Child Language: Acquisition and Development

510 Pages·2018·6.05 MB·English

by  Matthew Saxton

Child Language

Child Language
Acquisition and Development
2nd Edition
Matthew saxton
SAGE Publications Ltd
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© Matthew Saxton 2017
First published 2010
Reprinted 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or
criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any
form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with
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concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016962661
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-4462-9561-8
ISBN 978-1-4462-9562-5 (pbk)
Editor: Luke Block
Editorial assistant: Lucy Dang
Production editor: Imogen Roome
Copyeditor: Sarah Bury
Proofreader: Christine Bitten
Indexer: Martin Hargreaves
Marketing manager: Lucia Sweet
Cover design: Wendy Scott
Typeset by: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed in the UK
For Gary, Sue and Alex
Drawing of Alex Saxton by Colin Saxton
Contents
Acknowledgements
Publisher’s Acknowledgements
Notes on the Organization of this Book
Companion Website page
1 Prelude: Landmarks in the Landscape of Child Language
From burping to grammar in the pre-school years
Levels of language
Listen in mother
The cat in the hat in the womb
Some conclusions on sound
Word learning: From 0 to 14,000 in five years
Say ‘mama’
Estimating vocabulary size
The gavagai problem
Morphology: Bits and pieces
Syntax: Putting it all together
Language in context: Perceptual, cognitive and social development
The study of child language
The lie of the land
2 Can Animals Acquire Human Language? Shakespeare’s Typewriter
What is language?
The infinite monkey theorem
Language, talk and communication
The design of language
Teaching words to animals
Talking versus sign language
Lexigrams
Barking up the right tree: Word learning in dogs
Alex, the non-parroting parrot
Animal grammar
Combining words
Comprehension of spoken English by Kanzi
The linguistic limitations of animals
Is speech special?
Categorical perception in infants and primates
Statistical learning
Back to grammar: Infants versus monkeys
The language faculty: Broad and narrow
3 The Critical Period Hypothesis: Now or Never?
What is a critical period?
A musical interlude
Lenneberg’s critical period hypothesis
Designing research on critical periods
Cats’ eyes: An example from animal development
How to identify a critical period
The effects of linguistic deprivation
The royal prerogative: Experiments on people
Feral children
Genie
Different critical periods for different aspects of language
A happier ending: The case of Isabelle
Conclusions from cases of deprivation
Age of acquisition effects in second language learning
Early versus late starters: Effects on language outcomes
Age effects may not be due to a critical period
Plastic fantastic: The receptive brain
Deafness and late language learning
Two more cases of linguistic deprivation: Chelsea and E.M.
Early versus late learning of American Sign Language
4 Input and Interaction: Tutorials for Toddlers
Talking to young children
Characteristics of Child Directed Speech
Phonology
Vocabulary
Morphology and syntax
A dynamic register
Individual differences and their effects
Child Directed Speech: Summary
Lack of interaction: Can children learn language from television?
Imitation
Linguistic creativity: Children make their own sentences
Skinner and Chomsky on imitation
Imitation as a mechanism in cognitive development
Imitation: Who, when and how?
Individual differences in imitation
Corrective input
Recasts: Adult repetition of the child
The ‘no negative evidence’ assumption
Contrastive discourse
Negative feedback
Corrective input: Summary
Universality of CDS
Input and interaction in language acquisition
5 Language in the First Year: Breaking the Sound Barrier
Hunt the phoneme
In the beginning
Drops of sound in a river of speech
Categorical perception
Specialization towards the native language
Why I don’t speak Nthlakapmx
Loss or decline?
Enhancement of native contrasts
Individual differences in infant speech perception
Summary: Breaking the speech sound barrier
Word segmentation
The baby statistician
Learning in the real world
Prosodic cues to speech segmentation
Relative cue strength
Grammar from the babble
Phonemes, words and grammar: Summary
6 The Developing Lexicon: What’s in a Name?
Approaches to word learning
First words
Comprehension versus production
What do one-year-olds talk about?
Overextension
Categorically wrong
Lexical plugs: Pragmatic errors
Losing it: Retrieval failures