Linguistic Development Research Paper (Page 4 of 37) in pdf

1 INTRODUCTION

Introduction

This report is a general overview of current knowledge on linguistic development. It covers four

main aspects of the subject. It begins by brieﬂy covering the history of methodologies for studying

development, with references to diary studies, large sample studies , and linguistic studies .

Following the historical perspective there is a section on language apparatus, which discusses the

idea of the “language chain”. On page 9 I discuss the areas of the brain that have been linked to

language, as well as the diﬃculties of linking any part of the brain to a speciﬁc function. I then

discuss the neurological encoding that gets information from the brain to the body during speech. I

then discuss on page 14 in more detail the physiology of speech and hearing.

After the discussion of what it is that has to be developed are a series of sections that cover the

main developmental stages of language. They are the prelinguistic period (page 17), the holophrastic

period (page 19), the telegraphic period (page 20), the complex period (page 22), and the intuitive

linguistic period (page 25). This discussion is then followed by a discussion (page 26)of some of the

theoretical contributions that have been made over the years. In particular I discuss the diﬀerences

between the ideas of the behaviorists such as B.F.Skinner and the Linguistic theorists such as N.

Chomsky. In that section I also discuss some of the ideas of the developmental psychologists Piaget

and Vygotsky.

The section on developmental theories is followed by a glossary on page 32 and then an extensive

bibliography on page 37

The notation which I have used to represent an age in years and months is yy; mm. All phonological

symbols used are from the International Phonetic Alphabet. For more information on the font see

[var]. For a more detailed description of what the characters signify see the glossary and Fig. 24 p.

104 of [Cry80]

Language Acquisition

This section is intended to give a brief overview of the kind of issues that linguists and psychologists

consider when studying language development. If any of the terminology is new, refer to the glossary

on page 32 for explanations. In the rest of the report the terms will be explained in more detail.

The process of language acquisition has a number of features which have intrigued researchers for

over a hundred years. For example when children learn a set of words or ways to pronounce words

they are making forward process in the language development process.They then pass through a

new phase and all of a sudden they can no longer use the words properly. It appears that the child

has made a retrograde step in their development, but in the opinion of linguists the child has made

a forward leap, since they are now using general rules instead of memorized cases.

What causes this “U-turn” eﬀect? There are many explanations, and in recent years the use of

neural network models has made it possible to simulate the learning of irregular verbs and past

tense markers. The results of these experiments are promising.

In the early stages of development children start by distinguishing the major types of vowel and

consonant. Later on they acquire distinctions between the elements of those classes. By age 1 the

child is able to utter single word utterances, and by the end of the second year they are able to

speak 2 to 3 word utterances. This phenomenal ease and speed with which children are able to pick

up something so absurdly complicated, makes the subject all the more interesting and challenging.

The meanings expressed in the sentences produced by children in their early years varies between

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