Speech-Language Development for Children - Essay Example

? Contents QUESTION: 2 Cultural influence on phonological development: 2 Phonological development: 2 PROJECT: 3 The Nativist Interpretation: 3 Noam Chomsky: 3 Piaget Cognitive development theory: 4 Wellman, Poole, and Templin Research on Phonemes: 4 Brown's Stages of Language Development: 5 Genie Case: 6 Conclusion: 7 Bibliography 7 QUESTION: Cultural influence on phonological development: Nature verses Nurture: it is one of the oldest stances in psychology that states two main points which are nature verses nurture. It says that in humans some qualities are inborn which are called as nature (walking, sleeping, eating) and some are adopted by environment which are called as nurture (learning a skill like driving, writing etc.). If we see language in the light of this theory then we come up with this point that all humans starts to speak language without putting any direct effort to learn the language. A child is not taught to speak or learn the language. He himself learns to speak it when he interacts and see other people speaking around him, which shows that learning language in inborn instinct in humans. Every child learns to speak his mother language himself. Phonological development: When a child is born he interacts with other through facial expressions and gestures. He understands the basic facial expression of happiness, anger, and disappointment. Soon he sees himself in a world where everyone communicates with words. Therefore, he starts to babble phonemes like maa, baa etc which he listens all the time in words through people around him. His speech itself becomes clearer when he grows and the use of proper morphemes occurs. The phonemes like maa, baa are replace with a proper word like mom, water, food etc. When a child starts to speak he first use telegraphic language ( those words which are important to understand the whole thought of sentence like speaking word food when he want to eat something ). And when they start to speak their capacity of words is limited so there is an over extension of words in different things. (They would use word food for even drinking water, or will use similar word for bus, truck, car, and van). So with this notion of nature verses nurture we can conclude that according to nature verses nurture learning language is an inborn instinct. PROJECT: The Nativist Interpretation: The nativist interpretation theory argues that language in innate quality in humans. It states that human learns language not because of conditioning like behaviorist said but because of an innate ability in humans. We learn and start to speak language because we are born with a scheme to learn language. Whereas Behaviorist have only stressed over the learning of language but nativist have focus on why we learn language. Noam Chomsky: Noam Chomsky is the linguist who believed that human learns language because we have inborn instinct to learn and speak language so that we can communicate with people. He believed that humans are born with the set of rules about language, which are called “Universal Grammar”. Universal grammar is a basic building block for language over which every human language is formed. This theory gave a concept that every human is born with a language acquisition device which neurophysiological exist in humans to learn and understand language. They say that children are not taught to learn and speak language but they learn it themselves when they see other communicating with each other or with them. Piaget Cognitive development theory: Piaget’s theory describes the stages of child’s cognitive development, which involves their cognitive processes and understanding towards environment. In Piaget’s basic view children develops schemas over which they learn and react to environment. And when their previously learned schemas don’t work out they look for a solution through trial and error or find other ways. Piaget’s core ideas were assimilation, accommodation, conversation, and ego centrism. He gave four states of cognitive development of child’s schema; which are: 1. Sensori motor: In this stage, child develops the concept of object permanence. That thing exists even when they are not in front of them and they try to find those things. 2. Pre- operational: learns to speak language, thinking is still egocentric. They are unable to understand others point of view. They believe that other see what they see. 3. Concrete operational: start thinking logical, gets the concept of mass and volume (conservation). 4. Formal operational: develop logical thinking and concept of understanding abstract things. Wellman, Poole, and Templin Research on Phonemes: Wellman’s major work is her research over IQ. According to her stance, IQ is an inherited in humans and it get d improved and stimulated with exposure and learning. Mildred Templin is one of the prominent specialists in child language development. She conducted various researches over language development, spellings, and vocabulary. Wellman, Poole, and Templin did detailed study over how much phonemes a child can speak at particular age. For example according to Wellman and Templin, a child of 8 month can pronounce phoneme M, whereas according to Poole it is pronounced as age of 3.5 months. Their detailed research shows that how a child start pronouncing phonemes. Words like J, K, G and I are pronounced at age 4 usually and V, Z, S and R at age 5 and 6. Even we can observe the fact that a toddler always starts speaking with phonemes like M and N and then moves to other phonemes. Brown's Stages of Language Development: Roger Brown has described five stages of language development which tells when children starts to speak and what length of utterance a child can produce. Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) means a basic number of morphemes a toddler can speak. And with passage of time the number of morphemes increase with exposure, interaction and understanding towards language. Stage 1: This stage includes toddlers from 12th month to 26th month. In this stage children starts to connect a morpheme with an action or object. For example “mom eat”,” get ball” etc. they used one or two words for a complete expression and give basic meaning to their talk. They repeat the few words they know. Stage 2: starts from 27th month to 30th month of age. Children start learning the meaning of difference expressions and embedding. Start the use of copula in sentences. Use of negative words like cant, don’t etc. also appears in sentence. They start using preposition in sentences. Stage 3: starts from 31st month of age to 34th month. In this children start using auxiliary verbs in their sentences. They start using conjunctions such as so, and, but etc. Stage 4: in this stage which last till the age of 40th month, a double auxiliary verbs starts to appear in declarative sentences. They start using words like aren’t, isn’t etc. Stage 5: starts from 41 month of age to 46. They start using worlds like wasn’t, haven’t and shouldn’t. Better questioning is arise. ( it’s hot, isn’t it?) . Stage 5 plus: when a child reach the age of 4 his language become quite vast. He starts using works like nobody, no one, everyone, nothing etc. Their use of words become vast. (ehow) Genie Case: Genie who was a feral child learned to speak language after living isolated life for years till the age of 13th. Even after her isolation her ability to learn language shows that humans are inborn with an instinct to learn and speak language, though learning is faster in specific age and after that’s is slows down. Every child learns his mother tongue faster and without any direct effort whereas learning a secondary language after a specific age becomes slow and time taking. In many cases linguist have observed that children learn secondary language faster than adults. Many children can speak and understand multiple language if they are brought up in mixed culture. From the cases of girl Genie we can conclude that in all theories of language development three theories explain language development best which are social interactionist perspective, nativist perspective and cognitive perspective. According to social interactionist perspective child learns language with interaction as when Genie interacted she started to learn language. So both interactions according to social interactionist and inborn instinct according to nativist works together in the language development of child. Genie case has contributed a lot in the research and study of development of language in humans. Conclusion: Language is considered as one of the most important development in child. Many theories and views are presented over the development of language of child but one of the most widely accepted theory is that speaking and learning language is an inborn instinct in humans (Nativist) that’s why children start speaking their mother tongue themselves all around the world. Overall many factors combined together for a complete development. After giving a thorough study to Genie case we can conclude that not only Nativist perspectives define the language development in child but also social interaction theory as when child interacts he learns and speak language. Bibliography ehow. (n.d.). ehow family. 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