1

 Speech Production

 Speech Comprehension

2
A. From Vocalization to Babbling to
Speech

B. Early Speech Stages

 Naming, Holophrastic, Telegraphic, Morphemic

C. Later Speech Stages

 Rule Formation for Negatives, Questions,
Relative Clauses, Passives, and Other Complex
Structures

3
◦All babies make the same
variety of sounds

◦Crying, cooing, gurgling

◦Unlearned

4
◦ Repeated syllables (i.e. panpan,
baba, gigi)

◦ Most syllables basic Consonant (C) +

Vowel (V)

◦ Some simple closed syllables:

C + V + C (panpan)

5
 6 months
◦ Distinctive babbling using some intonation of
language they hear

6
 Advanced stage of babbling into uttering first
words
 Sounds in babbling not always immediately

realized in speech

7
 Consonants acquired in front-to-back order
 /m/, /p/, /b/, /t/ & /d/ precede /k/, /g/ and

/x/

8
 Vowels acquired in back-to-front order
 /a/ (ball) & /o/ low preceding /i/ meet and /ʌ

/ (mu d)

9
 Two variables:
◦ Visibility of articulators
◦ Ease of articulation

10
 Child observes where speech sounds come
from
 Child notes relationships between sounds

and position of noticeable speech

articulators particularly mouth and lips
◦ /m/, /p/ & /b/ learned first
◦ /k/, /g/, /s/ & /z/ learned later

11
 Vowels are learned through trial and
error
 Sounds closest to resting position of
articulators (e.g. back vowels such
as /a/ (watch) learned first)
 Tense vowels such as /i/ (feet) learned
later

12
Naming, Holophrastic, Telegraphic,
Morphemic
 4 months to 18 months, on average
around 10 months

 Children are said to have learned their

first word when:
◦ (1) they utter a recognizable speech form in
conjunction with (2) some object or event in the
environment
 i.e. ‘da’ for ‘daddy’

14
 Holophrastic
◦ ‘holo’ – whole
◦ ‘phras’ – phrase or sentence

 Single words to refer not only to objects

but also complex thoughts involving
those objects
◦ i.e. crying out ‘mama’ when lost in
departmental store to mean ‘I want mama’
◦ One word to describe a thought that adults
use a whole sentence to describe

15
 Complex situation described by a series of
single-word holophrases
◦ i.e. ‘peach, Daddy, spoon’

16
 Around 2 years of age

 Child’s utterance is like a telegram message

(short and mainly made up of content words)

17
 Variety of purposes & semantic relations
◦ Language used to request, warn, name, refuse,
brag, question, answer questions and inform

◦ Utterances involve semantic relations and

concepts such as agent, action, experience,
receiver, state, object, possession, location,
attribution, equation, negation and quantification

18
 Low incidence of function words (i.e. articles,
prepositions and the copula ‘be’)
◦ Nouns, verbs and adjectives mainly used

19
 Close approximation of language’s word
order
◦ i.e ‘My cup’ rather than ‘Cup my’
‘Not tired’ rather than ‘Tired not’

◦ Child realizes that different word orders signal

different semantic relations

20
 Addition of function words and inflections
to utterance

 Function words
◦ Prepositions ‘in’ and ‘on’
◦ Articles ‘the’, ‘a’ and ‘an’
◦ Modals ‘can’ and ‘will’
◦ Auxilaries ‘do’, ‘be’ and ‘have’

21
 Inflections
◦ Plural /s/ on ‘cats’ and /z/ on ‘dogs’
◦ Tense markers /t/ past tense forms on ‘worked’

22
 Three variables:
(1) Ease of Observability of Referent
(2) Meaningfulness of Referent
(3) Distinctiveness of Sound Signal which Indicates
the Referent

23
 The more easily a child can see or hear or
experience the referent in conjunction with
the speech sound spoken by others, the
more likely such referents would be stored
in memory
◦ i.e. Seeing a dog, smelling a cookie, hearing a
car, feeling hungry
◦ i.e. ‘The dog is barking’ as opposed to ‘The dog
barked’

24
 Referent objects that interests the child and
which the child wants to communicate about
will be learned faster than those which the
child lacks interest

25
 The greater the sound distinction involved,
the easier the morpheme signal will be
learned.
◦ i.e. ‘What is it?’ as opposed to ‘Mary’s playing”

26
 Questions on morpheme acquisition order:
(1) Why are Progressive and Prepositions ‘in’
and ‘on’ learned earliest?
(2) Why is Plural and Possessive learned
before Third Person?
(3) Why is Past Irregular learned before Past
Regular?

27
 The Progressive (continuing action)
morpheme involves action of objects
◦ e.g. The dog is barking
The car is coming

28
 Prepositions involve the physical location of
objects
◦ e.g. Doll in box
Doll on box

29
 Why prepositions ‘in’ and ‘on’ are learned
prior to other prepositions:
(i) They are sandwiched between two nouns
which can easily be observed in the physical
environment
(ii) The referents remain stationary in physical
space with respect to one another in the
physical space

30
 All three regular morphemes of the Plural,
Possessive and Third Person Singular have
exactly the same sounds
◦ e.g. dog/z/ (Plural)
Bob/z/ (Possessive)
sing/z/ (Third Person)

31
 The Plural and Possessive are more
observable and meaningful referents to the
child than the Third Person Singular
◦ e.g. Two cookies vs one cookie
Child’s own toys vs another child’s
toys

32
 Third Person morpheme
◦ Object is less obvious and defined by a more
abstract relationship
◦ Child must pick up the abstract first and second
person relationship (I and You) before making the
Other (non-speaker, non-hearer) distinction

33
 ‘Abstract’ Relationship
◦ ‘I’ changes on the basis of who is speaking
◦ ‘You’ changes according to who is listening

34
 The idea of the Third Person presupposes
awareness of the Plural morpheme
 Third Person is only applied in the singular

case
◦ e.g. The boy wants candy

35
 Without the Third Person Singular, the child
can still understand the speech of others and
can still be understood when he/she speaks

36
 Irregular in  Regular in
Present/Past: Present/Past:
◦ come/ came ◦ jump/jumped
◦ go/ went ◦ jog/jogged
◦ eat/ ate
◦ want/wanted
◦ break/ broke
◦ fall/ fell
◦ run/ ran
◦ sing/sang

37
 Irregular verbs highly important in everyday
life

38
 Rule Formation for Negatives,
Questions, Relative Clauses, Passives,
and Other Complex Structures
 Affirmative: Kim is hungry
Negative: Kim is not hungry

Kim isn’t hungry

 Affirmative: Kim wanted some candy

Negative: Kim did not want any candy

Kim didn’t want any candy

40
 Rule:
(a) If the verb is ‘be’, then NEG is
inserted after the copula ‘be’ form
 e.g. Affirmative: Kim is happy
Negative: Kim is NEG happy

Kim is not happy

41
 (b) If the verb is not ‘be’, then ‘not’ is
placed before the verb
 Affrimative: Kim wanted some candy
Negative: Kim not want + PAST some
candy

42
 Insert ‘do’ when the verb is one other than
‘be’
◦ Kim do not want + PAST some candy

‘do’ is not inserted if there is a model (will, can) or

auxiliary (be, have) present
e.g. Kim will not want to go

43
 Kim do + PAST not want some candy

 *Kim did not want some candy

44
 ‘some’ must be changed to ‘any’
◦ Kim did not want any candy

45
 Kim didn’t want any candy

46
 Affirmative :Kim wanted some candy
 Negative formation:
Kim not want + PAST some candy

Kim do not want + PAST some candy

Kim do + PAST not want some candy

(cont. on next slide)

47
Kim did not want some candy

Kim did not want any candy

Kim didn’t want any candy

48
 Period 1
◦ e.g. ‘No money’, ‘Not a teddy bear’, ‘No play
that’, ‘No fall’, ‘No the sun shining’, ‘No
singing song’

◦ Negation marker (NEG) in the form of ‘no’ or

‘not’ placed in front of the affirmative
utterance (U)

◦ NEG + U
 e.g. No fall

49
 Period 2
◦ ‘I don’t want it’ ◦ ‘Touch the snow no’
◦ ‘I don’t know his
name’ ◦ ‘That no Mommy’
◦ ‘We can’t talk’ ◦ ‘There no squirrels’
◦ ‘You can’t dance’ ◦ ‘He no bite you’
◦ ‘Book says no’ ◦ ‘I no want envelope’

50
 Negative marker appear internally within the
utterance
 Auxiliaries ‘do’ and ‘can’ appear with the

negation marker
 ‘don’t’ and ‘can’t’ treated as single words

51
 Period 3 ◦ ‘I am not a doctor’
◦ ‘Paul can’t have one’ ◦ ‘This not ice-cream’
◦ ‘This can’t stick’ ◦ ‘Paul not tired’
◦ ‘I didn’t did it’ ◦ ‘I not hurt him’
◦ ‘You didn’t caught ◦ ‘I not see you
me’ anymore’
◦ ‘Cause he won’t talk’ ◦ ‘Don’t touch the fish’
◦ ‘Donna won’t let go’ ◦ ‘Don’t kick my box’

52
 Period before perfect negatives are formed
 Copula ‘be’ and model ‘will’ appear with

negation
 Imperative negation formed with ‘do’ rather

than the simple negative

◦ e.g. ‘Don’t touch the fish’ as opposed to ‘Touch
the snow no’

53
 Child has idea when to insert ‘do’
◦ e.g. ‘You didn’t caught me’
‘I didn’t did it’
‘Don’t kick my box’

54
 Child also has idea when not to insert ‘do’
◦ e.g. ‘I am not a doctor’
‘Donna won’t let go’

 Child still makes errors but has grasped the

notion that ‘do’ is not inserted when there
is a modal (‘can’, ‘will’)
◦ e.g. ‘This can’t stick’

55
 Minor problems such as assignment of tense
to AUX
◦ e.g. ‘You didn’t caught me’
‘I didn’t did it’

56
 Two basic forms of question formations:
◦ Yes/no questions
◦ WH questions

57
 Same basic syntactic considerations as in the
formulation of negatives

 Declarative sentences with copula ‘be’,

modal, AUX, etc. must have that item in the
front of the sentence in a question

58
 Copula ‘be’ is fronted
◦ e.g. ‘John is a very tall boy’
‘Is John a very tall boy?’
 Modal is fronted
◦ e.g. ‘Bobby can go to the store’
‘Can Bobby go to the store?’
 AUX is fronted
◦ e.g. ‘Mary is singing now’
‘Is Mary singing now?’

59
 For a lone verb (not a copula, no modal
or AUX), AUX ‘do’ must be added
 The tense shifts from the verb to the
AUX
◦ e.g. ‘Kim wanted some candy’

‘Did Kim want any candy?’

AUX ‘do’ added to the front, tense shifts

to AUX, lexical concord

60
 who, what, where, when, how, why, etc.
 WH words are PRO (reduced substitute)
forms which substitute the phrase which is
targeted for questioning with an
appropriate WH word
 Involves high degree of complexity which
the child must recognize and internalize

61
 WH for Subject NP
◦ e.g. ‘The girl jumped on the table’
‘Who jumped on the table?’
WH for Object NP
◦ e.g. ‘The girl hit the boy’
‘Who(m) did the girl hit?’
WH for Prep Phrase of Location
◦ e.g. ‘The baby is on the table’
‘Where is the baby?’

62
 Modal fronted to follow WH
◦ e.g. ‘The monkey will be on the table’
‘Where will the monkey be?’

 AUX fronted to follow WH

◦ e.g. ‘The monkey is sitting on the table’
‘Where is the monkey sitting?’

63
 Rising intonation which may be used with
single words or phrases
◦ e.g. ‘Sit chair?’
‘Ball go?’

64
 Some set phrases with ‘what’ and ‘where’
◦ ‘What’s that?’
◦ ‘Where cookie?’

65
 Use of WH questions tacked on the beginning
of an utterance
◦ e.g. ‘Where my mittens?’
‘What he can ride in?’
‘Why kitty can’t stand up?’

66
 Yes-No Type 1 fronting is used
◦ e.g. ‘Will you help me?’

 Yes-No Type 2
◦ e.g. ‘Did I caught it?’
‘Does lion walk?’

67
 Emergence of tag questions with at first no
negation on the tag
◦ e.g. ‘*He’ll catch a cold, will he?’’

 Final emergence of correct form (acquired

around 4 years of age)
◦ e.g. ‘We had fun, didn’t we?’

68
 ‘What’ and ‘Where’ learned first
 Followed by ‘Why’
 ‘How’ and ‘When’ learned next

69
 Reflects child’s cognitive growth
◦ ‘What’ and ‘Where’ refer to concrete entities

◦ ‘Why’, ‘How’ and ‘When’ refer to abstract concepts

such as motive, manner and time

70
 Infrequently used by adults in speech
 Child’s comprehension of passives begin

around 4 years old

 Production occurs much later

71
 Agent subject and object NPs are
reversed
◦ e.g. ‘The boy pushed the truck’
‘The truck pushed the boy’
 ‘by’ appears before agent NP
◦ e.g. ‘The truck pushed by the boy’
 AUX ‘be’ appears before the verb
◦ e.g. ‘The truck be pushed by the boy’
 AUX is assigned same tense as on verb
◦ e.g. ‘The truck was pushed by the boy’

72
 Abbreviated (‘truncated’) passive
◦ certain other subject NP not realized
◦ e.g. ‘The door was opened’ (subject NP
not realized)

73
 Children rely on order of probability of an
event occurring before being able to fully
comprehend passives
◦ e.g. ‘The candy was eaten by the girl’
(The girl ate the candy since candy
doesn’t eat people)

74
 Sometimes the passive form is semantically
reversible when both subject and object can
serve as an agent
◦ e.g. ‘The donkey was kicked by the horse’

75
 Action verbs in passives are more easily
understood by children than stative verbs
◦ e.g. ‘The mouse was bitten by the
squirrel’ (Action Verb)
‘The man was remembered by the
boy’ (Stative Verb)

76
 Only at 13 years of age are children able to
produce agent-final full passives with ‘by’
(‘The door was opened by a man’) and
instrumental passives using ‘with’ (‘The
door was opened with a key’)
 Children able to comprehend and respond

to such passive forms well before they are

able to produce them

77
 Begins later than the other forms discussed
earlier (around 2 to 3 years old) and is
completed at 11 years of age

78
 Clauses attached to the end of utterances
◦ e.g. ‘I want Bill to go’

 Clauses that appear within utterances

◦ e.g. The man who lives here is gone

79
 In the beginning, object complements such as
‘I wanna go home’ appear (Object
complement = Object + another verb)

80
 Later, WH-clauses appear with abstract
adverbials
◦ e.g. ‘Can I do it when we get home?’
 ‘When’, ‘where’ and ‘how’ emerge before
the nouns that they replace
◦ e.g. ‘I show you where we went’ (adverb of place
‘where’) a month before ‘I show you the place we
went’ (NP ‘the place’ is used instead of the adverb
of location)

81
 Some complex grammatical structures may
not be acquired until the age of 10 or 11
years
 Application of Minimal Distance Principle

(MDP)

82
 Children confuse between:
◦ ‘John told Bill to shovel the driveway’
◦ ‘John promised Bill to shovel the driveway’
(application of shoveling task to the closest noun
which is Bill instead of interpreting the meaning
that John will do the work)

83
 ‘ask’
 Children cannot distinguish between:

◦ ‘I asked Mary what to do’ (Where ‘I’ is the subject of

‘do’)
◦ ‘I told Mary what to do’ (where ‘Mary’ is the subject
of ‘do’)

84
II. Development of Speech Comprehension
III. The Relationship of Speech Production,
Speech Comprehension and Thought
IV. Parentese and Baby Talk
V. Imitation, Rule Learning and Correction
VI. Learning Abstract Words
VII. Memory and Logic in Language Learning

86
 Can speech sounds reach the fetus while it is
still in the womb?

87
 The mother’s speech sounds were found to
be able to reach the ear of the fetus but
whether the ear of the infant is developed
enough to send the signals to the brain is
unknown

88
 Infants are able to distinguish their mother’s
voice over the voice of another woman’s

89
 Infants:
◦ may prefer their native language at birth
◦ show a preference for the language that their
mothers spoke during pregnancy
◦ are able to tell intonational differences between
the language their mother spoke and another
language
 But does this perception begin in the womb
or after birth?

90
 Language knowledge displayed by mute
people
◦ Christopher Nolan
◦ Anne McDonald
◦ Rie

91
 Mutes (with normal hearing and undamaged
intelligence) can develop the ability to
comprehend speech without being able to
produce speech

92
 Speech Comprehension develops in advance
of speech production
 As comprehension of a word, phrase or

grammar is formed, some of the learning is

produced in speech

93
 Speech comprehension necessarily precedes
speech production

 Children will not learn a language if all they

are exposed to are speech sounds

95
 Children must be exposed to speech which
they can relate to objects, events and
situations in their physical environment as
well as subjective events in their minds such
as pain, hunger and desire.

96
 The sound form must be associated with
something that gives a clue to its meaning
 Repeating a words or phrases that they hear
is not evidence of learning
 Learning has only taken place when speech
sounds are used appropriately

97
 (1) A learner must hear speech sounds
before he/she knows what sounds to
make

 (2) A learner must hear speech sounds in

coordination with the experience with
objects, situations or events in the
environment or the mind before he/she
can assign meanings to specific sounds

98
 The meanings underlying speech
comprehension are concepts in a person’s
mind

 Speech sounds on its own are simply sounds

which signify nothing

99
 Contents of thought are provided by the
child’s experience of the environment (i.e.
dogs, cats, people, food and events) and
events concerning those events as well as the
child’s experience of its own feelings,
emotions, desires and conceptual
constructions (thoughts).

10
0
 Thought provides the basis for speech
comprehension which then provides the basis
for speech production

10
1
 Speech that children receive when they are
young
 Also referred to as ‘Motherese’, ‘caregiver

speech’, ‘Adult-to-Child Language’ (ACL) and

‘Child-Directed Speech’ (CDS).

10
3
 A child receives input from many sources:
◦ mother, father, siblings, relatives, friends, etc.

10
4
 (1) Immediate and concrete
 (2) Grammatically correct input
 (3) Short sentences and simple structures
 (4) Simple and short vocabulary
 (5) Exaggerated intonation, pitch and stress
 (6) Older children too adapt their speech
 (7) Father’s speech is different from mother’s
speech

10
5
 Parents talk to their children about what is
happening in the immediate environment
◦ e.g. ‘The dog wants water’

10
6
 Speech is highly grammatical and simplified
 Useful for the child who is discovering the

structures that underlie sentences

10
7
 Short sentences with simple instead of
complex structures
◦ e.g. ‘The dog wants water’ instead of
‘The dog which has been running a
lot wants to drink some water’.

10
8
 Vocabulary used is simple and restricted
◦ e.g. ‘see’ instead of ‘notice’
‘hard’ instead of ‘difficult’

 Simplified phonology and structure

◦ Consonant + Vowel patterns
◦ e.g. ‘mama’, ‘wawa’ and ‘byebye’ instead of
‘mother’, ‘water’ and ‘goodbye’

10
9
 Adults use exaggerated intonation and a
slower tempo and frequently repeat or
rephrase what they or their children say

 Higher pitch, slower speech with more and

clearer pauses between utterances and
more distinctive stress on words than when
speaking to adults

11
0
 Adult speech to children refers more to the
context of the conversation and often serves
to clarify the children’s utterances

111
 e.g. 4-year-olds adapt their speech when
talking to 2-year-olds
 Non-parents also simplify their speech
 The simplification of speech may be a

universal phenomenon

11
2
 Fathers use different pragmatic
approaches in the speech they use with
children

 Fathers more often wait for children to

initiate conversations, show more control
through directives and imperatives and
use more difficult vocabulary

11
3
 Child is forced to make more adjustments
towards the father’s speech which direct the
child towards more complex use of speech in
order to communicate

11
4
 The father’s different speech style acts as a
bridging device between the close child-
mother communication and communication
with others

11
5
 A form of Parentese but with its own
characteristics

 Baby Talk involves the use of vocabulary and

syntax that is overly simplified and reduced

11
6
 Parents learn Baby Talk from other adults

 Involves standardized vocabulary

(It is ‘standard’ in the sense that such
vocabulary is culturally transmitted over
generations)

11
7
 Modifications in vocabulary
◦ e.g. ‘bow-wow’ (dog) and ‘choo-choo’
(train) in English

‘wan-wan’ (dog) and ‘bu-bu’ (car)

in Japanese

11
8
◦ Main sound structure: C + V
syllable unit which is often reduplicated

- It can also involve a closed syllable

[C+V+C] x N (where N can be any number)

11
9
 Onomatopoeic
◦ Sounds which various things make
◦ e.g. English ‘bow-wow’ and Japanese ‘wan-wan’ are
simulations of the barking of dogs

12
0
 Baby Talk can also be unique to a family and
not used outside of the family
◦ e.g. One child in attempting to say ‘vomit’ said
‘vompo’ instead. The parents used the word
‘vompo’ after that incident when referring to
‘vomit’

12
1
 Common to add /iy/ to words ending in a
consonant
◦ e.g. ‘birdy’ for bird, ‘horsy’ for horse and ‘kitty’ for
kitten

12
2
 Syntax is less prominent than vocabulary in
Baby Talk
 Similar to children’s telegraphic stage of

speech production
◦ e.g. ‘Mommy give Tommy banana’ instead of ‘I will
give you a banana’

12
3
 Substituting proper names for personal
pronouns
◦ Easier for a child to understand than items
involving shifting speaker-listener relations

12
4
 No reason to think it is harmful
 Reinforces solidarity between parent and

child

12
5
 Studies show a positive but small effect

 Parentese may be effective only for very

young children

12
6
 Imitation applies only to speech production
and not to speech comprehension
 Children learn to pronounce sounds and

words through imitation

12
8
 Imitation is not involved in the construction
of sentences. Abstract rules cannot be
imitated.

12
9
 Children often produce ungrammatical words
such as:
◦ ‘sheeps’, ‘mouses’, and ‘gooses’, regarding the
PLURAL
◦ ‘goed’, ‘comed’, ‘falled’, and ‘breaked’, regarding
the PAST

13
0
 Not the result of imitation as nobody says
these words for them to imitate
 Ungrammatical sentences:

◦ e.g. ‘No heavy’ and ‘No the sunshine’, regarding

the Negative
◦ ‘When we can go?’ and ‘He is doing what?,
regarding the Question

13
1
 Children learn the PLURAL morpheme and the
PAST tense morpheme and apply those to
new cases

13
2
 Correction may not be helpful because in
order to improve the child must:
(1) note the difference between the child’s own
utterance and that of the parent’s
(2) determine the nature of the error
(3) figure out a way to permanently change his or
her grammar or strategies so that it yields the
parent’s utterance in the future

13
3
 When learning the meaning of words,
children begin with the concrete and go on to
the abstract

13
5
 Order of learning abstract words:
1. physical objects (‘mama’, ‘dog’, ‘ball’,
‘table’) and direct activities (‘run’, ‘jump’,
‘play’, ‘give’)
2. relations and statives (‘on’, ‘sitting’)
3. mental experiences and relations (‘hungry’,
‘hurt’, ‘happy’, ‘want’)
4. utterances (‘Mary hurt’, ‘John thirsty’ and
‘Kitty want eat’)
5. complex abstract ideas (‘I’ (speaker), ‘you’
(listener), ‘truth’, ‘lie’, ‘guess’, ‘hope’, ‘idea’,
‘thought’)

13
6
 Child makes inferences from what people say
and on the basis of what happens in the
environment and the mind

13
7
 e.g. Learning the word ‘hurt’
◦ Child takes note when the word is spoken by others
and the situations in which they occur.

13
8
 Child must remember:
◦ a multitude of words, phrases and sentences along
with the contexts, both physical and mental in
which they occurred

14
0
 Two basic types of memory for language
learning:
(i) Associative learning
(ii) Episodic memory

14
1
 Connection formed between object and
sound-form of the object

14
2
 Whole events or situations are remembered
with phrases and sentences that others
have spoken

 Essential for determining the syntactic

structures such as the Negative, Question,
etc. and structures must be associated with
various degrees of politeness

14
3
 Children use both inductive and deductive
logic when analysing words and sentences
and the formulation of grammar and
strategies

14
4
 Inductive analyses in learning basic
morphemes, e.g. Progressive, Plural and
Third Person

14
5
 1. Search for characteristics in the speech
 2. Characteristics are then related to
objects, situations and events

 Abstract rule or principle is gleaned on the

basis of actual data

14
6
 Children use deductive logic which reflect the
conceptualization and thinking on their part

14
7
 e.g. ‘You have more than me!’
◦ Premise 1: You have more cookies than me
◦ Premise 2: We should have an equal amount
◦ Premise 3: You should give me some of your
cookies and make it equal

14
8