User:Teamwork341
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This page has been created to encourage and facilitate collaboration amongst members of the Wiki team. Feel free to post your contributions to this page, as well as to copy others' into your sandbox for revision. Also, it may be helpful to utilize the talk function of this page to share ideas, rather than any one person's.
target article: language acquisition
Introduction
first paragraph
Andrew A wants to work on this! Can someone post the link or URL to the Wikipedia page? I am having a really hard time finding it. Andrewz1 (talk) 20:08, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
- Language acquisition Is this the page you're looking for? Semccraw (talk) 15:45, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
History
For my copy editting job i editted the first paragraph under history Cindyy1 (talk) 18:15, 26 March 2012 (UTC)
For my copy editing job I also edited the second paragraph under the section titled "History." Lissyh1990 (talk) 23:43, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
overview of whole article
main domains of language
- possible stubs or links to existing articles: phonetics, phonology, lexicon, semantics, syntax, grammar
defining language, maybe early in article?
Domains of Language
Phonology
- neonates: Janet Werker, Pat Kuhl, distinguishing own from other languages (via prosodic information)
- 6 months: Peter Juczyk, sensitivity to non-native contrasts reducing, vowels first, recognition of own name (check Saxton: CM thinks it's 7 months), babbling (canonical or reduplicated and variegated; jargoning) *Allie Glock wants to work on phonology at 6 months
- At 6 months of age, babies begin to zoom in on the phonemes of their native language. In other words, they are no longer able to recognize the phonemes of foreign languages. This loss does, however, allow young children to ignore sounds that are unimportant to their language development, and sparks a learning process of communication using their native language. Bilingual babies also begin to lose recognition of phonemes unfamiliar to their native languages at this age, while simultaneously zooming in on the phonemes of both languages they are learning.
- At the beginning of the stage of perception and comprehension, babies 6-7 months of age begin to recognize their own name. One’s name is probably the most frequent word a person hears. Therefore, it is one of the first words children are able to learn and comprehend. Using motherese, parents and adults often repeat a baby’s name numerous times while talking to them. For example, a mother may greet her baby in the morning by saying, “Good morning Suzie! How is Suzie doing this morning? Lets pick something out for you to wear today. Does Suzie want to wear this? Is Suzie ready for breakfast?", and so on. As a result of her mother's constant use of her name, Suzie begins to recognize "Suzie" as a word. More importantly, she realizes the word "Suzie" is her name, and thus she begins to respond to the sound of her name.
- Around the age of 6 months, children enter into the developmental stage of babbling. There are two subtypes of babbling that children produce; reduplicated and variegated, both of which have a consonant vowel syllable pattern. Reduplicated oral babbling is when children verbalize the same consonant vowel syllable pattern repeatedly, such as bababa. In contrast, variegated oral babbling maintains the consonant vowel syllable patterns while implementing different phonemes in each syllable, for example, namadega. Notice that bababa and namadega lack meaning. This absence of meaning is the reason why these utterances are not considered to be words, but rather baby talk or child oral babbling.
- Babbling is not restricted to verbal communication, but is also present in non-hearing children. This is called manual babbling. Like oral babbling, manual babbling has reduplicated and variegated subtypes. Reduplicated manual babbling is represented when children continuously repeat the same hand gesture. Slightly more complicated, variegated manual babbling makes use of minimal pairs that are distinguished based on palm direction, hand shape, location, and movement. Manual babbling also lacks meaning, and is the result of a child’s attempt to produce language.
References:
- McKee, C. (January 12 - April 5, 2012). Lecture Class by A. L. Glock [Typed Notes]. PSY/LING 341: Language Development, University of Arizona. Arizona, Tucson.
- Saxton, Matthew. Child Language: Acquisition and Development. London: SAGE Publications, 2010. Print, (125-127).
- 10 months: Pat Kuhl, own phonemes pretty much categorized, consonants now done, word comprehension getting going (Jessica O. is doing 10 months Ornelasj (talk) 06:08, 14 April 2012 (UTC))
- At 10 months, infants begin to lose their ability to discriminate sounds from non-native languages when those sounds do not represent a discernible contrast (also known as a separate phoneme) in their native language[1].
- This loss of infants' ability to detect phonemic contrasts in other language is apparent when we look at the following phonemes from the perspective of a Japanese speaker: /ɹ/ and /l/. In English, /ɹ/ is a separate phoneme from /l/. This is exemplified in the words 'rake' and 'lake.' An English speaker would not use /ɹ/ and /l/ interchangeably because in English, this would create two different words with two different meanings. To a Japanese speaker, however, these words would not sound critically different, as these sounds are not separate phonemes in Japanese.
- Janet Werker, a professor at the University of British Columbia, conducted an experiment in 1984 which shows this change in an infant's ability to discern[2] the phonemic contrasts of any language. Before this change occurs, all contrasts are "critically different" to all infants. That is to say, an infant (learning any spoken language in the world) is able to perceive the difference between an /ɹ/ or an /l/, as well as he or she is able to note the difference between /p/ and /ph/ (aspirated /p/) and categorizes these sounds as contrasting. Patricia Kuhl, noting this ability in infants to identify these contrasts, named them "citizens of the world" because they seemed to be born with the power to learn any and all given phonemes as separate. Which meant, as Kuhl noted, they were born with the capability to learn any language in the world entire[3].
- Although this new ability presents itself as a loss of phonemic specification (i.e., the inability to discriminate between sounds of a non-native language may appear to be a step backward in learning), it is actually helping infants to zero in on the sounds of their own language, while preventing them from overextending this specification. If infants did not learn to ignore the differences that are irrelevant in their native language, they would have to hold a space in their lexicon for the sound /p/, in any given word, as well as a space for the other sounds /p/ (e.g., /p/ at the beginning of a word, /p/ at the end of a word, /p/ between two consonants, etc.). Not only would this put strain on the infant's memory, but it would be an unnecessary distinction to make (unless, of course, each of those categories of /p/ are contrastive in the infant's native language)[4]. In English, for instance, /p/ becomes aspirated at the beginning of a word, but English speakers do not note this /p/ as a contrastive sound. That is, if a native English speaker heard a person start the word, 'pat' with an unaspirated /p/, he or she would not hear this as a separate word with a separate meaning; although they may notice this difference, they would instead hear one of the many types of /p/ that would be considered in their lexicon under the general category, /p/. However, if they had a separate category in their lexicon for each type of /p/ sound, extra time would have to be taken in order to find exactly the right /p/, which would still lead him or her to the conclusion that the word uttered was 'pat,' but would take longer and require more space in his or her memory.
- At 10 months, infants begin to lose their ability to discriminate sounds from non-native languages when those sounds do not represent a discernible contrast (also known as a separate phoneme) in their native language[1].
- At this time, infants also learn to recognize sequences of the same consonants and vowels as the same words, regardless of who the sequences come from or what their patterns of intonation are. That is, they learn that a speaker's vocal tendencies are not a part of what gives a word a specific meaning. With this ability at hand, infants are able to ignore these differences, and they begin to learn how to hone in on word meaning, then subsequently, sentence meaning and the grammar of their language.
- 12 months: first words produced, what's their phonology like? overlap with babbling