Word learning is a fundamental building block for early language acquisition. One controversial phenomenon associated with vocabulary growth is vocabulary spurt, usually characterised as a rapid increase in productive vocabulary in early child language. Despite that fact that initially, the word production starts slowly, it has been argued that after few months, children undergo a transition to a subsequent stage of faster vocabulary growth (Goldfield & Reznick, 1990). Several theories have attempted to account for this phenomenon. For instance, Plunkett (1993, as cited in Ganger & Brent, 2004) suggests that the acceleration results from linguistic advances such as word segmentation which allows children to pick up more words from speech stream; however, there is now a growing disagreement on its existence in all children (Goldfield & Reznick, 1990; Ganger & Brent, 2004). The aim of the present essay is to evaluate the ability of two theories, namely the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Dynamical Systems theory (DST), to explain the issues underlying the lexical development and vocabulary spurt. This essay provides an overview of both theories and compares their strengths and weaknesses in their explanation of lexical development supported by empirical evidence.
Both ANN and DST were formed in opposition to the symbol system view of cognition (Smith & Samuelson, 2003). Despite acknowledging that some of underlying mechanisms may be innate, they see lexical development as an emergent process resulting from early social interaction and exposure to linguistic input (Poveda & Vellido, 2006). The main aim of ANN is to construct computational models of various cognitive processes based on biological details of n...
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From the moment an infant is born, it is bombarded with sounds that the brain attempts to categorize. Within the first year of life alone, infants already show preferences for phonologically legal structures in their native language when compared to illegal consonant structures (Friederici et al., 1993). While a personal lexicon is not developed until later in childhood, the early stages, primarily the recognition of word segmentation, begins within the first year of life. The topic of what the important factors are in babies perceiving speech and building a preference to their own language, however, is shrouded in mystery. For instance, Friedrici et al.’s study on phonotactic knowledge of word boundaries gave results that indicate the combination of simple context cues as well as the use of infant directed speech (IDS) allows babies to recognize phonotactically legal structures by nine months. However, McMurray et al.’s results directly contrast those findings by arguing that IDS simply causes a slower rate of speech but does not highlight contrasts between segmented sounds, nor does it enhance phonetic cues. Infant directed speech is a “speech register characterized by simpler sentences, a slower rate, and more variable prosody” (McMurray et al., 2012). While there is controversy regarding the beneficial factors of infant directed speech, most studies indicate that this register is extremely beneficial for infant speech perception in the first year of life.
Other environmental inputs have been proven many times to also influence the learning of a language. An educated and socially skilled parent will address their child linguistically differently than a parent who is less educated and has scarcer social skills. Naigles and Hoff-Ginsberg (1998) established this fact in a study that examined the degree to which the nature of verb input accounts for the order in which children learn verbs. They used a joint sample of speech from 57 m...
Fernald, A., Marchman, V. A., & Weisleder, A. (2013). SES differences in language processing skill and vocabulary are evident at 18 months.Developmental science, 16(2), 234-248.
Chomsky argued that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language. Since all human brains have these same sets, the assumption is that all languages have a shared underlying, universal grammar. “I think, yet the world thinks in me” is one of C...
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The words and grammatical structures of a language have a profound effect on how speakers think, even when they are not talking and listening. The essence of thinking consists of real words and phrases, so people do not have to conceive a concept which does not exist in their language. Also, if two people speak languages that differ in the concepts that they are able to express, their beliefs are irreconcilable and communication between them is impossible. The Semantics proposes that the meanings of words are mentally represented in the form of expressions. The meanings of words can vary between languages because children adjust and organise them from the most elementary concepts.
The wide world relevance of this study is that Roy alleges to have uncovered innovative methods when it comes to thinking about language development. Roy also alleges that he has found a way to set apart a direct verbal learning curve when his son learned how to say the word “water”. This causes the audience to applause when the word “water” is heard from Roy’s son. The applause is an enthusiastically rewarding moment that persuaded the audience to buy into the notion that a great scientific discovery was on the horizon.
that create words. It is first important to note that language displays a critical period in which the ability to acquire a second language declines after age seven. Furthermore, a study that tested American infants and Japanese infants on their ability to discriminate between the English /ra-la/ phonetic contrast showed that before the critical period both groups of infants performed similarly, but after the critical period American infants performed much better than Japanese infants. This provides evidence that infants are able to detect which phonemes, which can alter the meaning of words, are meaningful for their own language. Infants also execute phonetic learning using statistical learning; they become sensitive to the distribution of frequencies of the sounds in their everyday language between the ages of six to twelve months. Social interaction is another mechanism that aids in language acquisitio...
Language acquisition is perhaps one of the most debated issues of human development. Various theories and approaches have emerged over the years to study and analyse this developmental process. One factor contributing to the differing theories is the debate between nature v’s nurture. A question commonly asked is: Do humans a...
The biological theoretical perspective comes from a man named Noam Chomsky. He believed that all children have a language acquisition device. This is defined in the book as “a biological endowment enabling the child to detect the features and rules of language, including phonology, syntax, and semantics”. The evidence found was that throughout cultures, children tend to have the same language milestones. Most begin at age two to four months by cooing and develop at 13 months with their first words.
Amorsen, A., McBurnie, K., & Wilson, D. (2017). Oral language development in the early years-
There are four aspects of language development: phonology, semantics, grammar, and pragmatics. During the first two years of a child’s life, great strides in language development are made. Infants between birth and six months begin making sounds that start with reflexive verbalizations like crying because of distress and transitioning to cooing during social interactions. After the cooing stage, vocalizations to transition into babbling. Babbling is the repetitive vocalizations of consonants and vowels, like “dada.” Babbling lasts through the twelfth month, and jargon begins to take its place. Jargon, per Bjorklund and Hernandez Blasi, is “strings of sound filled with a variety of intonations and rhythms to sound like meaningful speech” (Bjorklund & Hernandez Blasi, 2012). During the nineteen to twenty-four-month stage, children can learn many new words and possess the knowledge of anywhere between ten and twenty
Still today, it is the commonly held belief that children acquire their mother tongue through imitation of the parents, caregivers or the people in their environment. Linguists too had the same conviction until 1957, when a then relatively unknown man, A. Noam Chomsky, propounded his theory that the capacity to acquire language is in fact innate. This revolutionized the study of language acquisition, and after a brief period of controversy upon the publication of his book, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, in 1964, his theories are now generally accepted as largely true. As a consequence, he was responsible for the emergence of a new field during the 1960s, Developmental Psycholinguistics, which deals with children’s first language acquisition. He was not the first to question our hitherto mute acceptance of a debatable concept – long before, Plato wondered how children could possibly acquire so complex a skill as language with so little experience of life. Experiments have clearly identified an ability to discern syntactical nuances in very young infants, although they are still at the pre-linguistic stage. Children of three, however, are able to manipulate very complicated syntactical sentences, although they are unable to tie their own shoelaces, for example. Indeed, language is not a skill such as many others, like learning to drive or perform mathematical operations – it cannot be taught as such in these early stages. Rather, it is the acquisition of language which fascinates linguists today, and how it is possible. Noam Chomsky turned the world’s eyes to this enigmatic question at a time when it was assumed to have a deceptively simple explanation.
On the surface one would look at child first language acquisition and adult second language acquisition and see similarities. In each case the learner first learns how to make basic sounds, then words, phrases and sentences; and as this learning continues the sentences become more and more complex. However, when one looks at the outcomes of these two types of acquisition, the differences are dramatic. The child's ability to communicate in the target language far surpasses that of the adult. In this paper differences in these two processes that most always produce such different outcomes will be explored.