Human mind is equipped with the means of producing and comprehending speech. However, this does not mean that with such abilities human beings are able to comprehend and produce speech at birth. This indicates that before they are able to acquire such abilities fully, they need to undergo psychological processes that make them able to comprehend speech and produce it based on the language system that they are exposed to. The psychological processes mentioned above include: (1) speech production and (2) speech comprehension.
Speech Production: Child Development
From vocalization to babbling to speech
1.
Vocalization
to babbling
· Infants
including who are born deaf make a variety of sounds such as crying, cooing and
gurgling even without a process of learning the sounds.
· Around 7th
month, normal children begin to babble and produce sounds of repeated syllables
which are also known as syllabic reduplication such as ‘papa’, ‘mama’ and
‘baba’.
· But not
all speech sounds of all languages can be produced because they will only babble
in the intonation of the language that they have been exposed to.
· Producing
sounds with the intonation of the first language is a learned phenomenon
because infants imitate and produce what they hear in the surrounding.
· Different
from deaf infants, since they lack hearing ability they will not undergo such
process but interestingly if they are exposed to sign language from birth,
their babbling stage is possible with the usage of their hands (signs or
gestures).
2.
Babbling
to speech
· After
babbling, children start to utter their first words and this can occur when
they are around one-year old or much earlier or even later than that.
· When they
begin to utter words, they only produce some of the sounds that they have
uttered during the babbling stage.
·
This is
due to the realization of meaningful speech in which sounds produced must match
with the heard sounds that are related to certain objects, needs and so forth.
· Babbling
is non-intentional. The sounds produced are not under the central cognitive
control and thus infants unintentionally produce the particular babbling
sounds.
3.
The order
of acquisition of consonants and vowels
· Consonants
are acquired in a front-to-back order in which ‘front’ and ‘back’ refer to the origin of the sound
articulation.
·
So, sounds
like /m/, /p/, /b/ and /t/ tend to occur first than other sounds.
·
On the
other hand, vowels are acquired in back-to-front order. So, sounds like /a/ and
/o/ precede the other vowels.
·
Two
variables on the order of acquisition:
- Visibility
of articulators: sounds produced by speech articulators in which positions are
noticeable are more likely to be uttered by children. For instance, /m/, /p/
and /b/ are produced by the noticeable mouth and lip movements.
-
Ease of
articulation: sounds that are closest to resting position of articulators are
easier to produce than sounds that need more motor control to produce such as
vowel /a/.
Early speech stages
1.
Naming:
one-word utterances
· On average,
children utter their first words around the age of 10 to 12 months.
· This
process involves physical development that is related to the proper
articulation of sounds and brain development that controls the speech areas in
the cerebral cortex.
·
At this
stage, children use nouns as proper nouns to refer to specific objects.
2.
Holophrastic
function: one-word utterances
·
Children
use single words to express complex thoughts with a various semantic functions.
·
For
instance, the word ‘mama’ can be used to express various meanings depending on
the context of where it is uttered such as in a department store, when a child
is lost and cry out ‘mama’, the meaning of the utterance may be ‘I want mama’
and when a child points to a bag in a store, the meaning may be ‘That shoes
belong to mama’.
·
In order
to be able to interpret the utterances, it is important to know the child, to
know the child’s experiences and elements of the present situation where the
utterances always occur.
3. Telegraphic
speech: two- and three-word utterances
·
Characteristics
of the utterances
- Variety of
purposes and semantic relations
-
Low
incidence of function words such as articles, prepositions and copula ‘be’
-
Close
approximation of the language’s word order
4. Morphemic:
morpheme acquisition
·
Children
start to add function words and inflections to the utterances.
·
Variables
that explain the order of morpheme acquisition:
- Ease of
observability of referent: the more easily a child can see, hear or experience
the referent, the more likely are such referent to be stored in memory.
- Meaningfulness
of referent: referents that are of the child interest will be learned faster
than those that lack such interest (a child will remember the more highly
meaningful referents).
- Distinctiveness
of the sound signal that indicates the referent: the greater the sound
distinction involved, the easier it will be for the a morpheme signal to be
learned.
Speech Comprehension: Child Development
Fetuses and speech input
·
Fetus
could hear sounds from the outside world during the pregnancy and it is made
through the medium of a liquid in the fetal. But still
infants after birth are difficult to distinguish speech sounds.
· This
indicates that during the pregnancy, the sounds heard by the fetus are
insufficient for identifying speech sounds at the later time.
Speech comprehension of mute-hearing children
Being able to utter
speech appropriately according to situations does not indicate the level of
language knowledge that one has. If the ability of producing speech becomes the
indicator of speech comprehension, then the mute-hearing child will have no
language knowledge. This is not true because children of such disability may
learn to comprehend everything that is spoken to them. This is due to the
hearing ability that they have in which help them to comprehend speech even
without they need to produce it as long as their basic intelligence is still
intact.
Relationship of Speech Production and Speech
Comprehension
·
Since
meaning is the basis of a language, a child could not begin to produce language
meaningfully if he or she does not have the opportunity to hear and understand
utterances within meaningful contexts.
·
So, they
need to be able to comprehend the meaning of a language before they can produce
it.
·
Exposure
or experience is an important element in the acquisition of language because
through this the learning process of language could take place with less
difficulty.
·
Hence, the
element here helps assist in the speech comprehension in which later on leads
to the speech production.
Parentese (Motherese, Caregiver Speech,
Adult-to-Child Language)
It
is the speech that children hear when they are young. It is the input that is
transmitted from many sources including mother, father, siblings, relatives,
friends and etc. Besides, the input also has special linguistic
characteristics.
Characteristics of parentese
1.
Immediacy
and concreteness
·
The talk
occurs in an immediate environment
·
Is it not
about abstract or remote objects and events
2.
Grammaticality
of input
·
The speech
is highly grammatical and simplified
·
Ungrammatical
sentences are found to occur but rarely
3.
Short
sentences and simple structures
4.
Simple and
short vocabulary
5.
Exaggerated
intonation, pitch and stress
·
Adults
exaggerate intonation and use a slower tempo
· Adults tend
to use high pitch, slower speech with more and clearer pauses between the
utterances
·
Distinctive
stress on words are placed in the speech
Imitation and Memory in Language Learning
Imitation
Children
copy and repeat aloud the words that they hear. So, through this process they
learn to pronounce sounds and words that they hear. However, there is a
limitation with this process and that is imitation only applies to the speech
production and it does not include the speech comprehension. Since speech comprehension
precedes speech production, thus imitation could be considered as the primary
process of language learning. Besides, imitation does not involve in the
process of constructing sentences. This is because the abstract rules of
creating sentences are to be understood and not to be imitated. Even though
imitation has limitations, it is still an important process especially to the
development of the articulation of speech sounds and the sound pattern of
sentences.
Memory
Memory
capacity helps children in language learning. Without memory, they could not
identify words of the language, devise rules for their use and relate speech to
the environment and mind. It also makes them to have difficulty to discover
abstract meanings and rules that can be connected to the previous experiences
that the children encountered before. So, a good memory really helps in
language learning.
1.
Theories
and Patterns of Language Development
2.
Child
Language Acquisition Theory-Chomsky, Crystal, Aitchison and Piaget
3.
Infants
using known verbs to learn new nouns: Before infants begin to talk in
sentences, they are paying careful attention to conversations (article)
*** If you are being engaged with children who
are in the process of language learning, try to have a look at this fun site, http://www.funbrain.com/brain/ReadingBrain/ReadingBrain.htmlfor kids’ reading materials and games.
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