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Psicholinguistics Summary Ch. 1
Psicholinguistics Summary Ch. 1
Summary of Chapter 1
How Languages Are Learned 4th Edn.
Chapter 1
Language Learning in Early Childhood
The study of child language acquisition
• Prenatal studies
– Language learning starts before the baby is born
– Hear as early as 16 weeks
– Pick up rhythm and cadences of L1 from mother’s voice
• Phonetic discrimination studies
– Can hear subtle phonetic differences very early
– Lose the ability to hear differences that are not phonemic
– Babies in bilingual environments retain the discrimination
ability longer
Child language acquisition
• L1 acquisition is universal
– Similarities in L1 acquisition across the world’s
languages→ Universal stages (e.g. crying, pointing, and
responding to frequently heard words)
– Most people ‘know’ and have a pretty good grasp of their
L1 (in contrast to their L2, where there is more variability).
• Children are able to use most syntactic patterns and
grammatical rules of their L1 before they reach school
age.
Milestones of development
• Crying
• Cooing: between 6 and 8 weeks
• Babbling: around 6-8 months
– Consonant-vowel sounds: bababa, dadada
• Holophrastic stage: from 12 to 18 months
– One word utterances: gone, dada, teddy
• Telegraphic speech: two years old
– 50-word vocabulary. Simple sentences: Mommy play
• 3 ½ to 4: filling in the missing grammatical elements,
asking questions, adapting speech to babies or adults
Vocabulary development: overextension