PSICHOLINGUISTICS By Achmad Philip

PART I:THEORY 1. a. The field of study of Psycholinguistics PSYCHOLINGUISTICS is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the human brain functioned. Modern research makes use of biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and information theory to study how the brain processes language. There are a number of subdisciplines; for example, as non-invasive techniques for studying the neurological workings of the brain become more and more widespread, neurolinguistics has become a field in its own right. Psycholinguistics covers the cognitive processes that make it possible to generate a grammatical and meaningful sentence out of vocabulary and grammatical structures, as well as the processes that make it possible to understand utterances, words, text, etc. Developmental psycholinguistics studies children's ability to learn language. Psycholinguistics is interdisciplinary in nature and is studied by people in a variety of fields, such as psychology, cognitive science, and linguistics. There are several subdivisions within psycholinguistics that are based on the components that make up human language. Theories about how language works in the human mind attempt to account for, among other things, how we associate meaning with the sounds (or signs) of language and how we use syntaxthat is, how we manage to put words in the proper order to produce and understand the strings of words we call "sentences." The first of these itemsassociating sound with meaning is the least controversial and is generally held to be an area in which animal and human communication have at least some things in common. Syntax, on the other hand, is controversial, and is the focus of the discussion that follows.

There are essentially two schools of thought as to how we manage to create syntactic sentences:
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(1) syntax is an evolutionary product of increased human intelligence over time and social factors that encouraged the development of spoken language; (2) language exists because humans possess an innate ability, an access to what has been called a "universal grammar." This view holds that the human ability for syntax is "hard-wired" in the brain. This view claims, for example, that complex syntactic features such as recursion are beyond even the potential abilities of the most intelligent and social non-humans. (Recursion, for example, includes the use of relative pronouns to refer back to earlier parts of a sentence"The girl whose car is blocking my view of the tree that I planted last year is my friend.") The innate view claims that the ability to use syntax like that would not exist without an innate concept that contains the underpinnings for the grammatical rules that produce recursion. Children acquiring a language, thus, have a vast search space to explore among possible human grammars, settling, logically, on the language(s) spoken or signed in their own community of speakers. Such syntax is, according to the second point of view, what defines human language and makes it different from even the most sophisticated forms of animal communication. The first view was prevalent until about 1960 and is well represented by the mentalistic theories of Jean Piaget and the empiricist Rudolf Carnap. As well, the school of psychology known as behaviorism (see Verbal Behavior (1957) by B.F. Skinner) puts forth the point of view that language syntax included is behavior shaped by conditioned response. The second point of viewthe "innate" onecan fairly be said to have begun with Noam Chomsky's highly critical review of Skinner's book in 1959 in the pages of the journal Language. That review started what has been termed "the cognitive revolution" in psychology. The field of psycholinguistics since then has been defined by reactions to Chomsky, pro and con. The pro view still holds that the human ability to use syntax is qualitatively different from any sort of animal communication. That ability might have resulted from a favorable mutation (extremely unlikely) or (more likely) from an adaptation of skills evolved for other purposes. That is, precise syntax might, indeed, serve group needs; better linguistic expression might produce more cohesion, cooperation, and potential for survival, BUT precise syntax can only have developed from rudimentaryor nosyntax, which would have had no survival value and, thus, would not have evolved at all. Thus, one looks for other skills, the characteristics of which might have later been useful for syntax. In the terminology of modern evolutionary
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biology, these skills would be said to be "pre-adapted" for syntax. Just what those skills might have been is the focus of recent researchor, at least, speculation. The con view still holds that languageincluding syntaxis an outgrowth of hundreds of thousands of years of increasing intelligence and tens of thousands of years of human interaction. From that view, syntax in language gradually increased group cohesion and potential for survival. Languagesyntax and allis a cultural artifact. This view challenges the "innate" view as scientifically unfalsifiable; that is to say, it can't be tested; the fact that a particular, conceivable syntactic structure does not exist in any of the world's finite repertoire of languages is an interesting observation, but it is not proof of a genetic constraint on possible forms, nor does it prove that such forms couldn't exist or couldn't be learned. There are a number of unanswered questions in psycholinguistics. In part, they are suggested by some of the items mentioned in the section on "theories" (above). For example, is the human ability to use syntax based on innate mental structures or is syntactic speech the function of intelligence and interaction with other humans? Can we even design psycholinguistic experiments to find that out? Research in animal communication has much to offer here. Can some animals be taught the syntax of human language? If so, what does that mean? If not, what does that mean? How are infants able to learn language? Almost all healthy human infants acquire language readily in the first few years of life. This is true across cultures and societies. And what about children who do not learn language properly? There is a broad field called aphasia that deals with language deficits. Can research in psycholinguistics ever be of some therapeutic value? In addition, it is much more difficult for adults to acquire second languages than it is for infants to learn their first language (bilingual infants are able to learn both of their native languages easily). Thus, critical periods may exist during which language is able to be learned readily. A great deal of research in psycholinguistics focuses on how this ability develops and diminishes over time. It also seems to be the case that the more languages one knows, the easier it is to learn more. Also, recent research using new non-invasive imaging techniques seeks to shed light on just where language is located in the brain. How localized is language? How distributed is it from one hemisphere to the other? The older, traditional descriptions of the language functions of Broca's area, Wernicke's area and other areas of the brain will be refined as research continues.

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b. The different between the area of study of Psycholinguistics and Sociolinguistics. Psycholinguistics is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the human brain functioned. Modern research makes use of biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and information theory to study how the brain processes language. There are a number of subdisciplines; for example, as non-invasive techniques for studying the neurological workings of the brain become more and more widespread, neurolinguistics has become a field in its own right; while Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used. Sociolinguistics overlaps to a considerable degree with pragmatics. It also studies how lects differ between groups separated by certain social variables, e.g., ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc., and how creation and adherence to these rules is used to categorize individuals in social class or socio-economic classes. As the usage of a language varies from place to place (dialect), language usage varies among social classes, and it is these sociolects that sociolinguistics studies. c. Psycholinguistics is considered mentalistic rather than behaviouristics. As we know that Psycholinguistics is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the human brain functioned. Modern research makes use of biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and information theory to study how the brain processes language. Psycholinguistics also covers the cognitive processes that make it possible to generate a grammatical and meaningful sentence out of vocabulary and grammatical structures, as well as the processes that make it possible to understand utterances, words, text, etc. Developmental psycholinguistics studies infants' and children's ability to learn language, usually with experimental or at least quantitative methods (as opposed to naturalistic observations such as those made by Jean Piaget in his research on the development of children). In Behaviorism, also called the learning perspective, is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things which organisms do including acting, thinking and feelingcan and should be regarded as behaviors. The school of psychology maintains that
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behaviors as such can be described scientifically without recourse either to internal physiological events or to hypothetical constructs such as the mind. Behaviorism comprises the position that all theories should have observational correlates but that there are no philosophical differences between publicly observable processes (such as actions) and privately observable processes (such as thinking and feeling). While Behaviorism is a psychological movement that can be compared with philosophy of mind. The basic premise of radical behaviorism is that the study of behavior should be a natural science, such as chemistry or physics, without any reference to hypothetical inner states of organisms as causes for their behavior. A modern example of such analysis would be Fantino and colleagues work on behavioral approaches to reasoning. Other varieties, such as theoretical behaviorism, permit internal states, but do not require them to be mental or have any relation to subjective experience. Behaviorism takes a functional view of behavior. In logical behaviorism, the meaning of psychological statements are their verification conditions, which consist of performed overt behavior. W. V. Quine made use of a type of behaviorism, influenced by some of Skinner's ideas, in his own work on language. Gilbert Ryle defended a distinct strain of philosophical behaviorism, sketched in his book The Concept of Mind. It is sometimes argued that Ludwig Wittgenstein defended a behaviorist position, but while there are important relations between his thought and behaviorism, the claim that he was a behaviorist is quite controversial (e.g., the Beetle in a box argument). 2. Soenjono Dardjowidjoyo (2003) mentions that there are universals in languages and in first language acquisition. a. Show the universals he indicates. He indicates the universal like what Comrie (1989/81:15-23) states that he devided universals in language into two big group which has sub-group as shown in the chart below:

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Non-implicational Absolute Implicational Universal Non-implicational Tendentious Implicational There is no exception for non-implicational absolute universal group. For example, All languages have vowel sound /a/, /i/, and /u/; they combine sound to form syllable. In implicational absolute group said that if language has X, it must have Y. For example, if the language has velar blocked consonant, /k/, it must have bilabial blocked consonant, /b/; if language has the first/second personal reflective (myself and yourself), the language must have the third personal reflection. There is big tendency of non-implication tendentious universal group for language has a certain thing. For example, almost all of language has nasal consonant. For implication tendentious universal group said that if the language has X, the big possibility is that it also has Y. For example language that has SOV (subject-object-verbal) order, it maybe have postposition order (not preposition). A linguistic universal is a statement that is true for all natural languages. For example, All languages have nouns and verbs, or All spoken languages have consonants and vowels. Research in this area of linguistics is closely tied to linguistic typology, and intends to reveal information about how the human brain processes language. The field was largely pioneered by the linguist Joseph Greenberg, who from a set of some thirty languages derived a set of basic universals, mostly dealing with syntax. Linguists distinguish between two kinds of universals: absolute (opposite: statistical, often called tendencies) and implicational (opposite non-implicational). Absolute universals apply to every known language and are quite few in number; an example would be All languages have pronouns. An implicational universal applies to languages with a particular feature that is always accompanied by another feature, such as If a language has trial grammatical number, it also has dual grammatical number, while non-implicational universals just state the existence (or non-existence) of one particular feature.
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Also in contrast to absolute universals are tendencies, statements that may not be true for all languages, but nevertheless are far too common to be the result of chance. They also have implicational and non-implicational forms. An example of the latter would be The vast majority of languages have nasal consonants. However, most tendencies, like their universal counterparts, are implicational. For example, With overwhelmingly greater than chance frequency, languages with normal SOV order are postpositional. Strictly speaking, a tendency is not a kind of universal, but exceptions to most statements called universals can be found. For example, Latin is an SOV language with prepositions. Often it turns out that these exceptional languages are undergoing a shift from one type of language to another. In the case of Latin, its descendant Romance languages switched to SVO, which is a much more common order among prepositional languages. Universals may also be bidirectional or unidirectional. In a bidirectional universal two features each imply the existence of each other. For example, languages with postpositions usually have SOV order, and likewise SOV languages usually have postpositions. The implication works both ways, and thus the universal is bidirectional. By contrast, in a unidirectional universal the implication works only one way. Languages that place relative clauses before the noun they modify again usually have SOV order, so pre-nominal relative clauses imply SOV. On the other hand, worldwide SOV languages show little preference for pre-nominal relative clauses, and thus SOV implies little about the order of relative clauses. As the implication works only one way, the proposed universal is a unidirectional one. Linguistic universals in syntax are sometimes held up as evidence for universal grammar (although epistemological arguments are more common). Other explanations for linguistic universals have been proposed, for example, that linguistic universals tend to be properties of language which aid communication. If a language were to lack one of these properties, it has been argued, it would probably soon evolve into a language having that property.

In phonology
Some linguistic universals (or tendencies) may be phonologically based. For example, the raspberry sound is never used phonemically within any human language, while there is no known spoken language without /a/ or //. All spoken languages also have some plosives. According to Roman Jakobson and Linda Waugh, numerous studies have proved that high-pitched sounds (such as /i/, as in poquito (Spanish), kitty (English), maomi (Mandarin))

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frequently refer to smaller beings or objects (supposed to be such because smaller creatures can produce only high-pitched sounds).

In semantics
In the domain of semantics, research into linguistic universals has taken place in a number of ways. Some linguists, starting with Leibniz, have pursued the search for a hypothetic irreducible semantic core of all languages. A modern variant of this approach can be found in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage of Wierzbicka and associates. Other lines of research suggest cross-linguistic tendencies to use body part terms metaphorically as adpositions, or tendencies to have morphologically simple words for cognitively salient concepts. The human body, being a physiological universal, provides an ideal domain for research into semantic and lexical universals. In a seminal study, Cecil H. Brown (1976) proposed a number of universals in the semantics of body part terminology, including the following: in any language, there will be distinct terms for BODY, HEAD, ARM, EYES, NOSE, and MOUTH; if there is a distinct term for
FOOT,

there will be a distinct term for HAND; similarly, if there are terms for INDIVIDUAL TOES,

then there are terms for INDIVIDUAL FINGERS. Subsequent research has shown that most of these features have to be considered cross-linguistic tendencies rather than true universals. Several languages, for example Tidore and Kuuk Thaayorre, lack a general term meaning 'body'. On the basis of such data it has been argued that the highest level in the partonomy of body part terms would be the word for 'person'.

b. How are the universals relevant to Psycholinguistics study? It will be relevant when the language said to be spoken and understood by all or most of the world's population; or, in some circles, is said to be understood by all living things, beings, and objects alike. In some conceptions, it may be the primary language of all speakers, or the only existing language; in others, it is a fluent secondary language used for communication between groups speaking different primary languages. Psycholinguistics and Communication Sciences have witnessed tremendous growth for the last decade or two. Topics of research have been terrifically diversified and obvious growth has been reflected in the literature as we explore the genetic bases of communication and the associated neurocognitive processes involved.
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To define communication, linguistic elements need to be addressed. All definitions of language must also include a communicative function (Ellis, 1999). Language is essentially a system of communication. Language may be defined as a plurality of signs of the same nature, whose primary function is communication among organisms (Hierro S. Pescador, 1986). Within this broad definition, human language is the most complex system. 3. An article on Psycholinguistics. (Enclosured) The critical analysis of the article Piagets Theory of Cognitive Development: This article talks about the Piagets Theory of Cognitive Development proposes that there are four distinct, increasingly sophisticated stages of mental representation that children pass through on their way to an adult level of intelligence. The four stages, roughly correlated with age, are as follows: a) Sensorimotor period (years 02) Infants are born with a set of congenital reflexes that allow them to float in the heavily dense world, according to Piaget, in addition to a drive to explore their world. Their initial schemes are formed through differentiation of the congenital reflexes. The sensorimotor period is the first of the four periods b) Preoperational stage (years 27) Pre-Operational stage of development follows the Sensorimotor stage and occurs between 27 years of age. In this stage, children develop their language skills. They begin representing things with words and images. However, they still use intuitive rather than logical reasoning. At the beginning of this stage, they tend to be egocentric, that is, they are not aware that other people do not think, know and perceive the same as them. Children have highly imaginative minds at this time and actually assign emotions to inanimate objects. The theory of mind is also critical to this stage. c) Concrete operational stage (years 711) The Concrete operational stage is the third of four stages of cognitive development in Piaget's theory. This stage, which follows the Preoperational stage, occurs between the ages of 7 and 11 years and is characterized by the appropriate use of logic.

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d) Formal operational stage (years 12 and up) The formal operational period is the fourth and final of the periods of cognitive development in Piaget's theory. This stage, which follows the Concrete Operational stage, commences at around 12 years of age (puberty) and continues into adulthood. It is characterized by acquisition of the ability to think abstractly, reason logically and draw conclusions from the information available, as well as apply all these processes to hypothetical situations. During this stage the young adult is able to understand such things as love, "shades of gray", logical proofs, and values. Piagetians accounts of development have been challenged on several grounds. First, as Piaget himself noted, development does not always progress in the smooth manner his theory seems to predict. 'Decalage', or unpredicted gaps in the developmental progression, suggest that the stage model is at best a useful approximation. More broadly, Piaget's theory is 'domain general', predicting that cognitive maturation occurs concurrently across different domains of knowledge (such as mathematics, logic, understanding of physics, of language, etc). However, more recent cognitive developmentalists have been much influenced by trends in cognitive science away from domain generality and towards domain specificity or modularity of mind, under which different cognitive faculties may be largely independent of one another and thus develop according to quite different time-tables. In this vein, many current cognitive developmentalists argue that rather than being domain general learners, children come equipped with domain specific theories, sometimes referred to as 'core knowledge', which allows them to break into learning within that domain. For example, even young infants appear to understand some basic principles of physics (e.g. that one object cannot pass through another) and human intention (e.g. that a hand repeatedly reaching for an object has that object, not just a particular path of motion, as its goal). These basic assumptions may be the building block out of which more elaborate knowledge is constructed. Additionally, some psychologists, such as Vygotsky and Bruner, thought differently from Piaget, suggesting that language was more important than Piaget implied.

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PART II: APPLICATION Consider the following language data: Dimas : Guk-guk, ma (while holding his mums hands tightly) : Guk-gul akal. Ibu : Sayang, anjingnya menggonggong. : Taka apa-apa. Tidak nakal. : Kamu takut? Dimas : Iya, guk, guk akal. : Dimas moh cini. : Ma, masu?, ma. Ibu : Ya, mari masuk. Dimas : Ya, mali masuk? 1. Show the respective roles of the mother and child in the communication process. 2. Clark (1982) states that kids tend to invent new terms for certain concepts. Show them in the data. Why does Dimas invent the terms? 3. In which mental stage is Dimas? Support your answer with the relevant theory. --------------------------------------------------1. Show the respective roles of the mother and child in the communication process. The mother-child relationship has always been considered a source of profound emotional closeness and communicative intimacy between the two. Whether or not a telepathic element is involved in this state of affairs is still a matter of controversy. The problem is thrown into sharper perspective, however, when we turn our attention to the early symbiotic relationship between mother and childwhere it all started in the first place. Symbiosis has been defined as a physiologically reciprocal dependent relationship between two different organisms, beneficial for both. Although the emphasis on a biological difference between the two respective organisms does not strictly apply to human symbiosis, its basic features can readily be discerned in the early postpartum period. They are brought home to us through direct observations by child psychiatrists, and they can be further corroborated by psychoanalytic reconstruction in the treatment situation. 2. Clark (1982) states that kids tend to invent new terms for certain concepts. Show them in the data. Why does Dimas invent the terms? Children learn languages without formal instruction, effortlessly and quite swiftly. Every day you produce and comprehend thousands of totally new sentences without even - 11 -

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thinking about it. Some people are impaired in their general cognitive abilities but not in their language use Philosophers, evolutionary biologists, and psychologists use language acquisition as a test bed for exploring and contrasting theories of learning, development, and representation. Linguists search for evidence to evaluate the innateness of language hypothesis stating that many aspects of the formal structure of language are innate (Chomsky 1965 ). Many aspects of the formal structure of language are difficult to learn for adult second language learners but small children master them easily. Even though they do not know/ understand much yet. they do not get grammar lessons. many adults do not use correct language when they talk to children. We cannot teach children every reference and every sentence that they will need. Children appropriately use words acquired in one context to make reference in the next expression. Children attain close-to-adult proficiency in their mother tongue by the age of 3-4 years despite large differences in the children's mentalities and motivations, the circumstances of their upbringing (rich-poor, parents talking to them a lot-parents not talking to them very much, educated parents-uneducated parents,), and in the particular language which they are exposed to (isiZulu, Chinese, Arabic). Some linguists have argued that the theoretical goal of their discipline is to explain how children come to have knowledge of language through only limited and impoverished experience of it in the speech of adults. Chomsky called it as the Poverty of Stimulus (Chomsky 1986) If children do not know anything about grammar when they start acquiring language, how can they acquire it, given that adults do not teach them grammar? that adults do not always speak correctly? that adults do not correct the childrens grammatical errors? - 12 -

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Nativist-generativist position the human capacity for language is the product of a mental language learning faculty = Language Acquisition Device(LAD). Empiricist-functionalist position Language acquisition is the product of general learning capacities. Each position might be tenable for different aspects of language. Illustration whether Children Acquire Grammatical Rules through Imitation-1: Child Adult Child Adult Child Adult Child My teacher holdedthe baby rabbits and we patted them. Did you say your teacher held the rabbits? Yes. What did you say she did? She holdedthe baby rabbits and we patted them. Did you say she held them tightly? No, she holdedthem loosely. They do not acquire morphological or syntactic rules through imitation. A child who is unable to articulate early in her life but is able to hear, will be able to speak almost immediately when she overcomes her impairment. But Children learn social rules of language use though imitation. A child will copy his parents in how to greet strangers as opposed to friends. Illustration whether Children Acquire Grammatical Rules through Reinforcement-1: Child Father Child Father Father Father Child Father Child : Want other one spoon, Daddy. : You mean, you want the other spoon. : Yes, I want other one spoon, please, Daddy. : Can you say the other spoon? Child Otheronespoon. : Say other. Child Other. : Spoon. : Spoon. : Other spoon ; Other spoon. Now give me other one spoon? The fact that Children do not learn morphological or syntactic rules through reinforcement. Reinforcement and corrections on syntactic and morphological errors do not occur often in child-parent communication.

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Attempts to correct a childs syntax and morphology are doomed to failure: Children do not understand what they are doing wrong and are unable to make the corrections when they are pointed out. Illustration that Children Acquire Social Rules of Language Use through Reinforcement-1 Child Mother Child Mother Child Mother Child Mother Mother Child : Mommy, want more milk. : Is that the way to ask? : Please. : Please what? : Please gimme milky. : No. : Please gimme milk. : No. Child Please : Please, may I have more milk? : Please, may I have more milk? Children learn social rules of language use though reinforcement. They understand that they do not adhere to social rules of communication and can correct themselves. Illustration of Children Acquire Grammatical Rules through Analogy-1 Adult : I painted a red barn. Child : I painted a blue barn. Adult : I painted a barn red. Child : I painted a barn blue. Adult : I saw a red barn. Child? : *I saw a barn blue. Illustration of Children Acquire Grammatical Rules through Analogy-2 Adult Adult Adult Child? NO
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The boy was sleeping. Was the boy sleeping? The boy who is sleeping is dreaming about a new car. *Is the boy who sleeping is dreaming about a new car? CHILDREN DO NOT MAKE THIS KIND OF MISTAKE! - 14 -

Child!

Is the boy who is sleeping dreaming about a new car? Children do not acquire grammatical rules through analogy. Analogy would operate on

the linear order of words in a sentence. Children at a very early age know, however, that the rules of their grammar are structure dependent Some adults speak a simplified language to young children called motherese, child directed speech (CDS),or baby talk. When we talk in motherese, we speak slower, more clearly, we exaggerate our intonation and we try hard to use grammatical sentences Children do not acquire syntax through structured input. Motherese is not syntactically simpler than normal speech. The caregivers do not provide grammar lessons in making things easier first and moving to more and more complex sentences. Many parents know nothing about the grammatical rules underlying their language. Many children do not hear motherese at all. Many cultures do not have motherese, in others, adults do not much talk to babies. Children with a lot of exposure to motherese are no better language learners. Motherese helps to get the childrens attention. If you want your baby to do something, she might attend to you faster and listen longer, if you use motherese. But she will not acquire language any better through motherese.

3. In which mental stage is Dimas? Support your answer with the relevant theory. Language acquisition is a creative process.Children are not given explicit information about rules by either instruction or correction. All children--irrespective of their culture, their cultural and social environment, their mother tongue--go through the same developmental stages INNATENESS HYPOTHESIS The innateness hypothesis is a linguistic theory of language acquisition which holds that at least some linguistic knowledge is extant in humans at birth. Facts about the complexity of human language systems, the universality of language acquisition, the facility that children demonstrate in acquiring these systems, and the comparative performance of adults in attempting the same task are all commonly invoked in support. The idea that there may be an age by which this learning must be accomplished is known as the critical period hypothesis.
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They are born with a blueprint for language of Universal Grammar (UG). No one teaches us Grammar but we know the rules of our Grammar nonetheless. We know the rules of syntax and morphology even at a very early age. The language we hear as children is often ungrammatical and incorrect Universal Grammar provides the toolkit from which to build a grammar for any language. Principles in Universal Grammar hold for all natural languages. They are abstract general principles like every language has a subject Children Know about Structure Dependency. No one teaches children syntax trees! But to form correct questions in English, the children must know about them. Children obey the coordinate structure constraint when forming questions. Coordinate Structure Constraint-1 Jack and Jill went up the hill. Jack andJill went up the hill. Jack went up the hill withJill. Jill ate bagels andlox (= salmon). Jill ate bagels andlox. Jill ate bagels withlox. Who went up the hill? *Who did Jack and __ go up the hill? Who did Jack go up the hill with __? Jill ate what? * What did Jill eat bagels and __? What did Jill eat bagels with __?

Coordinate Structure Constraint-2 Bagels and lox= a coordinate structure noun phrase (NP) Bagels with lox= an NP followed by a prepositional phrase (PP) NP NP N Conjunction NP N N Bagels and lox Bagels P and N lox NP NP PP

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The assumption that UG is innate provides a solution for the logical problem of language acquisition and the poverty of stimulus problem. Children acquire complex grammar easily and rapidly and uniformly because they all possess a blueprint for grammar (UG) right from the start. UG helps them to avoid many errors and guides them through language acquisition The Course of Language Development-Overview-1 Unborn children can discriminate their own language from another language Newborns show a preference for their own mothers speech and can differentiate their mother tongue from other languages. The Course of Language Development-Overview-2 Infants can discriminate male and female voices and distinguish all phonemic contrasts in natural languages. From 6 months onwards they loose this ability (perceptual loss as a consequence of close interaction with the mother tongue) 7-10 months old children can o produce reduplicative babbling: the 12 most frequent consonants in the world languages make up 95% of the consonants infants use in their babbling o babbling intonation resembles the intonation contours of the sentences spoken by the caregivers The Course of Language Development-Overview-3 o 12 months old children o first words = content words (inja/ dog, ubisi/ milk) o children master the task of segmenting fluent speech I bet her five rand. I better do my laundry.

o use holophrastic speech: the meaning of a sentence is expressed in one word o Up! o Go!

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The Course of Language Development-Overview-4 o 18 months old children o o o know app. 50 words but they understand more than 5 times may experience a vocabulary spurt express a sensibility for word order o 2 year old children o start building two word phrases o allgonesock, byebyeboat, more wet, dirty sock as many words as they produce

The Course of Language Development-Overview-5 o 2 1/2 3 year old children o build sentences with growing syntactic complexity o o thegarden. o over-generalize morphological rules o Mommy breakedthe cup. Daddy bringedthe shovel. The Course of Language Development-Overview-6 o 4 year old children o use complex sentences o The boy who pushed me yesterday was send home by the headmaster today. o reach close-to-adult proficiency in their first language(s) early multiword utterances are in telegraphic style Cat stand up table. What that? He play tune.

start using function words and inflection I am goingtoread.Thecat can climb atree. Daddy is in

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References

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