Language Acquisition and Speech Recognition - Essay Example

Language Acquisition and Speech Recognition Learning a language is a natural phenomenon. Children are born with the ability to learn language, beginning at birth. Linguistic professions argue that all children, regardless of their native language, learn language in a similar manner. Nonetheless, most children learn language quickly, way beyond the capability of complex speech-recognition software and super computers. It is however not clear how children learn to understand language so fast, but majority of the explanations revolve around the argument that children observe and copy what they hear, and the assumption that human beings posses a natural aptitude that enables them to understand grammar (Gopnik et al., 200:101). However, children learn the vocabulary and sound of their first language primarily through imitation; seldom are they any grammar. Despite this, they rapidly learn to speak in a grammatically correct language. This phenomenon supports Noam Chomsky theory that children learn grammar of particular languages because all intelligent languages base their foundation on a complex structure of universal grammatical rules that are parallel to an innate capability of the human brain (Dupoux and Mehler, 2001:371). Similar to children learning their native languages, adults too pass through these stages when they try to learn a second language. This paper seeks to provide a comprehensive explanation of language acquisition, as well as a review of how infants respond to speech. Language is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. It incorporates both nonverbal and verbal aspects that most children seem to acquire quickly. Prior to birth, all nerve cells are virtually formed, and they position themselves into strategic locations in the brain of an infant. After birth, a baby can hear, see, and respond to touch, but only slightly. At this stage, the stem of the brain (a primitive region responsible for controlling vital functions such as breathing and heartbeat) has accomplished its wiring tasks (Gopnik, 2011:46). However, the connections between different nerve cells are still weak and wispy. This improves after a few months, with the high centers of the brain exploding with new synapses. Consequently, an infant is biologically prepared to tackle the stages of language acquisition. According to linguistic experts, there are four stages of language acquisition, which are phonology, syntax, pragmatics, and semantics. Phonology essentially refers to the study of the organization of speech sounds and their related functions. It serves as the primary linguistic accomplishment during the first year of a child’s development. Essentially, the phonology of a language refers to the fundamental and basic sound units as well as the rules for their combination. Conceptually, all intelligible sounds have a number of basic sounds referred to as phonemes. These phonemes are the smallest sound units that influence the meaning of a given word (Gopnik et al., 200:126). Interestingly, infants are capable of identifying numerous sound variances in the order of hundreds. For instance, a six months old infant is able to detect the difference between a “pa” and a” ma”. The initial year of development, infants tend to receive messages as well as work on producing messages. With physical development, infants eventually form the ability to make and produce sounds. However, the initial sounds are more cooing, utterances of vowel-like nature often accompanied by babbling (consonant-vowel combinations) and consonants (Kager, Pater, and Zonneveld, 2004:297). In the first six months of life, physiological changes that occur also contribute to speech development. These changes include motor control of lips, tongue development, tooth eruption, and shaping of the oral cavity. At this stage, the primary task of the infant is to identify phonemes. According to experts in the field, infants display early sensitivity to prosody, which is the fluctuation of voice, or the patterns of stress, rhythm, and intonation that communicate the meaning in speech (Weissenborn and Hohle, 2001:4). For instance, a person might raise their voice to ask a question or lower to indicate to the infant that they are serious. This helps an infant to identify with the phonology and prepares them for semantics, the next stage. Semantics, in simple terms, are meaning of combination of words, or single words. Before they reach one year, babies begin to understand words, and around the same timeline, they begin to produce them. However, babies pronounce these words in isolation. This stage of one-word pronunciation lasts from between two months and a year. Interestingly, all children in the entire world produce similar words, which is another unexplainable phenomenon. About half the initial words refer to objects: food (tea, milk), body parts (hand, mouth), clothing (socks, shirt, and diaper), toys (blocks, dolls), vehicle (bicycle, car), household items (spoon, chair), animals (kitty, dog), and people (papa, dada). Still at this stage, children learn to use of gestures to gain attention to an event or object, a process referred to as proto-declarative communication (Gopnik, 2011:34). This form of communication capitalizes on gestures to issue request or commands. For instance, a child may throw down a bottle to indicate that they do not want it anymore or pointing at specific objects that they want the people around them to see. By one and a half year, language changes in two major ways. First, the growth of vocabulary increases, and the child is able to learn new vocabularies at a rate of about one in every two waking hours, and will sustain this rate (or faster) through adolescence. On primitive syntax, children begin with two-words strings such as see baby, no bed, no pee, all messy, all wet. These two-word utterances are telegraphic in nature because they only contain the necessary elements to pass across the message, omitting prepositions and modifiers. The syntax stage s important as the child learns how to combine words grammatically or correctly. Still at this stage, a child is able to direct the actions of other people and express their inners states. Pragmatics refers to the rule of using language within a social context effectively. For instance, preschool children may yell out demanding for a book, but they unaware that it is not socially acceptable to yell at a teacher or an adult. Parents play an integral role in teaching children on the acceptable and unacceptable social behavior and language. They achieve this by constantly reminding the children such language manners such as “Thank You” and “Please” are socially acceptable (Weissenborn and Hohle, 2001:8). Moreover, they act as the primary models of the children by putting what they are teaching into practice. In normal circumstance, children may vary by a year in language development rates, although they pass through the same stages regardless of their compression or stretch. Infants respond differently to speech. The main forms of communication for infants are crying, body movements, smiling, fussing, and other nonverbal movements and behaviors. Repeated interactions with their families and caregivers enable easy interpretation of the meanings and responses as well. Both the parent and the child are part of the unique conversation. In a typical conversation, for instance, a parent may request the child to look at her. The infants may respond by looking at the direction of eth voice, prompting the parent to exclaim that the baby is looking at her. This is a prime example of a language-body conversation because the parent uses speech and the child responds by physical movements such as smiling, laughing, reaching, walking, turning, running, holding, sitting, grasping, and so on. These forms of conversations persist for many months prior to any intelligible utterances by the child. Despite the fact that the child is not uttering any words, they are imprinting a linguistic map on the functionality of the language (Dupoux and Mehler, 2001:364). The child is silently internalizing the sounds and pattern of the particular language. After decoding enough of the language, it appears that speaking occurs spontaneously. However, the speech of the child is not perfect, but with time, the utterances closely approximate those of native speakers. As time passes, infants realize the powerful impact of language on their caregivers and adopt more efficient and defective ways of communication. According to a study by Peter Jusczyk, infants begin responding to their own names at four and a half months. However, the response does not vary from other forms of speech, similar to how a child responds to a conversation without understanding the meaning. Moreover, infants may respond excitedly to certain nonsense sounds and words, but this is because these words and sounds are part of a routine that an infant establishes with a child (Jusczyk, 2000:74). The use and understanding of the importance of language in communicating begins early. Infants initially interact with the outside world by squealing or crying to show pain or hunger. They then begin exploring things by mouthing them, throwing, or banging them together. They copy the action of other people such as waving good-bye, blowing raspberries to symbolize pleasure and excitement. They look at people and object keenly, using facial expressions to communicate, such as frowning and smiling. They also take turns to make unintelligent sound, babbling and cooing (Gopnik et al., 200:98). Hearing contributes enormously to the ability of a child to develop language skills and normal speech. Infants strengthen their skills by listening to environmental sounds and voices. If a child with loss of hearing is not identified at these early stages, the language development of eth child will have significant delays. In most circumstances, parents are the first to identify hearing problems of small children. Failure of a child to respond to audio stimuli may prompt a parent to request for hearing evaluations and other tests. Hearing impairments at the early stages significantly affect language and speech development, which further affect the communication skills and academic performance of the child (Gopnik et al., 200:126). If a child lags behind their peers in acquisition of language and speech skills, this highlights their delay in communication. The term speech disorder refers to the problems or difficulties producing in producing speech sound or poor voice quality. Characteristics of the disorder include speech flow or rhythm interruption such as stuttering (or dysfluency). Speech problems may be the formation of sound, also called phonological disorder or articulation, or extreme difficulties in voice quality, or production of speech sounds (Weissenborn and Hohle, 2001:8). After birth, all the nerve cells of an infant are operational. Infants respond to cold, heat, pain, and touch stimuli (Jusczyk, 2000:86). Interestingly, these newborn infants seem to distinguish the various forms of sound, taste, and even smell. Acquisition of language seems to take place at very high rates. The main aim of this paper was explaining how infants tend to acquire language fast and the sensory environment that propagates this development. The question about the exact time that an infant begins to hear and respond to speech and sound is still a debatable issue. Experts in the field highly regard Peter Jusczyk for his groundbreaking experiment that bridged the gap between language development and infant speech perception (Jusczyk, 2000:101). According to the scholar, development of the skills of language learning begins in the womb. Thousands of newborns begin this phenomenon processing connecting their nerve cells to their brain for endless language learning. The development of a child provides certain “window” or periods through which a child can learn, develop, and refine a given ability such as producing and recognizing speech. Once this period passes, it becomes extremely difficult for a child to learn and refine these abilities. Language learning is the most important development in the life cycle of human beings. Without communication, the various developments that we enjoy would not exist. It is thus important to identify comprehensively the issues that affect language learning. It is imperative to identify at which particular stage, from inception to the critical period that an infant has the “window” of opportunity, an infant begins to identify and respond to sound (Weissenborn and Hohle, 2001:6). This will enable experts to address the issue of language disability, especially in today’s world where babies are born prematurely and exposure to toxic and drug substances. Bibliography Dupoux, E., and Mehler, J. (2001). Language, Brain, and Cognitive Development: Essays in Honor of Jacques Mehler. Massachusetts: MIT. Chapter 20 pg 363 to 377. Retrieved on March 21, 2012, from http://books.google.com/books?id=IfUebhmNrjcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Language,+Brain,+and+Cognitive+Development:+Essays+in+Honor+of+Jacques+Mehler&hl=en&sa=X&ei=32FpT6DJMo3prQeInJGHCA&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA Gopnik et al. (2000). How Babies Think. Quezon: Phoenix Publishers. Chapter 4 pg 92-128. Retrieved on March 21, 2012, from http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Babies-Think-Science-Childhood/dp/075381417X#reader_075381417X Gopnik, A. (2011). The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us about Truth, Love, and Meaning in Life. New York: Random House. Chapter 1 and 2. Retrieved on March 21, 2012, from http://books.google.com/books?id=9M6vMyT9J6MC&dq=The+Philosophical+Baby:+What+Children%E2%80%99s+Minds+Tell+Us+about+Truth,+Love,+and+Meaning+in+Life&hl=en&sa=X&ei=52JpT4ySDtDLrQfq2rj9Bw&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA Jusczyk, P. (2000). The Discovery of Spoken Language. Massachusetts: MIT. Chapter 4 pg 73-110. Retrieved on March 21, 2012, from http://books.google.com/books?id=G2IkjVGr_DQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Discovery+of+Spoken+Language&hl=en&sa=X&ei=AGNpT5-VHsimrAe1nYSUCA&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA Kager, R., Pater, J., and Zonneveld, W. (2004). Constraints in Phonological Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 9 pg 292-320. Retrieved on March 21, 2012, from http://books.google.com/books?id=unyn2D4Gy4IC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Constraints+in+Phonological+Acquisition&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GmNpT8_LL8HKrAfB39TqBw&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA Weissenborn, J., and Hohle, B. (2001). Approaches to Bootstrapping: Phonological, Lexical, Syntactic, and Neurophysiological Aspect of Early Language Acquisition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Part I Chapter 1 pg 3-24. Retrieved on March 21, 2012, from http://books.google.com/books?id=9WNL2n1L904C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Approaches+to+Bootstrapping:+Phonological,+Lexical,+Syntactic,+and+Neurophysiological+Aspect+of+Early+Language+Acquisition&hl=en&sa=X&ei=mmNpT_-wFoHsrAfTjp34Bw&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA Read More