11/8/01

These are notes I made to help me think about guiding questions for class on the 7^th. The information in here can be regarded as accurate. Susan

November 7, 2001

Nature vs Nurture

Wild children typically do not speak despite the “grammatical” or language inheritance they were born with.

Children are born with similar sensitivities to phonology and phonological contrasts; within about 6 months there is differentiation by the language community of which they are a part.

Speech input is necessary for speech development.

Extracting grammatical form is not an easy task. Pinker walks through what a child might need to come equipped with to make sense of speech input. He concludes that it is X-bars (for NP and VP0 would do it (pag 285 – 287).

Bates and MacWhinney model explores a number of issues in how language is extracted from speech input. Cue Validity is an important concept; functional value of cues related to accessibility and availability. Individual differences result from differential response to cues as well as differential cue availability. Cues that are reliable are more useful than those that are not. Reliable is defined as leading to the correct conclusion. The cues that “shout” the loudest, get heard the most. A functional rather than a structural approach. Cues are value in the context of the functions they signal and the functions they accomplish.

Language Acquisition: How do we become language users?

Based on the reading you have done, I want to take the rest of today to talk about what people mean when they say that children acquire language - What is it that they acquire?

And how do they do it? How does it come about?

What?

Become members of a discourse community

Learn how their particular language accomplishes the functions and properties of language. (Syntax, appropriateness of particular sentence forms for particular goals e.g., questions, requests, commands, etc.)

Literal or Direct versus Indirect

Literal versus Metaphorical uses of language

How to organize language to convey information about past and future (narratives) Hudson & Shapiro

In elementary and later years - how to learn from and with language. How to reason propositionally.

What evidence do we need to claim that a child has acquired language? Need to be understood. Need to understand others. Hakuta

What properties and functions must they command? Different views on this. Basic sentence types, basic functions. “Functional” English. Generativity, creativity - the most frequently cited one. Have to be able to do more than mimic or repeat - because that shows there is a rule system acquired, not just a pattern memorized.

How?

Learn in communicative interaction with peers and adults

Constructive experiences - they build their language

Extract meaning and express it in language they can use

Processes: association, imitation, reinforcement, modeling, transfer, generalization, part whole (mimic parts of sentences prior to being able to command the structure and rules for th whole sentence- repeat end of sentence; adopt its form. (e.g., I want to know what you are doing. To What you are doing?)