TOPIC SIX: LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

OBJECTIVES
By the end of this topic, the learner should be able to;
1. Define language development
2. Identify theories of language development
3. Outline factors that influence language development in children
4. Describe the aspects or components of language development
5. Identify communication disorders/problems among learners
6. Explain the implications of language on learning
Language development is a process starting early in human life. Infants start without language,
yet by 4 months of age, babies can discriminate speech sounds and engage in babbling.
Some research has shown that the earliest learning begins in utero when the fetus starts to
recognize the sounds and speech patterns of its mother's voice.
Usually, productive language is considered to begin with a stage of preverbal communication in
which infants use gestures and vocalizations to make their intents known to others.
According to a general principle of development, new forms then take over old functions, so that
children learn words to express the same communicative functions which they had already
expressed by preverbal means.
Theoretical frameworks of language development
Language development is thought to proceed by ordinary processes of learning in which children
acquire the forms, meanings and uses of words and utterances from the linguistic input.
The method in which we develop language skills is universal however, the major debate is how
the rules of syntax are acquired.
There are two major approaches to syntactic development, an empiricist account by which
children learn all syntactic rules from the linguistic input, and a nativist approach by which some
principles of syntax are innate and are transmitted through the human genome.
NATIVIST THEORY
The nativist theory, proposed by Noam Chomsky, argues that language is a unique human
accomplishment. Chomsky says that all children have what is called an innate language
acquisition device (LAD).
Theoretically, the LAD is an area of the brain that has a set of universal syntactic rules for all
languages. This device provides children with the ability to construct novel sentences using
learned vocabulary.
Chomsky's claim is based upon the view that what children hear - their linguistic input - is
insufficient to explain how they come to learn language.
He argues that linguistic input from the environment is limited and full of errors. Therefore,
nativists assume that it is impossible for children to learn linguistic information solely from their
environment
However, because children possess this LAD, they are in fact, able to learn language despite
incomplete information from their environment. This view has dominated linguistic theory for
over fifty years and remains highly influential, as witnessed by the number of articles in journals
and books.
EMPIRICIST THEORY
The empiricist theory suggests that, there is enough information in the linguistic input children
receive and therefore, there is no need to assume that an innate language acquisition device exists
Language, empiricists believe that general brain processes are sufficient enough for language
acquisition. During this process, it is necessary for the child to be actively engaged with their
environment.
In order for a child to learn language, the parent or caregiver and teachers adopts a particular way
of appropriately communicating with the child; this is known as child-directed speech (CDS).
CDS is used so that children are given the necessary linguistic information needed for their
language. Empiricism is a general approach and sometimes goes along with the interactionist
approach.
INTERACTIONIST PERSPECTIVE
Other researchers embrace an interactionist perspective, consisting of social-interactionist
theories of language development. In such approaches, children learn language in the interactive
and communicative context, learning language forms for meaningful moves of communication.
These theories focus mainly on the caregiver's attitudes and attentiveness to their children in
order to promote productive language habits.
BEHAVIORIST THEORY
An older empiricist theory, the behaviorist theory proposed by B. F. Skinner suggested that
language is learned through operant conditioning, namely, by imitation of stimuli and by
reinforcement of correct responses.
PIAGET'S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Piaget's theory of cognitive development, considers the development of language as a
continuation of general cognitive development
FACTORS INLFUENCING LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

[Link] preconditions
Evolutionary biologists are skeptical of the claim that syntactic knowledge is transmitted in the
human genome.
However, many researchers claim that the ability to acquire such a complicated system is unique
to the human species.
Non-biologists also tend to believe that our ability to learn spoken language may have been
developed through the evolutionary process and that the foundation for language may be passed
down genetically.

2. Gender Differences
Children versus adults
It seems as if during the early years of language development females exhibit an advantage over
males of the same age. When infants between the ages of 16 to 22 months were observed
interacting with their mothers, a female advantage was obvious. The females in this age range
showed more spontaneous speech production than the males and this finding was not due to
mothers speaking more with daughters than sons
In addition, boys between 2 and 6 years as a group did not show higher performance in language
development over their girl counterparts on experimental assessments.
3. Environmental Influences
The environment a child develops in has influences on language development. The environment
provides language input for the child to process. Speech by adults to children help provide the
child with correct language usage repetitively.
Throughout research done, it is concluded that children exposed to extensive vocabulary and
complex grammatical structures more quickly develop language and also have a more accurate
syntax than children raised in environments without complex grammar exposed to them. With
mothers, the mother talks to the child and responds back to the child, whether it be a babble the
child made or a short sentence.
While doing this, the adult is prompting the child to continue communicating which may help a
child develop language sooner than children raised in environments where communication is not
fostered.
Child-directed speech will concentrate on small core vocabulary, here and now topics,
exaggerated facial expressions and gestures, frequent questioning, paralinguistic changes, and
verbal rituals.
An infant is least likely to produce vocalizations when changed, fed, or rocked. The infant will
more likely produce vocalizations when a nonverbal behavior such as touching or smiling is
directed at the infant.
Child-directed speech will also catch the child's attention and in situations where words for new
objects are being expressed to the child this form of speech may help the child recognize the
speech cues and the new information provided.
Data shows that children raised in highly verbal families had higher language scores than those
children raised in low verbal families.
Continuously hearing complicated sentences throughout language development increases the
child's ability to understand these sentences and then to use complicated sentences as they
develop.
Studies have shown that students enrolled in high language classrooms have two times the
growth in complex sentences usage than students in classrooms where teachers do not frequently
use complex sentences.
Adults use strategies other than child-directed speech like recasting, expanding, and labeling:
Recasting is rephrasing something the child has said, perhaps turning it into a question or
restating the child's immature utterance in the form of a fully grammatical sentence. For
example, a child saying "cookie now" a parent may respond with "Would you like a cookie
now?"[
Expanding is restating, in a linguistically sophisticated form, what a child has said. For example,
a child may say "car move road" and the parent may respond "A car drives on the road."[
Labeling is identifying the names of object, If a child points to an object such as a couch the
mother may say "couch" in response. Labeling can also be characterized as referencing.
Some language development experts have characterized child directed speech in stages.
Primarily, the parents will use repetition and also variation to maintain the infant's attention.
Secondly, the parent will simplify speech to help in language learning. Third, any modifications
in speech will maintain the responsiveness of the child. These modifications develop into a
conversation that provides context for the development.
4. Cultural Effects on Language Development
While most children throughout the world develop language at similar rates and without
difficulty, cultural and socioeconomic differences have been shown to influence development.
An example of cultural differences in language development can be seen when comparing the
interactions of mothers in the United States with their infants with mothers in Japan.
Mothers in the United States use more questions, are more information oriented, and use more
grammatically correct utterances with their 3-month-olds.
Mothers in Japan, on the other hand, use more physical contact with their infants, and more
emotion-oriented, nonsense, and environmental sounds, as well as baby talk, with their infants.
These differences in interaction techniques reflect differences in "each society's assumptions
about infants and adult-to adult cultural styles of talking."
Specifically in North American culture, maternal race, education
5. Socio-economic Effects on Language Development
Socio-economic class influence parent-child interactions in the early linguistic environment.
When speaking to their infants, mothers from middle class "incorporate language goals more
frequently in their play with their infants," and in turn, their infants produce twice as many
vocalizations as lower class infants.
Mothers from higher social classes who are better educated also tend to be more verbal, and
have more time to spend engaging with their infants in language. Additionally, lower class
infants may receive more language input from their siblings and peers than from their mothers.
 6. Social pre-conditions
It is crucial that children are allowed to socially interact with other people who can vocalize and
respond to questions. For language acquisition to develop successfully, children must be in an
environment that allows them to communicate socially in that language.
There are a few different theories as to why and how children develop language. The most
popular—and yet heavily debated—explanation is that language is acquired through imitation.
7. The Consequences of Bilingualism on Language Development
This is learning more than one language at the same time.
Learning two languages simultaneously can be beneficial or a hindrance to a child’s language
and intellectual development.
However, there is a large debate regarding whether or not bilingualism is truly beneficial to
children. Parents of children often view learning a second language throughout elementary and
high school education beneficial to the child.
Another perspective dictates that the second language will just confuse the child and prevent
them from mastering their primary language.
Studies have shown that American bilingual children have greater cognitive flexibility, better
perceptual skills and tend to be divergent thinkers than monolingual children between the ages of
five to ten.
In another study throughout America, elementary school English-monolingual children
performed better in mathematics and reading activities than their non-English-dominant bilingual
and non-English monolingual peers from kindergarten to grade five.
Further research is necessary to continue to shed light on this
COMPONENTS OR ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
There are four main components of language development:
1. PHONOLOGY -knowledge of how to produce phonemes, which are the basic sounds of
speech and gestures; communication in reflexive in nature.
-Infants speak/chatter to themselves in a language made up of repetitive syllables such as ‘da
da da’ ‘ba ba ba’ this type of early speech is called babbling and it occurs in all normal
children between three and seven months of age.
 -Several studies suggests that infants everywhere in the world make the same sound when
babbling (olney and scholnick, 1976, saito etal, 1981)
-In summary current thinking holds that the early acquisition of phoneme production has
three distinct aspects of it;
i. First most children babble innately but do not produce all the sounds of speech in their
babbles.
ii. Second, parents selectively reinforce some sounds which then come to predominate.
iii. Third, children innately imitate phonemes not produced in their babbles, and parents reward
the children for doing so. Eventually the child produce all the sounds in its native language.
2 SEMENTICS OR MEANING OF WORDS.
-Words represent objects and action. Thus words have meanings that infants must learn as they
progress from babbling to true communicative speech.
-The problem children face as they learn semantics is that most words have more than one
meaning, e.g. drink- noun-verb.
-At one year, the child may actually say single words earlier but doesn’t appear to grasp the
meaning of words. This is known as uttering holophrastic or one word sentence.
-Learning on the child utters two word sentences called telegraphic speech. They include
important words such as nouns and verbs. But omits other parts of [Link] ‘mummy up’
meaning mummy pick me up.
-The meaning children assign to words tend to change from general to specific. Thus at an early
age a little girl may use the word ‘daddy’ to refer to any adult males, later might refer just to
males who look like her father, finally she learns to use ‘daddy’ only when referring to her father
and ‘man’ referring to other male adults.
-By the age of four, most children can use simple relationship words such as more-less, young-
old and weak-strong.
-At any point in child’s development, the meaning the child assigns to words tells a lot about
how far the youngster’s cognitive development has progressed.
3 SYNTAX
-Mastery of syntax or the rules by which words can be combined into sentences. Young people
learn a few words by rote. The children increase their vocabularies by making analogies that is ;
by reasoning that this word sounds like that word.
-pinker believes that children learn rules or procedures which they then test out in their speech.
Feedback from adults helps the children to determine which rules work and which ones don’t.
(pinker, 1984, pinker and prince 1987)
-Several studies show that children start out by forming irregular past tenses correctly. That is
they say brought and want. When first learning to speak. Then they discover the past tense rule
for regular words and overgeneralize this rule. They begin to say ‘bringed’ and ‘goed’. Finally
the youngsters learn that the past tense rule works only with a regular verbs. At this point they
return to saying ‘brought’ and ‘went’. This studies suggest that children learn syntax both by rule
and by analogy. (kolata,1987)
4 PRAGRAMATICS- Discovering the pragmatics use of language or the appropriate social use
of speech.
-Languages came about because people living together needed to communicate with each other.
-This involves practical or pragmatic rules about when to speak and when not to speak.
-Children must learn not only how to communicate their needs but also to predict what the social
consequences of saying something will be.
-Newborns cry to express their needs. As they acquire language they find more complex way to
communicate. Thus linguists call it international communication.
-Society however puts constraints on what the child can say and on how and when the child must
say things. All cultures have polite forms of social discourse. These are part of social rituals eg
saying please.
-Children should also learn to take turns when speaking and how to correct their own verbal
mistakes. (mc tear, 1985)
-Human brains are suited for language learning. however many scientists have been successful in
teaching chimpanzees to communicate either in sign language or by pressing keys on a computer
console.
 Phonological developmentPhonology involves the rules about the structure and sequence
of speech sounds.
 Semantics consists of vocabulary and how concepts are expressed through words.
 Grammar involves two parts.
 The first, syntax, is the rules in which words are arranged into sentences.
 The second, morphology, is the use of grammatical markers (indicating tense, active or
passive voice etc.
 Pragmatics involves the rules for appropriate and effective communication. Pragmatics
involves three skills:
o using language for greeting, demanding etc.
o changing language for talking differently depending on who it is you are talking to
o following rules such as turn taking, staying on topic
Each component has its own appropriate developmental periods.
From shortly after birth to around one year, the baby starts to make speech sounds. At around
two months, the baby will engage in cooing, which mostly consists of vowel sounds. At around
four months, cooing turns into babbling which is the repetitive consonant-vowel combinations.
Babies understand more than they are able to say. In this 0–8 months range, the child is engaged
in vocal play of vegetative sounds, laughing, and cooing.
Once the child hits the 8-12 month range the child engages in canonical babbling i.e. dada as
well as variegated babbling. This jargon babbling with intonational contours the language being
learned.
From 12–24 months, babies can recognize the correct pronunciation of familiar words. Babies
will also use phonological strategies to simplify word pronunciation.
Within this first year, two word utterances and two syllable words emerge. This period is often
called the holophrastic stage of development, because one word conveys as much meaning as an
entire phrase. For instance, the simple word "milk" can imply that the child is requesting milk,
noting spilled milk, sees a cat drinking milk, etc.
By 24–30 months awareness of rhyme emerges as well as rising intonation.
By 36–60 months, phonological awareness continues to improve as well as pronunciation.[.
By 6–10 years, children can master syllable stress patterns which helps distinguish slight
differences between similar words.
Semantic development
From birth to one year, comprehension (the language we understand) develops before production
(the language we use). There is about a 5 month lag in between the two. Babies have an innate
preference to listen to their mother's voice. Babies can recognize familiar words and use
preverbal gestures.
Within the first '12–18 months semantic roles are expressed in one word speech including agent,
object, location, possession, nonexistence and denial. Words are understood outside of routine
games but the child still needs contextual support for lexical comprehension.
18–24 months Prevalent relations are expressed such as agent-action, agent-object, action-
location.
Also, there is a vocabulary spurt between 18–24 months, which includes fast mapping. Fast
mapping is the babies' ability to learn a lot of new things quickly. The majority of the babies'
new vocabulary consists of object words (nouns) and action words (verbs).
30–36 months The child is able to use and understand why question and basic spatial terms such
as in, on or under.
36–42 months There is an understanding of basic color words and kinship terms. Also, the child
has an understanding of the semantic relationship between adjacent and conjoined sentences,
including casual and contrastive.
42–48 months When and how questions are comprehended as well as basic shape words such as
circle, square and triangle.
48–60 months Knowledge of letter names and sounds emerges, as well as numbers.
By 3–5 years, children usually have difficulty using words correctly. Children experience many
problems such as under extensions, taking a general word and applying it specifically (for
example, 'blankie') and overextensions, taking a specific word and applying it too generally
(example, 'car' for 'van'). However, children coin words to fill in for words not yet learned (for
example, someone is a cooker rather than a chef because a child will not know what a chef is).
Children can also understand metaphors.
From 6–10 years, children can understand meanings of words based on their definitions. They
also are able to appreciate the multiple meanings of words and use words precisely through
metaphors and puns. Fast mapping continues.
Within these years, children are now able to acquire new information from written texts and can
explain relationships between multiple meaning words. Common idioms are also understood.
Grammatical development
From 1–2 years, children start using telegraphic speech, which are two word combinations, for
example 'wet diaper'.
At around 3 years, children engage in simple sentences, which are 3 word sentences. Simple
sentences follow adult rules and get refined gradually. Grammatical morphemes get added as
these simple sentences start to emerge.
By 3–5 years, children continue to add grammatical morphemes and gradually produce complex
grammatical structures. By 6–10 years, children refine the complex grammatical structures such
as passive voice.
Pragmatics development
From birth to one year, babies can engage in joint attention (sharing the attention of something
with someone else). Babies also can engage in turn taking activities.
debate.
Language Disorders
A language disorder is the impaired comprehension and or use of a spoken, written, and/or
other symbol system. A disorder may involve problems in the following areas:
1. The form of language i.e. phonology, morphology, or syntax
2. The content i.e. semantics
3. The function of language in communication i.e. pragmatics
Language disorders and conditions which can cause language development problems are many
including:
 Attention deficit hyperactivity  Language delay  Speech delay
disorder  Otitis media  Speech disorder
 Auditory processing disorder  Pragmatic language  Speech sound
 Autism impairment disorder
 Developmental verbal  Specific language  Speech repetition
dyspraxia impairment

1. How does language development influence learning ?