1. Language development
in children
Dr. Reem Al-Sabah
Dept. of Community Medicine
& Behavioral Sciences

2. Why is language important?
• Language is our primary means of
communicating thought.
• Language is universal (all human cultures).
• Every human being of normal intelligence
acquires his or her native language and uses
it effortlessly.

3. Levels of language
Sentence units
↓
Words
↓
speech sounds
Language: a multilevel system for relating
thoughts to speech by means of word and
sentence units.

4. The two aspects of language
• Production:
thought → sentence → sounds
• Comprehension:
sounds → words → sentence → meaning
Two of the basic properties of language
• Structured
• Productive

5. Language Units and Processes
• Speech sounds (phonemes): discrete speech
categories
• In English, all speech sounds are divided into
about 40 phonemes.
• Example:
• ee (sweet, heat, thief, these)
• ur (burn, first, term heard, work)
• f (field, photo)

6. • Word units (morphemes):
•The smallest unit of language that carries
meaning.
• Most morphemes are words (e.g., house, class).
•Others are prefixes and suffixes added to words
(e.g., prefix un; suffix ing and ed).

7. Morphemes:
• Grammatical morphemes: make a sentence
grammatical (e.g., a, the, in, on, ed, ing)
• Most important aspect of a word is its
meaning, or the name of a concept.
• Ambiguous words: name more than one
concept.

8. • Sentence units: include sentences and phrases.
• They correspond to parts of a thought or
proposition allowing us to extract propositions
from sentences.
• Propositions can be divided into:
• Subject- noun
• Predicate (description)- verb
• Syntactic rules: structure the parts of a sentence
so we can tell what is related to what.
• Example: “the green bird ate a red snake”

9. Effects of Context on Comprehension and Production
Figure 9.3 Levels of Understanding and Producing Sentences. In
producing a sentence, we translate a propositional thought into the
phrases and morphemes of a sentence and translate these
morphemes into phonemes. In understanding a sentence, we go in
the opposite direction-we use phonemes and phrases of a sentence
and from these units extract the underlying propositions

10. Language and the Brain
• Two regions of the left hemisphere of the
brain critical for language:
• Broca’s area- controls speech
• Wernicke’s area– language understanding

11. • Damage to either of these areas leads to
specific kinds of aphasia (breakdown or deficit
in language)
• Broca’s aphasia: (expressive aphasia)
• difficulty pronouncing words correctly.
• Speak in a slow, labored way.
• Their speech makes sense but includes
only key words.
• Disruption at level of syntax (syntactic
deficit)

12. Wernicke’s aphasia: (receptive aphasia)
Unable to comprehend words
Can hear words, but don’t know their
meanings.
Disruption at level of words and concepts
(Conceptual deficit).
Conduction aphasia: problems in repeating
a spoken sentence.

13. The Development of Language
• Infants appear to be preprogrammed to
learn phonemes, but need years to learn the
rules.
• Children are able to discriminate among
different sounds which correspond to
different phonemes in any language.

14. The Universal Sequence
• First noises and gestures
• Make a variety of sounds even in the first weeks of
life.
• Newborns prefer to listen to high-pitched, simplified,
and repetitive adult speech (baby-talk,
motherese/parentese, child-directed speech)
• Babbling
• 6-9 months, babies begin to repeat certain syllables
(ma-ma-ma, da-da-da, ba-ba-ba) accompanied by
rhythmic gestures (waving of arms).
• Deaf babies make babbling sounds later and less
frequently, but are advanced in their use of gestures
(manual babbling).

15. • First Words
• About 1 year of age, the average baby speaks (or
signs) a few words.
• Children learn words that name concepts familiar in
their environment (family members, food, body
parts).
• Over the first years of life, children learn which
phonemes are relevant to their language and lose
the ability to discriminate between sounds that
correspond to the same phoneme in their language
(e.g., Japanese children and /l/ and /r/)

16. • Overextend: applying words to similar
concepts (12-30 months) .
• vocabulary development speeds up.
• Next children learn sentences, one word
utterances, next telegraphic speech, and then
elaborate their noun and verb phrases.

17. Best Time to learn any language
When is the best time?
• Childhood (ages 2-6yrs) appears to be a sensitive
period for many language skills.
• Vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation are
rapidly and easily learned.

18. Why is early childhood the best time to learn
language?
1.The developing brain: dendrites and
neurological areas for language learning grow
rapidly during these years.
2. The social context: young children are
motivated to be social. Want to communicate,
not embarrassed to be wrong.

20. How do children acquire language?
• Learning
• Innate factors
Learning
• Imitation and conditioning
• Hypothesis testing: children learn a rule, test it,
and retain it if it works.
• Example: adding ed to regular verbs to form
the past tense of a word (cook-cooked).
Irregular verbs (go-went, break-broke).

21. Innate factors
• All children go through the same sequence of
language development.
• Deaf children
• Critical periods. Especially for acquiring sound
systems of a new language.
• First few months of life critical for learning
phonemes of native language.

22. Critical Periods
• Learning the sound system of another
language (speech sounds).
• Learning syntax. Native ASL speakers were
better at understanding and producing words
with multiple morphemes (e.g., untimely).
• Children exposed to extreme isolation (e.g.,
the case of Genie).

23. • Can other species learn human language?
• They have communication systems different
from humans.
• Apes are able to develop human-like
vocabulary but cannot combine their signs in
the way humans do.

24. Teaching Children to Read Fluently
 Talking (without too many commands) and
reading to young children.
 An extensive vocabulary and awareness of
sounds are more important than memorizing
the alphabet and recognizing the letters.
 An extensive vocabulary and awareness of
sounds develop naturally if child is read to at
least daily and discusses what is read.

25. Learning to Read
A B C D E F G H I
J K L M N O P Q R
S T U V W X Y Z

26. あ ば せ だ え ふ が は い
じゃ か りゃ ま な お ぱ きゅ ら
さ て う ふ わ きゃ や び

27. あ ば せ だ え ふ が は い
A B C D E F G H I
じゃ か りゃ ま な お ぱ きゅ ら
J K L M N O P Q R
さ て う ふ わ きゃ や び
S T U V W X Y Z

28. The importance of reading
Reading aloud to young children is not only
one of the best activities to stimulate language and
cognitive skills; it also builds motivation, curiosity, and
memory. Bardige, B. Talk to Me, Baby!(2009), Paul H Brookes Pub Co.

29. Reading aloud to children
• linked to young children’s emergent literacy ability.
• Phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge.
• Stimulate oral language skills (vocabulary, syntactic and
semantic processes, and narrative discourse processes
such as memory, storytelling and comprehension and
reading ability).
• involves parents and other important adults to the child
in a focused interaction.
Duursma, Augustyn, & Zuckerman (2008)