vocal apparatus as well as a nervous system with certain capabilities.

2. Environmental Influences

"The behavioral view of language development is no longer considered a viable explanation of how children acquire language, yet a great deal of research describes ways in which a children's environmental experiences influence their language skills. Michael Tomasello (2003, 2006; Tomasello & Carpenter, 2007) stresses that young children are intensely interested in their social world and that early in their development they can understand that intentions of other people."

One component of the young child's linguistic environment is (child-direct speech) which is language spoken in a higher pitch than normal with simple words and sentences. It has the important function of capturing the infant's attention and maintaining communication. Adults use strategies other than child-direct speech like recasting, expanding, and labeling. Recasting is rephrasing something the child has said, perhaps turning it into a question or restating the child's immature utterance in the form of a fully grammatical sentence. Expandingis the restating, in a linguistically sophisticated form, what a child has said. Labeling is identifying the names of objects.

3. Social preconditions

It is crucial that children are allowed to socially interact with other people who can vocalize and respond to questions. For language acquisition to develop successfully, children must be in an environment that allows them to communicate socially in that language.

There are a few different theories as to why and how children develop language. The most popular explanation is that language is acquired through imitation. However, this proves to be more of a folk tale than anything. The two most accepted theories in language development are psychological and functional. Psychological explanations focus on the mental processes involved in childhood language learning. Functional explanations look at the social processes involved in learning the first language.

There are four main components of language:

• Phonology involves the rules about the structure and sequence of speech sounds.
• Semantics consists of vocabulary and how concepts are expressed through words.
• Grammar involves two parts. The first, syntax, is the rules in which words are arranged into sentences. The second, morphology, is the use of grammatical markers (indicating tense, active or passive voice etc.).
• Pragmatics involves the rules for appropriate and effective communication. Pragmatics involves three skills:
• using language for greeting, demanding etc.
• changing language for talking differently depending on who it is you are talking to
• following rules such as turn taking, staying on topic

Each component has its own appropriate developmental periods.

Phonological development

From birth to around one year, the baby starts to make speech sounds. At around two months, the baby will engage in cooing, which mostly consists of vowel sounds. At around four months, cooing turns into babbling which are the repetitive consonant-vowel combinations. Babies understand more than they are able to say.

From 1–2 years, babies can recognize the correct pronunciation of familiar words. Babies will also use phonological strategies to simplify word pronunciation. Some strategies include repeating the first consonant-vowel in a multisyllable word ('TV'--> 'didi') or deleting unstressed syllables in a multisyllable word ('banana'-->'nana'). By 3–5 years, phonological awareness continues to improve as well as pronunciation.

By 6–10 years, children can master syllable stress patterns which helps distinguish slight differences between similar words.

Semantic development

From birth to one year, comprehension (the language we understand) develops before production (the language we use). There is about a 5 month lag in between the two. Babies have an innate preference to listen to their mother's voice. Babies can recognize familiar words and use preverbal gestures.

From 1–2 years, vocabulary grows to several hundred words. There is a vocabulary spurt between 18–24 months, which includes fast mapping. Fast mapping is the babies' ability to learn a lot of new things quickly. The majority of the babies' new vocabulary consists of object words (nouns) and action words (verbs). By 3–5 years, children usually have difficulty using words correctly. Children experience many problems such as underextensions, taking a general word and applying it specifically (for example, 'blankie')and overextensions, taking a specific word and applying it too generally (example, 'car' for 'van'). However, children coin words to fill in for words not yet learned (for example, someone is a cooker rather than a chef because a child will not know what a chef is). Children can also understand metaphors.

From 6–10 years, children can understand meanings of words based on their definitions. They also are able to appreciate the multiple meanings of words and use words precisely through metaphors and puns. Fast mapping continues.

Grammatical development

From 1–2 years, children start using telegraphic speech, which are two word combinations, for example 'wet diaper'. Brown (1973) observed that 75% of children's two-word utterances could be summarised in the existence of 11 semantic relations:

Eleven important early semantic relations and examples based on Brown 1973:

• Attributive: 'big house'
• Agent-Action: 'Daddy hit'
• Action-Object: 'hit ball'
• Agent-Object: 'Daddy ball'
• Nominative: 'that ball'
• Demonstrative: 'there ball'
• Recurrence: 'more ball'
• non-existence: 'all-gone ball'
• Possessive: 'Daddy chair'
• Entity + Locative: 'book table'
• Action + Locative: 'go store'

At around 3 years, children engage in simple sentences, which are 3 word sentences. Simple sentences follow adult rules and get refined gradually. Grammatical morphemes get added as these simple sentences start to emerge. By 3–5 years, children continue to add grammatical morphemes and gradually produce complex grammatical structures. By 6–10 years, children refine the complex grammatical structures such as passive voice.

Pragmatics development

From birth to one year, babies can engage in joint attention (sharing the attention of something with someone else). Babies also can engage in turn taking activities. By 1–2 years, they can engage in conversational turn taking and topic maintenance. At ages 3–5, children can master illocutionary intent, knowing what you meant to say even though you might not have said it and turnabout, which is turning the conversation over to another person.

By age 6-10, shading occurs, which is changing the conversation topic gradually. Children are able to communicate effectively in demanding settings, such as on the telephone.

Theoretical frameworks of language development

There are four major theories of language development.

1. Behaviorist Theory

The behaviorist theory, proposed by B. F. Skinner (father of behaviorism) says that language is learned through operant conditioning (reinforcement and imitation). This perspective sides with the nurture side of the nature-nurture debate. This perspective is not widely accepted today because there are many criticisms. These criticisms include that the perspective is too specific, encourages incorrect phrases and is not entirely possible. In order for this to be possible, parents would have to engage in intensive tutoring in order for language to be taught properly.

2. Nativist Theory

The nativist theory, proposed by Noam Chomsky, says that language is a unique human accomplishment. Chomsky says that all children have what is called an LAD, an innate language acquisition device that allows children to produce consistent sentences once vocabulary is learned. He also says that grammar is universal. This theory, while there is much evidence supporting it (language areas in the brain, sensitive period for language development, children's ability to invent new language systems) is not believed by all researchers.

3. Empiricist Theory

The empiricist theory argues that there is enough information in the linguistic input that children receive, and therefore there is no need to assume an innate language acquisition device (see above). This approach is characterized by the construction of computational models that learn aspects of language and/or that simulate the type of linguistic output produced by children. The most influential models within this approach are statistical learning theories such as connectionist models and chunking theories such as CHREST.

4. Interactionist Perspective

The interactionist perspective, consists of two components. This perspective is a combination of both the nativist and behaviorist theories. The first part, the information-processing theories, tests through the connectionist model, using statistics. From these theories, we see that the brain is excellent at detecting patterns.

The second part of the interactionist perspective, is the social-interactionist theories. These theories suggest that there is a native desire to understand others as well as being understood by others.