Samenvatting
Summary Block 5 Problem 5
Summary for problem 5 about language
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Problem 5 – BerkComponents of Language
1. Phonology: refers to the basic units of sounds: phonemes, each language only uses a subset of the
sounds human are capable of generating
2. Morphology: rules to specify how words are formed from sounds. These rules include grammar
rules as well. Morphemes are smallest meaningful language units
i. Free Morphemes: can stand alone as a word e.g. dog
ii. Bound Morphemes: can’t stand alone but modify the meaning of free morphemes
e.g. -s, -ed
3. Semantics: refers to the meanings expressed in words and sentences (vocabulary)
4. Syntax: rules that specify how words are to be combined/arranged to form meaningful phrases and
sentences
5. Pragmatics: refers to the rules for engaging in appropriate and effective communication (gestures,
tone of voice, also involves sociolinguistic knowledge: interaction rituals, verbal greetings, adjusting
speech to mark important social relations such as differences in age and status)
Note: Grammar consists of 2 parts: syntax and morphology
Theories of Language Development
1. THE LEARNING (EMPRICIST) PERSPECTIVE (by Skinner and Bandura)
Caregivers teach language by modeling and reinforcing grammatical speech. This theory emphasizes
imitation and reinforcement.
Criticism: children can’t acquire development of syntax and grammatical rules by imitating adult speech.
2. THE NATIVIST PERSPECTIVE BY CHOMSKY (1957)
Regards language as imprinted into the structure of the brain. Focusing on grammar, he says that the rules
for sentence organization are too complex to be directly taught to or discovered by children.
Instead he proposed all children have a Language Acquisition Device – LAD: an innate system that permits
children to combine words into grammatically consistent utterances once they have learned sufficient
vocabulary, and to understand the meaning of the sentences they hear. Relies on verbal input.
Within the LAD is a universal grammar, a built-in storehouse of rules common to all human languages.
Young children use this knowledge to decipher grammatical categories and relationships in any language to
which they are exposed to.
Other suggestions: children don’t have any innate knowledge of language but instead they have an inborn
Language Making Capacity (LMC): a set of specialized linguistic processing skills that enable children to
analyze speech and detect semantic, phonological and syntactical relationships.
Evidences
Animals: Many attempts have been made to teach animals language. A Bonobo chimp, Kanzi, acquired
remarkable comprehension of English. However, his mastery of grammar doesn’t exceed a human 2-year-
old. No evidence exists that even the brightest animals can understand and produce sentences both
complex and novel.
Brain: Language is housed in the left hemisphere. Broca’s Area, located in the left frontal lobe supports
grammatical processing and language production. Wernicke’s Area, located in the left temporal lobe, plays
a role in comprehending word meaning. People who had damage to these areas and displayed aphasias:
communication disorders.
, Depending on the site of the injury to the adult left hemisphere, language deficits vary. Damage to frontal
lobe areas usually cause language production problems, damage to temporal lobe areas cause
comprehension problems. This is consistent with Chomsky’s notion of a brain prepared to process
language.
The brain is not lateralized at birth, language areas develop as children acquire language. Even though the
left hemisphere is biased for language, if it’s injured in the first years, other regions take over language
functions and most children attain normal competence. e.g. deaf adults who learned ASL in childhood
depend on the right side. When young brains relocate language the right hemisphere, it localizes it in
roughly the same regions that typically support language in the left hemisphere.
Sensitive Period Hypothesis: Human beings are most proficient at language learning before they reach
puberty (age 15). E.g. As the immigration age increases from infancy and early childhood into adulthood,
English proficiency declines, regardless of the person’s education level.
If a 2nd language is learned during early childhood, then, the same brain area used for learning native
language is activated. But people who learn their 2nd language after puberty use a different brain area to do
so. Language competence doesn’t sharply drop at a certain age but a continuous decrease occurs.
Narrowing of speech perception: neural networks become more dedicated to processing native language
sounds, and strengthening native language learning while weakening the capacity to acquire unfamiliar
languages. This neural commitment increases with age. And thus, younger age has a language learning
advantage.
Pidgin: when adults from different cultures migrate to the same area, they communicate in pidgin- a
hybrid of their various languages to enable simple communication. Over generations pidgin transforms into
a creole- a true language with complex grammar.
Criticism of Nativist Perspective
- Difficulty specifying universal grammar. There is an absence of a complete description of these
abstract grammatical structures.
- The assumption that grammatical knowledge is innately determined doesn’t fit certain observations
of language development. More experimentation and learning are involved than he suggested.
- Lacks comprehensiveness
- Little attention to quality of language input and social influences
- Doesn’t regard children’s cognitive development. But cognitive competence influences children’s
grammatical mastery.
THE INTERACTIONIST PERSPECTIVE
Biological and environmental influences interact to determine the course of language development. They
believe that children are biologically prepared to acquire language but the preparation doesn’t consist of
LAD or LMC but a powerful brain that slowly matures. They believe communication strategies foster
language learning such as joint activities, child-directed speech, conversation, and expansion and recasting
by adults.
Information-Processing Theories: Researchers design computer systems to simulate the
multilayered networks of neural connections in the brain and programme them with basic
learning procedures. Then the artificial network is exposed to various types of language
input and given feedback about the accuracy of its responses. The network is a good model
of human learning and development.
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