based on Steinberg's book

1. PSYCHOLINGUISTIC
HOW CHILDREN LEARN LANGUAGE
MUSFERA NARA VADIA
1300925

2. We’ll learn……
1. The Development of Speech Production
2. The Development of Speech Comprehension
3. The Relationship of Speech Production, Speech
Comprehension And Thought.
4. Parentese and Baby Talk
5. Imitation, Rule Learning, and Correction
6. Learning Abstract Words
7. Memory and Logic in Language Learning

3. 1. THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPEECH PRODUCTION
From Vocalization to Babbling to Speech
• Vocalization to Babbling
– Prior to uttering speech sounds, infants make a variety of sounds,
crying, cooing, gurgling.
– Around the seventh month, children ordinarily begin to babble, to
produce what may be described as repeated syllables.
– The production of sounds using the intonation contours of the first
language is obviously a learned phenomenon because when infants
babble they follow the intonation contours of the language they hear.

4. • Babbling to Speech
• The infant does not intentionally make the particular babbling
sounds which occur. They seem to happen by the chance
coordination of speech articulators.
• While, a meaningful speech is the sounds must not uttered at
random but must match previously heard sounds which are
conventionally associated with certain objects, need, and so
on. The sound is created by speech articulators.

5. • Explaining the acquisition order of consonants and vowels
• In the meaningful speech phase, it appears that consonants
are acquired in a front-to-back order, where ‘front’ and ‘back’
refer to the origin of the articulation of the sound.
• Vowels seem to be acquired in a back-to-front order.

6. Early Speech Stages: Naming, Holophrastic, Telegraphic,
Morphemic
• Naming: one-word utterances
• Children can be said to have learned their first word when:
(a) they are able to utter a recognizable speech form, and
when it is done.
(b) in conjunction with some object or event in the
environment.
• Ordinarily, children speak along with physical movement.

7. • Holophrastic functions: one-word utterance
• Children do not only use single words to refer to objects; they
also use single words to express complex thoughts which
involves those objects.

8. • Telegraphic speech: two- and three-word utterances
• Variety of purposes and semantic relations
– The child uses language to request, warn, name, refuse, brag, answer,
and inform.
• Low incidence of function words
– Rarely use articles, prepositions, and the copula ‘be’.
• Close approximation of the language’s word order
– Speak words in right order.
• Syntactic vs semantic analysis

9. • Morpheme acquisition
• Once two- and three-words utterance have been acquired,
children have something on which to elaborate. They start to
add function words and inflection to their utterances.

10. The Brown morpheme acquisition research
• Brown focused on the acquisition of different function words
and inflections in English. He found that children acquired the
morphemes in a relatively similar order.
• Brown checked frequency of occurrence of the morphemes in
adult speech to see if more highly used morphemes were
learned faster by the child. He found no relationship. He then
considered that the order reflected an increasing order of
semantic or grammatical complexity.

11. Steinberg’s explanation
• The order of morpheme acquisition can be explained directly and simply by
applying psychological learning principles.
• Variable 1: ease of observability of referent
The more easily a child can see or hear or otherwise experience the
referent.
• Variable 2: meaningfulness of referent
The child who desires to communicate will be learned faster than those
which lack such interest.
• Variable 3:distinctiveness of sound in signaling the referent
The child is able to identify the speech sound that signals that
morpheme.
• Morpheme referents which are more observable and carry more meaning
will be more quickly learned than those which are not.

12. Explaining the order of some morphemes by the
three variables theory
Why are Progressive and Prepositions ‘in’ and ‘on’ learned earliest?
• The Progressive morpheme involves the action of those object, while
Preposition involve the physical location of those objects.
Why are Plural and Possessive learned before Third Person?
• These two morphemes involve physical events, situations, and
objects that are readily observed in the environment. While the
Third Person is more abstract.
Why past irregular learned before past regular?
• The sound changes from present to past are much more noticeable
for the irregular verbs than for the regular ones.

13. Later Speech Stages: Rule Formation for Negatives, Questions,
Relative Clauses, Passive, and Other Complex Structures.
• Negation formation
• Question formation
– Yes-No Questions
– WH Questions
• Passive formation
• Other problems
 Structures with two or more verbs
 Verbs problems

14. 2. THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPEECH COMPREHENSION
Fetuses and Speech Input
– The mother’s speech sounds were found to be able to reach the ear
of the fetus above the background sounds.
Newborns (neonates) and Speech Input
Speech Comprehension Occurs without Speech Production:
the Case of Mute-Hearing Children
– Christopher Nolan
– Anne McDonald
– Rie

15. In Normal Children Speech Comprehension Develops in
Advance of Speech Production
o If children did not first learn to understand the meaning of
words and sentences, they would not be able to use words or
sentences in a meaningful way.
• Pre-speech normal infants
• The Huttenlocher study
• The Sachs and Truswell Study
• A Reading before Speaking Study

16. Relative Paucity of Comprehension Studies
• The product of the speech production process, the child’s
utterance, is something that can be directly observed while
the product of the comprehension process, meaning,
cannot.

17. 3. THE RELATIONSHIP OF SPEECH PRODUCTION,
SPEECH COMPREHENSION AND THOUGHT.
Speech Comprehension Necessarily Precedes Speech Production
• Children must be able to comprehend the meaning of the language
before they themselves can produce it.
• Children first need to be exposed to utterances with a clear
connection to the articles referred to before they themselves can
begin to say such utterances.
• Children may sometimes repeat words or phrases they hear, but
this is not evidence for learning unless the sounds are used in
meaningful context that is suitable for those sounds form.

18. Thought as the Basis of Speech Comprehension
• The meaning that underlie speech comprehension are
concepts that are in a person’s mind.
• Without such content of thought, the child would have nothing
to assign as the meaning of words and sentences.
• One cannot begin to learn such abstract words without first
learning words for objects which are directly observable in the
world.

19. 4. PARENTESE AND BABY TALK
Parentese
• Parentese is the sort of speech that children receive when they
are young.
Characteristic of Parentese
• Immediacy and concreteness
– The speech which parents and others use in talking to children has a
number of distinctive characteristic which evidently aid language
learning.
• Grammaticality of input
– The speech directed to children is highly grammatical and simplified.

20. • Short sentences and simple structure
• Vocabulary: simple and short
• Exaggerate intonation, pitch, and stress
– Adults exaggerate intonation and use a slower tempo, and frequently
repeat or rephrase what they or their children say.
• Older children too adapt their speech
• Father versus mother speech
– Fathers tend to employ different pragmatics approaches in the
speech they use with children.

21. Baby Talk
– Baby Talk involves the use of vocabulary and syntax that is overly
simplified and reduced.
• Vocabulary
– Baby Talk words is that they are supposed to represent the sounds
which various things make.
• Syntax
– Syntax play a less prominent role in Baby Talk than does vocabulary.
• Should baby talk be used?
– Yes, it is. There is no good reason to be harmful.

22. 5. IMITATION, RULE LEARNING, AND CORRECTION
What is Learned by Imitation
• Imitation can apply only to speech production and not to
speech comprehension.
Productivity by learn
• Children have formulated rules in their minds according to
which they construct novel utterances.
The Frequent Futility of Correction
• Correction does not play an important role in grammar
learning. The child does notice his or her own incorrect speech
and then makes the necessary revision.

23. 6. LEARNING ABSTRACT WORDS
• Children acquire the meaning of words begin with the
concrete and go on to the abstract. Children learn abstract
words by experiencing those words. Metaphor also help
children to comprehend the abstract concepts.

24. 7. MEMORY AND LOGIC IN LANGUAGE LEARNING
Memory
• Two basic types of memory operate in language learning:
– associative learning, where a connection is formed between an
object and the sound-form name of that object.
– Episodic learning, where whole events or situations are remembered
along with phrases and sentences that others have spoken.
 Logic
• Children use inductive logic
• Young children use deductive logic