Munira Jamal, 28 January 1998
* Rule-governed and creative
* Human linguistic capacity is unique
Infants' First Sounds
*
(Begins at around 5-6 months and lasts for some 6-8 months)
* Meaningless sounds
* Sounds are already `language-like'
*
(Late part of the 1st year or the early part of the 2nd year)
* Holophrastic `sentences' are produced
* Words indicating names (mama, doggie), certain actions, demands (more!
no!)
* Undergeneralization
* Overgeneralization
* `Rich interpretations' from the parents' side
* Child's utterances don't necessarily mean what adult utterances mean
Possible conclusion:
Child uses language for social purposes, tries to convey ideas and feelings
*
(At some point during the 2nd year of life)
* The beginnings of a structured language (Engl.: subject + predicate
structure)
* Two-word sentences with clear syntactic and semantic relations
* No inflections for number, person or tense
dirty sock |
hi mommy |
allgone sticky |
*
Development of language in more detail
* Two, three, four, or five words or longer
* Sometimes called `telegraphic speech', because only `content' words
occur
* The words appear to be `sentence-like'
Andrew want that |
Cathy build house |
Two extreme positions
The extreme environmentalist position:
* Lingustic behavior is shaped gradually
The extreme innateness position:
* Infants are born with knowledge of the basic grammatical relations/
categories
* This knowledge is universal
* Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
* Universal Grammar (UG)
Child: |
I taked a cookie. |
Parent: |
Oh, you mean you took a cookie. |
Child: |
Yes, that's right, I taked it. |
Conclusion
Imitation can only be involved to some extent; therefore it's not the decisive
concept; anything the child ist not yet ready for, it simply ignores
Child: |
Nobody don't like me. |
Mother |
No, say `Nobody likes me.' |
Child: |
Nobody don't like me. |
(repeated eight times) | |
Mother: |
Now, listen carefully, say `Nobody likes me.' |
Child: |
Oh, nobody don't likes me. |