Holistic comprehension:
Holophrases-one-word utterances that convey a holistic communicative intention
Strategies for acting on objects:
- Do-what-you-usually-do
2. Act-on-the-object-in-the-way-mentioned
When toddlers establish stable symbol-referent associations:
18-19 month olds can do it
The three assumptions of toddlers:
- Reference principle-people use words to refer to entities
a. Words stand for entities to which they refer
b. Mutual exclusivity assumption- presupposes that each referent has a unique symbol - Extendability principle-words are extendable
a. Some similarity that enables use of one symbol for more than one referent - Whole-object principle- a word refers to the whole entity, not its parts
The assumptions of toddlers:
additional assumptions to allow toddler to form hypothetical definitions quickly and use syntactic information
1. categorical assumption-used by 18-month-olds and up to extend a label to related entities
A. classification is not just based on perceptual attributes, but on function, world knowledge, and communication characteristics of words, such as frequency of use
2. novel name-nameless assumption-child assumes that novel symbols are linked to previously unnamed referents
3. conventionality assumption-child expects meanings to be expressed by others in consistent conventional forms-consistently use same names
Toddler expressive strategies:
A. four expressive strategies to get linguistic knowledge
1. evocative utterances-statements child makes naming entities
A. adult responds to naming with evaluation
2. hypothesis testing-child says word with rising intonation
A. adult responds with evaluation
3. interrogative utterances-child asks what something is with “what?” or “that?”
4. selective imitation
Selective imitation definition
imitation is whole or partial repetition of the utterance of another speaker within no more than 3 successive child utterances
Role of selective imitation
- used in acquisition of words, morphology, and syntactic-semantic structures
- 20% of what toddlers say is imitation
- imitations are slightly more mature than child’s productions
- decreases after 2
- especially important for vocabulary growth at single-word level
- child can use imitation during routines and in conversation
- focus operations-prominent until age 3
a. child focuses on one or two words and repeats them - substitution operations-child repeats portion of utterance but replaces words
Bootstrapping and types of bootstrapping:
A. bootstrapping-use what they know about language to help them decipher what they don’t know
- semantic bootstrapping-analyze syntax based on semantic structures
- syntactic bootstrapping-syntactic structures are used to figure out word meanings
Basic Sentence Type
Subject-Verb-Object
Universal language-learning principles for young children
A. pay attention to the ends of words
1. children acquire linguistic markers at ends of words, like “-s,” “-er,” “-ed,” before those that appear at the beginnings of words, like “in-,” and “un-”
2. also learn verb endings, like “-ing,” before auxiliary or helping verbs, like “is” in “is eating”
B. phonological forms can be systematically modified
1. child learns that sound changes, like “walk” to “walked,” can reflect meaning changes
C. pay attention to the order of words and morphemes
1. child produces same morpheme order as adults (“charmingly”) and SVO order of adults
2. word order in child speech reflects word order in adult forms of the language
3. in early stages of development, sentences that do not have standard word order will be interpreted using standard word order
When do symbolic play
At about two (words?), can do symbolic play, in which one play object is used for another
Over-extensions
overextensions of rules usually limited to appropriate semantic category
Toddlers’ pattern-finding:
seeks underlying rules for language
- schematization and analogy-account for how children create abstract syntactic constructions from concrete pieces of language they have heard
a. schematization-children hear utterances like “gimme X” and learn schemes for specific functions and individual words to fill slots in each
b. analogy-children understand relationship across schemes, like “X is Y-ing the Z” and “A is B-ing the C,” learning that “X” and “A” and “Z” and “C” play analogous roles
Adult teaching techniques (responding behaviors)
- parent reinforcement usually not direct for syntactic correctness but for truthfulness and politeness
- if grammatically correct, parent more likely to imitate, change topic, acknowledge, or not respond
- if incorrect, parent more likely to reformulate, expand utterance, or request clarification
- reformulate or recast an utterance-produce child utterance to make it more grammatically correct, add new information, or change the form
A. decrease as pass through preschool years
B. may involve rearrangement of the sentence
C. children then repeat the reformulation, acknowledge the correction, or reject the reformulation because the adult has misunderstood the child’s meaning - expansions-more mature version of a child’s utterance in which word order is preserved
A. child-”mommy eat,” adult-”mommy is eating her lunch”
B. decreases as gets beyond two words
C. third of expansions are imitated by child - extension-comment or reply to child’s utterance that provides more semantic information
A. child-”doggie eat,” adult-”doggie is hungry”
B. semantically contingent-retains focus of previous utterance
C. pragmatically contingent-goes along with intent of previous utterance - imitations of child’s utterances
- reduced+expanded/extended response-emphasizes child’s imitation and provides additional information
A. Mother-”See the big kitty.” (model)
Child-”Kitty.” (imitation)
Mother-”Kitty.” (reduced from model) “The kitty’s meowing.” (extended child’s utterance) - expansion, extension, and imitation result in more child imitations
Turnabouts
Turnabouts-utterance that responds to prior utterance and requires a response
Child-”We had spaghetti”
Adult-”Spaghetti? I bet you went to a_____”
1. request for clarification or contingent query-type of turnabout-used by both adults and children to get information that was not initially transmitted (“What?”)
2. with two- and three-year-olds, mothers employ yes/no questions most often in turnabouts
3. children aged 3 to 5 ½ can produce and respond effectively to requests for clarification from adults and peers
