Chapter 12 Language development

Theories of language development Learning theory (e.g. BF Skinner) Nativism (e.g. Chomsky) Cognitive development (e.g. Piaget) Social Interactionism (e.g. Vygotsky)

Gallery of language theorists

The learning theory view Language develops as a result of the learning history of the child Processes : Imitation of caregivers Shaping of behavioural responses (utterances) by operant reinforcement Problems: How do you explain novel utterances? How do you explain ungrammatical utterances?

The nativist view Language develops as a function of biological maturation Existence of critical periods and the rapid development of language in those periods points to biology… Chomksy: Children are born with a Language Acquisition Device This predisposes them to discover the rules of grammar

The cognitive development view Language develops integrally with other forms of cognition Piaget: General cognitive development paves the way for language Once the sensorimotor stage nears its end, AND chld has abilities to represent objects and events symbolically

The social interactionism view Language develops in interaction with the social environment Vygotsky: Stresses the importance of the interpersonal context in which language appears Infant learns language through exchanges with caregivers in familiar context The familiar context provides opportunity for practice

Stages of language development Pre-verbal speech (0 - 12 months) Exercise vocal chords Telegraphic stage (12 - 18 months) Kernel of grammar development Fully grammatical speech ( 4 years) Vocabulary esp. continues to develop Reading and writing ( 4 - 7 years)

Two ways to learn how to read Phonics Taught spelling-to- sound rules Learn to use these rules to read Visual Don’t break words down into phoneme combinations Instead teach correspondence between whole words and sounds

Phases in learning to read Sight vocabulary stage Recognise words from their appearance Discrimination-net stage Discriminates words from a set she knows, using ‘closest match’ evaluation Phonological recoding stage Learns how to map individual sounds onto letters Orthographic stage Has mastered how to read whole word, without recoding into sounds

Language and thought Linguistic determinism Mentalism Sapir-Whorf hypothesis Language ----> thought Primary evidence = excess of environmentally descriptive words in some cultures E.g. Eskimos have dozens of words for snow Mentalism Language development is dependent on earlier cognitive development Thought structures precede language; language is an outcome of these