Development: Basic Models

1. Development: Basic Models • Basic issue: heritability (nature-nurture interactions) • --no development: small adults! • --progressive differentiation • --instinct (maturation alone --> devel.) • --readiness (maturation is a pre-req for learning) • --critical period (maturation is a pre-req but opportunity disappears) • --stages and waves

2. Development:Why study? • Child is father to the man • Analysis of complex system • Heredity --environment issues • Heritability = Vg/Vt (variance) • Why difficult? --right experiment • Role of culture & socialization: Rosseau/Victor of Aveyron

3. Language • The Premise of this lecture is that Language is what distinguishes humans from animals. All of us have it, none of them do. Is this just species-centrism, or is it accurate? In order to answer that question, we need to look at what language is.

4. Animal Signaling systems • Animal signaling systems. White tailed deer, Monkeys, Bees etc. Characteristics of signal system: invariant-fixed mapping, unstructured, uncreative, unproductive....

5. Behavioral View of Language • Language as sets of words: Simple behavior, responses to stimuli. Not so.Skinner: (de)mands & (con)tacts. control via echo, text, intraverbal or autoclitics (descriptive or functional--frames "the x's car". Chomsky's scathing attack led to alternative view

6. Language Can be Described as Complex Heirarchy of Rules Start with phonology: Phoneme (40 out of 200 sounds) Made up of distinctive features (8) ex. -place (7) [bl, ld, d, a, p, v g] -manner (6) of artic. stop, fric, affric, nas, lat, semivowel example: /p/ /t/ /k/:: /b/ /d/ /g/ + VOT experiment 20msec

9. Word/Morpheme Level (Meaning) • 50,000 Morphemes • 200,000 Words • You can say a lot….but still limited

10. Syntactic Level • Rules of ordering/inflection convey meaning. (“Dog bites cat” and “Cat bites dog” mean different things while using same words! • Language as “packaging” job is to convey underlying propositions

16. Pragmatic Level • Language in social use within a community • It’s all automatic and mostly effortless despite its complexity • Enormous complexity and rapid online processing!

17. Hockett’s Defining Characteristics • displacement: bees do it vy limited (flagpole ex). • productivity: say anything "palimony" bees cant' do flagpole-no vert • creativity: (cont. of above?) (not one of Hockett's) • interchangeability: any speaker can understand any message • discreteness: small separable units of sound • duality of patterning: small set of building blocks-->infinite words • traditional transmission: knowledge passed on • arbitrariness: no natural relationship necessary between word & ref. • semanticity: (cont. of above) ie. arbitrary assignment of word--ref. • vocal=auditory channel, specialization: unimp.K. broadcast xmission, direct. reception, rapid fading, total feedback

19. Animals Learning Human Lang. • Porpoises/whales/ • chimps/gorillas • parrots!

21. Language/thought/impact • Whorf/Sapir hypothesis • Roesh and the Dani (BW-R-GYB-BR-PPOG-L) • Why is language so important? --Cultural cumulation (and not oysters on rocks or termites on sticks!) • Schactel

22. Language Development • Taught? -not an easy issue • Course of development-- • infant conversations • babbling (back to front, front to back) • one word • two word • Then syntax, and off and running • vocab. learning plus nuances (5000+ by age 5)

24. Arguments for Innateness • semi-dedicated brain tissue (Broca's, Wernicke's) • critical period • early start and early development + difficulty of task (complexity of rules, 5000+ words by age 5 + semi-complete set of rules • overgeneralization: not mimicry • syntactic uniqueness (numerous issues) (many instances: wild chn. animals, no-input lang. etc.) • poor teaching and poor examples (parsing problem)

30. Thought Leads Language! • Holophrastic speech • Telegraphic speech • “Bye bye cat” ex. • Kid’s translations of adult speech