Role of Prosody in Language Acquisition - Essay Example

Role of Prosody in Language Acquisition The development of language has always been a debate about whether it is innate or acquired and has been supported by a number of theories. Nativism, supports the view that language is innate and according to the nativists the children develop language rapidly, effortlessly and without any instructions whereas the opposite view point; empiricism supports the idea that the language is an acquired ability that is learnt from the child’s innate characteristics linked to the experiences of the world (Hoff, 1997) A phenomenon by which the possession of certain categories by the observer affects the perception of the observer, such phenomenon is termed as categorical perception. Through experimental methods it is disclosed that the ability of the observer to differentiate between things perceptually is much better when the objects belong to different groups as compared to when the objects belong to the same groups. With the help of this phenomenon we see the world in terms of the various groups that a person has created. This phenomenon holds significant importance in the field of cognitive sciences due to the fact that it serves as a link between a person’s upper level conceptual system and the lower level perception system of an individual. Another reason as to why Categorical perception is important is because it allows the possibility to evaluate as to how the high level cognition can be based on the perception and action. Categorical perception is important in the formation of equivalence classes and also serves as the initial stage whereby it acknowledges the crucial rather than the perfunctory facet of an object. (Goldstone & Hendrickson, 2010). Various studies were conducted in order to prove the phenomenon of categorical perception. The first experiment was conducted by Liberman, Harris, Hoffman and Griffith (1957). The study consisted of a continuum of stop vowel syllables and the only difference that existed between these syllables was the difference in direction and the range of the transition of the second formant. The extent of the F2 transition was over [b]-[d]-[g] continuum. When the respondents were given the set speech pattern, majority of them said that they heard all the three stimuli in the form of “bay”, “day” or “gay” whereas contrary to the way it was perceived by many i.e., in the form of ‘ba’, ‘da’ or ‘ga’. The reason as to why the three stops were identified as labial, alveolar and velar stops was because the onset of frequency of F2 was varied. The experiment performed was conducted based on two tests; identification and discrimination test. Identification test helped to label the stimuli which had been randomized whereas the discrimination test helped to differentiate between two sources and analyze whether both the sounds were similar or not. (Munir & Shahbaz, 2003). A fetus develops its inner ear during the second trimester of gestation and this is when the fetus begins to perceive sounds but these sounds are often restricted due to the presences of amniotic fluid and the maternal tissue. Another important trait of human language is known as prosody which consists of the musical features of speech such as rhythm, pitch and intonation. Infants have the ability to differentiate between rhythms since birth. A study concluded that those infants who were 2 to 3 months old could differentiate tones on the basis of the sequence of the rhythms (Damon, Kuhn & Siegler, 1998). In order to study the capacity of an infant to process sentences Mehler et al (1988) conducted an experiment which was based on the method of non nutritive sucking. This experiment was performed by measuring the number of sucks which the infant produced when he was listening to speech passages. He evaluated that a French infant who was merely 4 days old had the ability to differentiate between French; which was his mother tongue and Russian. Furthermore, these infants could also differentiate between English and Italian, both of which were unfamiliar for the baby (Hesketh, Christophe & Lambertz, 1997). Researches have also proved that sensitivity of an infant the prosodic units and intonations serve as the building block in a Child’s language acquisition. Infants have the ability to differentiate between prosodic units and syllables. With the help of statistical learning infants utilize the rhythmic structure of words to buildup their language and hence this allows the development of fluent speech (Seewald & Tharpe, 2011). One of the major problems faced by a child who is in the stage of learning language is the division of fluent speech into individual words. Hence, children make use of various strategies in order to understand the words within a speech sentence and once a child learn how to segment words; it becomes easier for the baby to learn the language. Another concept of bootstrapping is used to reveal more from one word. A study suggested that infants who are 8 months of age quickly learn to differentiate between flows of syllables based on the sounds which occur more often than other. Babbling is another speech related phenomenon that usually occurs between 6 to 10 months of age. It constitutes a series of vowel and consonants which are mixed to form lengthier syllables, this is also accompanies with the great deal of repetition. The continuity hypothesis suggests that babbling is followed by language because during the stage of babbling the baby produces sounds which have the ability to be formed into words (Harley, 1995). There is also evidence that deaf infant also had the capacity to babble at the age of 10 months. Petitto and Merentette in 1991 conducted an experiment that helped to conclude that the infants perceive words, syllables and phonemes in the form of a pattern and when this is repeated many times triggers the stage of babbling. Hence the babbling may be defined as the mechanism with which the infants discover the structure of a language and how to replicate this structure in a similar manner (Hala, 1997). In order to ascribe meaning to words the infants often develop conceptual relations between the words. Two theories; the whole object bias and mutual exclusivity bias are used to describe how infants ascribe meaning to words. According to the former theory infants assume that the words actually refer to the objects of interest rather than their characteristics while the latter discusses as to how the infants prefer a single word for a single object or many objects belonging to the same category because of the fact that children do not name an already named object rather they use the a new word to describe a novel object (Benson & Haith, 2009). Statistical structure also contributes towards learning to discriminate between the word boundaries. Saffran et al. (1996) concluded through his experiments that infants as well as adults utilize statistical learning in order to differentiate between words in a sentence and once they develop this ability they then tend to listen to new stimulus rather than listening to the words (Saffran, 2003). In order for a child to develop syntactic abilities, the child has to learn how to discriminate between certain syntactic categories such a noun, verb, adjective etc. Semantic bootstrapping is the process by which children have the capacity to expand their knowledge by identifying the syntax of a sentence (Harley, 1995). Sign language is considered regular languages that usually evolve when there is an absence of oral communication. Many researchers have concluded that sign language is considered a regular form of language that contains phonology, morphology and syntax systems and hence it concludes that both spoken and signed languages are considered the same that can exist in the similar language module and only differ in relation to the peripheral systems. The speech is language theory and the Modality independent language module theory both discuss as to how the sign language and the speech both are one and the same thing and both are an extension of a single language module (Levy & Schaeffer, 2003). There are many languages that exist from olden times and are derived from their predecessors and each generation then inherits the language to the next generation with minor alterations. Pidgin and Creole are also two such languages. Pidgin is a type of language that occurs when two people of two different languages try to make up a conversation whereas Creole is a type of language that was derived from Pidgin language but it evolved in to becoming a native language (Schiffman, 1997). According to language bio-program hypothesis also known as lexical learning hypothesis, those children to whom pidgin was revealed at an early stage invented a Creole language by adapting to the pidgin vocabulary, Hence theory of Creolization serves as a basis for language development and language formation (Mufwene, n.d.). References Hoff, E. (1997). Language development. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Pub. Goldstone, R., & Hendrickson, A. (2010). Categorical Perception. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 01(01). Munir, I., & Shahbaz, M. (2003). Categorical perception. Center For Research In Urdu Language Processing. Retrieved from http://www.cle.org.pk/Publication/Crulp_report/CR03_03E.pdf Damon, W., Kuhn, D., & Siegler, R. (1998). Handbook of Child Psychology, Cognition, Perception, and Language (6th ed.). New York : NY: J. Wiley. Hesketh, S., Christophe, A., & Lambertz, G. (1997). Non-nutritive Sucking and Sentence Processing. INFANT BEHAVIOR AND DEVELOPMENT, 20(2), 263- 269. Seewald, R., & Tharpe, A. (2011). Comprehensive handbook of pediatric audiology. San Diego: Plural Pub. Harley, T. (1995). The Psychology of Language: From Data to Theory. Hove, East Sussex, UK: Erlbaum (UK) Taylor & Francis. Hala, S. (1997). The Development of Social Cognition (pp. 128- 129). Hove: Psychology Press. Benson, J., & Haith, M. (2009). Language, memory, and cognition in infancy and early childhood. Amsterdam: Academic. Saffran, J. (2003). Statistical language learning: mechanisms and constraints. Current Directions In Psychological Science, 12(4), 110-114. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.01243 Levy, Y., & Schaeffer, J. (2003). Language competence across populations. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates. Schiffman, H. (1997). Pidgin and Creole Languages. Ccat.sas.upenn.edu. Retrieved 17 May 2015, from http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/messeas/handouts/pjcreol/node1.html Mufwene, S. creole languages | linguistics :: Theories of creolization. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 17 May 2015, from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/142562/creole-languages/274920/Theories-of-creolization Read More