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LESSON NOTE 2
INTRODUCTION
Starting from their very first cries, human beings communicate with the world around them.
Infants communicate through sounds (crying and cooing) and through body language (pointing
and other gestures). However, sometime between 8 and 18 months of age, a major
developmental milestone occurs when infants begin to use words to speak.
Words are symbolic representations; that is, when a child says “table,” we understand that he is
referring to a specific thing, and we don’t have to see that object. The word represents the object.

Language can be defined as a system of symbols that is used to communicate. Although lan-
guage is used to communicate with others, we may also “talk to ourselves” and use words in our
thinking. The words we use may influence the way we think about and understand our
experiences

To learn a language,
• the child must first of all be able to distinguish between language relevant
and language-irrelevant sounds, hear people speak and be able to
discriminate between the different speech sounds and words. She
must also be able to remember words and recognize them.
• She must be able to produce sounds and gradually learn to combine
these sounds to produce words and sentences. The child speaks the
first words by the end of her first year itself and after that rapidly grows in
language. Even though what she produces first may be single words, they
often subsume an underlying sentence.
• But even before being able to produce words and sentences, the child
should also be able to understand the meaning of the words and
sentences spoken by people around and she should be able to identify
what’s grammatically correct and contextually appropriate.

. Infant’s Abilities to Hear and Learn a Language

You all know that infants can hear and localize the sound source soon
after birth, i.e., they can make out from which direction the sound is coming.
Their ability to hear and perceive the direction of sound improves with age.
They also develop the ability to distinguish speech sounds from non-speech
sounds.
• The human infant is more responsive to human speech as compared
to any other sound. Newborns move their bodies in rhythm with adult
speech as early as 12 hours after birth. If the speed of the adult’s speech is
fast, the movements of the newborn became fast. If the rhythm of the
speech slows down, so do the child’s movements. They react in this manner
to speak in any language, but do not move in rhythm to tapping sounds or to
repetitive vowel sounds that do not resemble human speech. It has been
found that neonates prefer to hear vocal music over instrumental music.

DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE

There are four basic aspects of language that have been studied: phonology, syntax, semantics,
and pragmatics. Phonology is the study of the sounds of a language. (To remember this term,
think of the sounds that come from your telephone, or the word cacophony, meaning a lot of
loud, annoying sounds!)
Syntax is the grammar of a language—that is, how we put words in order and how we change
words (for example, play becomes played when we talk about the past) so they make sense to our
listeners.
Semantics is the meanings of words.
Pragmatics is how we use language. For example, you probably speak in different ways to your
professor, to your friends, and certainly to a 2-year-old. In each case, you are using language in a
different way. When children develop the ability to communicate with language, they are
developing all four of these areas (Gleason, 2005). They must understand and form the sounds of
the language they are learning. They must learn what words mean and how to put them together
so they make sense, and they must learn when and how to use language to accommodate to their
listeners and to accomplish their goals. We will consider all of these aspects as we describe lan -
guage development.
Two basic units are central to the study of language and its development: morphemes and
phonemes.
A morpheme is the smallest unit that has meaning in a language. For example, the word cats
has two morphemes: cat and s. Cat refers to the animal, and s means more than one.
A phoneme is the smallest distinct sound in a particular language that signals differences
between words. For example, cat and bat are clearly distinct words in English, as indicated by
the different beginning sounds. Different languages have types of phonemes that are distinct.
For instance, in Japanese, the length of a vowel can indicate a different word. The word toko
means “bed,” while toko with a long final o means “travel” (Sato, Sogabe, & Mazuka, 2010). In
English, no matter how long we draw out the a in cat, it still means “cat.”

Theories of Language Development

There are many different ideas about how children learn to talk and understand language, and
many controversies persist to this day. We are still learning about how this amazing process can
occur so quickly in the first years of life.

Behaviorism and Social Cognitive Learning Theory

If you were to take a survey of people on the street and ask them how children learn language,
the chances are that many would answer “by imitation.” Of course imitation must play an
important role. After all, children learn the language that they hear, not some other language!
The idea that language is learned through imitation is connected with Bandura’s theory of social
cognitive learning.. Imitation is the central learning principle of social cognitive theory.
According to B. F. Skinner (1957/1991), language is also shaped through operant conditioning,
or reinforcement. When we respond to a baby’s babbling with a smile or some vocalization of
our own, babies babble even more. If we respond to a request for “cookie” with the desired
cookie, it becomes more likely that the child will use that word again the next time she wants a
cookie. If we remember that reinforcement is anything that makes a behavior continue, then it is
clear that we reinforce the development of a child’s language in many ways. Consistent with
these ideas, research has shown that the more that mothers respond to their babies’ vocalizations,
the sooner their babies develop language (Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein, & Baumwell, 2001)
Noam Chomsky (1968) developed a theory that proposes that the human brain is innately wired
to learn language. He believes that children could not learn something as complex as human
language as quickly as they do unless there is already a grammatical structure for language
hardwired in their brains before they ever hear human language. He calls this universal
grammar. According to this theory, hearing spoken language triggers the activation of this
structure and does more than just promote imitation. Chomsky believes that the language that we
usually hear is not adequate to explain the construction of all of the rules of language that
children quickly learn.
For instance, nativists such as Chomsky point to the evidence that children will say things they
have never heard, such as “The cats eated the mouses” rather than “The cats ate the mice.” We
hope that children have never heard adults say something like “eated” or “mouses” and therefore
they could not just be imitating language they have heard.
However, you can easily see that, although the first sentence is grammatically incorrect, in
some respects it could be correct. In English we do add -ed for the past tense and -s for plurals.
However, we have exceptions to that rule, called irregular verbs or nouns. When children make
this type of grammatical error they are showing that they have learned a pattern, but they are
applying it to words that don’t follow that pattern. This process of acting as if irregular words
follow the regular rules is called overregularization. Children are creating these words from
their own understanding of grammar, and Chomsky believes that the basic principles of grammar
are innate.
Clearly, we do not all speak the same language and the rules for grammar are not the same in all
languages, so how can there be a universal grammar? Chomsky believes that there are basic
language principles that are hardwired in the brain, similar to the basic principles that underlie
the operation of the hard drive of your computer. Just as your computer’s hard drive can run
many different types of software, the language structures in your brain can process the specific
characteristics of many different languages.

Interactionism Approach
A third approach incorporates aspects of both behaviorism and nativism. According to
interactionism, both children’s biological readiness to learn language and their experiences with
language in their environment come together to bring about language development. Just as we
learned about how nature is expressed through nurture in Chapter 4, these theorists argue that
both are equally necessary for the child to develop language and both must work together.
In addition, interactionism means that language is created socially, in the interaction between
infant and adult. For example, adults naturally simplify their speech to young children not
because they think “I need to teach this child how to speak!” but because the child then under -
stands and responds to what the adult is saying. The adult is sensitive to the effectiveness of his
communication so that when the child does not understand, he simplifies his language until the
child does understand (Bohannon & Bonvillian, 2005). Research on mother-infant speech in a
variety of cultures has found that mothers make many of the same modifications in their speech
to infants, perhaps because these changes produce a good fit between the mother’s speech and
the infant’s perceptual and cognitive capabilities (Fernald & Morikawa, 1993). In addition,
adults often repeat what children say but recast it into more advanced grammar. For example, a
child might say, “More cookie,” and the adult might respond, “Oh, do you want more cookies?”
In the process, he is modeling a slightly higher level of language proficiency, which the child can
then imitate. The child in this example might then say, “Want more cookies.”

Infants understand words before they can say them. Another way we describe this is to say
comprehension of language precedes production of language. When you tell a 1-year-old to put a
toy in a box, she will most likely understand you and might follow your directions, yet she is not
likely to be able to say anything close to “put the toy in the box.” This differential between
receptive and expressive language continues throughout life (Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2001).

Infants’ Preverbal Communication /Prelinguistic Communication Stages

Crying
Babies cry as soon as they are born. At first this is a reflexive behavior, not intentional commu-
nication from the infant. However, crying is not pleasant for adults to hear, so we are motivated
to do what it takes to make it stop. The process of communication begins when babies begin to
learn that crying can act as a signal that brings relief from hunger, discomfort, and loneliness.
Although babies cry for many reasons, there does not appear to be clear evidence that they
have different cries for hunger, pain, or loneliness. Research shows only that parents differentiate
the intensity and severity of crying, not the specific reason for the cry (Gustafson, Wood, &
Green, 2000). Knowing this should bring relief to parents who have been told that they should
recognize why their baby is crying but realize that they cannot.
Cooing
Between 2 and 4 months after birth, babies begin to make more pleasant sounds (Menn & Stoel-
Gammon, 2005). The sounds they can make are limited because of aspects of their physiology,
so they sound a bit like doves “cooing.” At this stage they also begin to laugh, which is a great
reward to parents! Infants at this stage begin to join in a prelanguage “conversation” with parents
(Tamis-LeMonda, Cristofaro, Rodriguez, & Bornstein, 2006). The baby coos; the parent talks
back; the baby looks and laughs; the parent smiles and talks. In this way, babies begin to learn
how to use language even before they can speak.
Babbling
Babies typically begin to make one-syllable sounds, such as ba and da, when they are 4–6
months old and begin to combine those sounds (baba, daga) when they are 6–8 months old
(Sachs, 2005). The most common consonant sounds are /b/, /d/, and /m/. At this point, parents
get very excited, thinking that the baby means “daddy” when he says “dada” or “mommy” when
he says “mama.” Although it does not appear that these first vocalizations are meaningful, babies
may start to learn their meaning because of the way their parents respond to these sounds (Menn
& Stoel-Gammon, 2005). It is interesting to note that in languages from around the world, even
among those with no common origins, the words for father—dada (English), abba (Hebrew),
and baba (Mandarin Chinese)—and mother—mama (English), ahm (Arabic), and manah
(Greek)—start with the earliest sounds babies make.
Bababa changes to daDAW ee derBEH as babbling begins to sound more and more like the
language the baby is hearing (maybe the second phrase sounds like the doggie under the bed)
and not like other languages.
Although babies initially are able to make all the sounds in languages around the world, at this
point a baby growing up with English will not produce the type of /r/ sounds used in French or
Spanish because the baby is not hearing those sounds in the language environment. Now the
feedback from hearing speech plays more of a role in language development than it did earlier.
Deaf babies will babble early on, but at the age when hearing babies increase the variety of
their sounds, deaf babies do not because they are not receiving this language input from their
environment (Menn & Stoel-Gammon, 2005). On the other hand, deaf babies who are learning
sign language appear to go through the same stages of language learning as hearing babies, in
this case “babbling” with hand gestures instead of sounds.

How Adults Foster Language Development

Before we continue our description of the stages of language development, let’s take a focused
look at the role that adults play in fostering young children’s language development. In many
cultures, adults begin to shape infants’ developing language ability by talking to them, even
when it is clear that the babies do not understand. Adults act as if they do understand and carry
on conversations, taking turns with whatever the baby responds. Karmiloff and Karmiloff-Smith
(2001) provide the following illustration:
Mother: Oh, so you’re HUNgry, are you?
(Baby kicks.)
Mother: YES, you ARE hungry. WELL, we’ll have to give you some MILK then, won’t
we?
(Baby coos.)
Mother: Ah, so Mommy was RIGHT. It’s MILK you want. Shall we change your diaper
first?
(Baby kicks.)
Mother: RIGHT! A clean diaper. THAT’s what you want. GOOD girl. (p. 48)
This type of exchange provides the baby with early experience with the back-and-forth of
dialogue that will be important in later speech, but we must be careful about concluding that
what adults do is the most important factor for children’s developing speech. Research with some
cultures, such as the Gusii people of Kenya, shows that parents in these cultures speak to their
babies much less often than American parents, but their infants still develop language. In fact,
when LeVine and his colleagues (1994) instructed Gusii mothers to talk and play with their
babies while they were videotaped, they complied but said “it was of course silly to talk to a
baby” (p. 210). However, Gusii children become as proficient with their language as American
children are with English despite these different early experiences with language. There are
many roads to language competence, and we must be careful not to apply one standard to all
people.

Child-Directed Speech
The special way that we talk to infants and young children was once referred to as motherese.
However, since we have found that in most cultures, all adults, and children too, change the way
they speak to infants and young children, this type of speech is now known as child-directed
speech (Fernald & Morikawa, 1993). Think about how you talk to babies or how you see others
do so. You are unlikely to approach a baby and say in a low, monotone voice, “Hello, baby, how
are you today? I hope you are having a fine day.”
You would be much more likely to say, “Hel-LO, BAAAA-BEEEE. How are YOU today?”
Child- or infant-directed speech is quite different from the way we talk to our friends.

Some people believe that these changes are harmful to infants, teaching them the wrong way
to speak, but the evidence is that what we naturally do in this way actually fosters language
development (Fernald & Morikawa, 1993; Rowe, 2008).
When we talk to babies we generally talk in a higher-pitched voice and exaggerate the ups and
downs of our pitch, like a roller coaster. In one study, if 4-month-old babies turned their head in
one direction they would hear regular adult speech. If they turned their head in the other
direction they would hear child-directed speech. Most infants turned more often in the direction
that started the child-directed speech (Fernald, 1985). This finding supports the idea that the
reason that we speak in this silly way is because infants pay more attention to us when we do.
Although adults in some cultures do not tend to talk to their babies, Fernald (1985) reports that
this type of child-directed speech has been found in cultures in America,

SUMMARY
Language A system of symbols that is used to communicate with others or in our thinking.
Phonology The study of the sounds of a language.
Syntax The grammar of a language.
Semantics The study of the meanings of words.
Pragmatics The rules that guide how we use language in social situations.
Morpheme The smallest unit in a language that has meaning.
Phoneme The smallest distinct sound in a particular language that signals differences between
words.
Interactionism: A theory of language development that proposes that the child’s biological
readiness to learn language interacts with the child’s experiences with language in the
environment to bring about the child’s language development.
Nativism A theory of language development that hypothesizes that human brains are innately
wired to learn language and that hearing spoken language triggers the activation of a universal
grammar.
Universal grammar A hypothesized set of grammatical rules and constraints proposed by
Chomsky that is thought to underlie all languages and that is hardwired in the human brain.
Overregularization A type of grammatical error in which children apply a language rule to
words that don’t follow that rule or pattern (for example, adding an s to make the plural of a
word like foot).
Interactionism A theory of language development that proposes that the child’s biological
readiness to learn language interacts with the child’s experiences with language in the
environment to bring about the child’s language development.
Recast To facilitate language learning, adults often repeat what children say but put it into more
advanced grammar.
Receptive language The ability to understand words or sentences.
Expressive language The written or spoken language that we use to convey our thoughts,
emotions, or needs.
Child-directed speech Speech that is tailored to fit the sensory and cognitive capabilities of
infants and children so that it holds their attention; includes speaking in a higher pitch with
exaggerated intonation and a singsong rhythm and using a simplified vocabulary.

EXERCISES- TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

1. It is perfectly fine to use baby talk with infants. True or False

2. The way that adults often talk to babies—in a high-pitched voice, with a great deal of
exaggeration, and in a singsong rhythm—is actually well suited to the hearing
capabilities and preferences of a baby. Babies pay attention to us when we talk this way,
and doing it will not delay their language development.-True

3. A sensitive parent should be able to tell the difference between a baby who is crying
because he is hungry and one who is crying because he is in pain or is lonely. –True
4. Infants’ crying can differ in intensity and severity, but there does not appear to be a
specific cry to signal hunger, pain, or loneliness. Even sensitive parents usually can’t
make these distinctions. –False
5. It is perfectly fine to use baby talk with infants.-True
6. The way that adults often talk to babies—in a high-pitched voice, with a great deal of
exaggeration, and in a singsong rhythm—is actually well suited to the hearing
capabilities and preferences of a baby. Babies pay attention to us when we talk this way,
and doing it will not delay their language development.-True