Psycholinguistics

Second edition
LONGMAN LINGUISTICS LIBRARY

General editors

GEOFFREY HORROCKS, Ullivmity ofGnJlln"idge

DAVID DENlSON, Uniuersity of Maneben er

Für a complere list o f books in thc series, sec page vii,

Psycholinguistics:
Language, Mind and World

Second edition

Danny D. Steinberg
Hiroshi Nagata
David P. Aline
First published 1982 by Pearson Education Limited
Second edition 2001

Published 2013 by Routledge

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201, Taylor & Francis.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

Steinberg, Danny D.
Psycholinguistics : language, mind and world / Danny D. Steinberg, Hiroshi Nagata, David P. Aline
– 2nd ed.
p. cm. – (Longman linguistics library)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-582-03949-5 (alk. paper)
1. Psycholinguistics. I. Nagata, Hiroshi, 1949 – II. Aline, David P., 1959 – III. Title. IV. Series.
P37.S78 2001
401’.9-dc21 00-044782

ISBN 13: 978-0-582-03949-0 (pbk)

Set in 10/12pt Janson Text by 35

To Wendy, Yuriko and Yoko in appreciation for their help and
understanding.
This page intentionally left blank
LONGMAN LINGU ISTICS LI B RA RY
General Editors:
G EO FF R EY H O RRQ C KS
University of Cambridge
OAVIO O ENISQ N
University of Manchester
Introduction to Text Linguistics
RO BERT OE BEAUGRAND E and
WO LFG ANG DRESSLE R
Psycholinguistics
Language, Mind and World
Second edition
DANNY D. STEINBERG
HIR O SH I N AG ATA and DAVIO
Principles of Pragmatics
GEO FFR EY N . LEE CH
The English Verb
Second edition
F. R. PALMER
Pidgin and Creole Languages
SUZA NNE ROM AINE
General Linguistics
An Introductory Survey
Fourth edition
R.H. ROBINS
Generative and Non-linear Phonology
JACQUES OURANO
Modality and the English Modals
Second edition
F. R. PALMER
Dialects of English
Studies in Grammatical Variation
PETER TRUD Glll and
J. K. C HA M BERS (eds)
An Introduction to Bilingualism
C H ARlOTT E H Q FFM AN N
Linguistic Theory
The Discourse 01Fundamental Werks
ROB ERT OE BEAUG RANDE
A History of American English
L L. D1Ll ARD
Aspect in the English Verb
Process and Result in Language
YISHAI T O BI N
The Meaning of Syntax
A Study in the Adjectives of English
CONNOR FERRIS
P. AlINE
Latin American Spanish
JOHN lIPSKI
A Linguistic History of Italian
MA RTl N M AIDE N
The History of Linguistics
All edited by GIU LlO LE_ SCHY
Volume 111:
Renaissance and Early Modem
Linguistics
Volume IV:
Nineteenth Century Linguistics
ANNA MORPURGO OAVIES
To come:
Volume V:
The Twentieth Century
Modern Arabic
Structures, Functions and Varieties
( LIVE HOLE S
Frontiers of Phonology
Atoms, Structures and Derivations
JACQUES DUR A ND and
FRANCIS KATA MBA (eds)
An Introduction to the Celtic
Languages
PAUl RUS$Ell
Causatives and Causation
A Universal-typological perspectve
JAE JUNG SONG
A Short History 01 Linguistics
Fourth edition
R. H . RO BIN$
Grammar and Grammarians in
the Early Middle Ages
VIVIEN lAW
Greek
A History of the Language and its
Speakers
GEOF FREY HOR ROCK$
The New Comparative Syntax
L1L1A N E HAEG EMAN (ed.)
The Structure and History 01
Japanese
LONE TAKE UCH I
The Acquisition 01 Syntax
Studies in Comparative Developmental
Linguistics
M A RC- A RI EL FRIE D EMA N N and
lU IGI Rllli (eds)
Experimental Phonetics
KATR IN A HAV WARD
Explaining Language Change:
An Evolutionary Approach
WILLIAM C RO FT
Linguistic Typology:
Morphology and Syntax
JAE JUN G SO NG
Problems and Perspectives:
Studies in the Modern French Language
W ENDY AYR ES· SE NNE TT and JAN I CE
(A RRU TH ERS with RO SAlI N D TEM PLE
 Contents

Preface xv
List of Tab/es XV11
List of Figures XYl11
Publisber's Acknoioledgements XIX

Part 1. First-Language Learning 3

Chapter 1. How Children Learn Language 3

1.1. T he Development of Speech Production 3
1.2. T he Development of Speech Co mprehension 27
1.3. The Relationship of Speech Produ ction , Speech
Comprehension and Thought 34
1.4. Parentese and Baby Talk 36
1.5. Imitation, Rule Learning, and Correction 41
1.6. Learnin g Abstract W ords 44
1.7. Memory and Logic in Language Learning 46

Chapter 2. The Deal and Language: Sign, Oral, Written 50

2.1. Sign Language: A True Language witho ut Speech 50
2.2. Ges tures of H earing People Are Signs But Do Not
Form a Language 52
2.3. Speech-Based Sign Languages 56
2.4. Independent Sign Languages (ISLs) such as American
Sign Language (ASL) 60
2.5. T he Process of Learning ASL 64
2.6. T he Oral Approach and T otal Communication 65
X CON TENT S

2.7. T he Sign Langnage vs. Ora l Approach Controversy 67

2.8. Public Recognition of ASL and G rowth of Deaf Pride 70
2.9. The Written Language Bilingual Approach for
Complete Communication 75
2.10. A Programm e for T eaching Written Language 80

Chapter 3. Reading Princi ples and Teaching 93

3.1. Writing Systems and Speech 93
3.2. T he Whole-Word vs. Phoni cs/Decoding
Co ntrove rsy 96
3.3. T he Whole-Word Approach 97
3.4. The Phonics/Decoding Approach 98
3.5. Mor e on the Whole-Wor d Appro ach 102
3.6. A Universal Four-Phase Reading Programme 111
3.7. Results of the Reading Programm e in the Unired
Stares, J apan and China: In th e Pre-school and in
the Horne 114
3.8. T he Fallacious Notion of Reading Readiness 118
3.9. The Advantages of Early Readin g for Pr e-school
Age Children 122

Chapter 4. Wi ld and Isolated Childre n and the Critical Age Issue

for Language Learning 124

4.1. Legends, Evil Kings and Empero rs 124

4.2. Victor : T he W ild Boy of Aveyro n 127
4.3. Genie: Raised in Isolation 131
4.4. Isabelle: Confinement with a Mute M other 135
4.5. Chelsea: A Tragic Case of M isdiagnosis 137
4.6. H elen Keller: T he Renowned Deaf and Blind Girl 138
4.7. A Critical Age for First-Language Acquisition? 140

Chapte r 5. Ani rnals and Language Learning 144

5. 1. Teaching Speech to Apes 145

5.2. T eaching Sign Language to the Chimpanzee, Gorilla
and O rangutan 147
5.3. T eaching Artificial Languages to Chimpanzees 152
5.4. Teaching Langu agc to Dolphins 156
5.5. T eaching Spoken English to an African G rey Parrot 159
5.6. Animal Communi cation in the Wild 160
 CO NTENTS XI

5.7. Conclu sions 162

5.8. Web Sites for More Inform ation 165

Part 2. Second -Language Learning 167

Chapter 6. Children and Adults in Second-Language Learning 169

6.1. Childre n are Better: A Co mmon Belief 169
6.2. Basic Psychological Factors Affecting
Second -Language Learnin g 170
6.3. Social Situations Mfecting Second-La nguage
Learnin g 178
6.4. Co nclusion: Who is Better? Adults or Children? 184
6.5. Some Other Influences: ESL or EF L Community
Co ntext, Motivation , and Attitude 185
6.6. Is T here a Cri tical Age for Second-La nguage
Learning? 187

Chapter 7. Second-Language Teaching Methods 190

7.1. Characte rizing the Essentials of Meth ods 190
7.2. Traditional Methods: G rammar-T ranslation, Marural,
Learning?
Dir ect, Audiolingual 193
7.3. T he Chomskyan Revolution Brings Down the
Foundatio ns of the Audiolingual Method 201
7.4. O ffbeat Methods Appear then Disappear:
Co gnitive Code, Community Language Learnin g,
Silent W ay, Suggestope dia 202
7.5. Co ntemporary Methods : T otal Physical Response,
Co mmunicative Language T eaching, Iatural
Approach 206
7.6. Some Research Studies Comparing Effectiveness
of Methods 214
7.7. Goa ls Must Be Considered in the Selection of
a Method 216

Chapter 8. Bilingualism, Cognition, Transfer and Learning

Strategies 218
8.1. Varieties of Bilingualism 218
8.2. Is Bilingualism Beneficial or Detrimental? 219
XII CO NTE NTS

8.3. Sequential and Simultaneous Learning Situations 228

8.4. Transfer Effects of Language 1 on the Learni ng of
Language 2 233
8.5. Strategies for Second-La nguage Production 236
8.6. Srrategies for Becoming a Better Second-Language
Learner 238
8.7. Teaching Reading in a Bilingual Situation at
H ome 238

Part 3. language, Mind and Brain 241

Chapter 9. l anguage, Thought and Culture 243

9.1. A Relationship at the H eart of Psycholinguistics 243

9.2. Four Theories Regarding the Dependence of
T hought and Culture on Language 245
9.3. T heory 1: Speech is Essential for T hought 246
9.4. T heory 2: Language is Essent ial for T hought 251
9.5. T heory 3: Language Determines or Shapes Ou r
Perception of Nature 255
9.6. T heory 4: Language Determines or Shapes Our
Cultural World View 261
9.7. Erroneo us Beliefs Underlying the Four T heories 266
9.8. T he Best T heory,
heory ~ Part 1: T hought is Independent
of Language 269
9.9. T he Best T heory, Part 2: Languageheory,
C IlU Assist in
Conveying New Ideas and Culture 271
9.10. John Locke Said It Best 275

Chapter 10. Where Does Language Knowledge Come From?

Intelligence, Innate Language tdeas, Behaviour? 27 6
10.1. How Do We Acquire Knowledge? 276
10.2. Mentalism vs. Materialism 277
10.3. Behaviourist Wa rs: Materialism vs,
Epiphenomenal ism vs. Mediationism 280
10.4. Objections to Behaviourism 282
10.5. Philosophical Functionalism and Our Objections
to It 285
10.6. Mentalist Wars : Empiricism's Intelligence vs.
Rationalism's Innate Ideas 288
 CONTENTS xiii

10.7. C homskyan Arguments for Inn ate Language Ideas

and the Inadequ acy of those Argu ments 29 1
10.8. It is Time for Emerge ntis m to Re-emerge 307

Chapter 11. Language and the Brain 309

11.1. Ge neral Brain Stru ctu re and Fun ction 309
11.2. Hemispheric Structu re and Fun ction 313
11.3. Hemispheric Domin ance 314
11.4. Lat eralized H emisph eric Functioning 318
11.5. Langua ge Areas and their Fun ctioning 321
11.6. Right -Hemisph ere Language Abilities 324
11.7. T he Bilingual Brain 327
11.8. Sign Language 330
11.9. Language Disor ders: Aphasias 332
11.1O. Methods of Investigating Brain and Language 338

Part 4. Mental Grammar and Language Processing 343

Chapter 12. Language Criteria for Assessing Gramm ars 345

12.1. Four Fundamenta l Langu age Abilities of Speakers 345
12.2. Explaining th e Four Abilities with Behaviouri st,
Psychological and Strucrura l Lin guistic T heories 347
12.3. Explaining the Fou r Abilities with C homsky's
Ge nerative Rule System 355
12.4. Two Other Fundamental Abilities: Sentence
Synonymy and Strucrural Ambiguity 360
12.5. Conclusion 364

Chapter 13. Natural Grammar: A 'God's Truth' Grammar Based

on the Primacy of Speech Comp rehension 366
13.1. Psychological C rireria for Assessing G rammars 366
13.2. Psychological Crite rio n No. 1: A 'God's T rut h'
Gra mmar 366
13.3. T he Explanatory Inadeq uacy of C homsky's
Syntactic-Based Grammar 372
13.4. Perform ance-Process Grammars 375
13.5. Psychological Criterion heory,
Criterion
o. 2: Primacy of Speec h
Comprehension 378
xiv CONTENTS

13.6. Inadequaey of Functionalist and Cognitive Grammars 38 1

13.7. How the Child Leam s aGrammarural Grammar
Gramm 38 1
13.8. T owards a Theory of arural Grammar in Relation
to Thought and its Functioning in the
Co mprehension and Production of Sent ences 392

References 395
Autbors Index 428
Subject Index 437
 Preface

Almost two deca des have passed since the first edirion of this book ap peared.
Since then Psycholingu istics has grown so tha t it is difficult for any one
person to acquire the necessary theoretical and research know ledge of each
of its various fields. Even though, berween the first and present editions, I
devored myself to th e preparation of my 1993 Longman book, All Introduction
to Psycbolinguistics, still I fou nd myself falling beh ind. It was my good fortu ne,
therefore, that I was able to secure the assistance of two very capable
psycholi nguists fo r this seco nd ed itio n. Their know ledge and good sense
creates a book su perio r to any which I could have done alone. T hey hon our
me as co-autho rs.
This book, like th e earlier edit ion, is directed towa rds rea ders who wish
to understand the psycho logy of language as it relates to learning, mind and
br ain as weil as various aspects of society and culture, Although the top ics
which are presented are dealt with in depth and invo lve current issues and
research, non ethel ess, little or no specific knowledge of "ny to pic 's
presupposed on the part of the reader; basic terms and concepts are presented
an d discussed before more complex or abstract rnatters are co nsidered. The
know ledge presented in th is volume is intended to bring the rea der to the
hig hest level of understand ing of the topics considered.
We are indebted to Mr J eff Matthews of Naples who not on ly made
substantial contributions to various chapters of the book but was instrumental
in prov iding us with many source materials. W e would like to th ank Professor.
Steven Davis of Simon Fraser Un iversity for his en lighteni ng discussion on
mind and phi loso phical functionalism, Professor Richard Sch rnidt o f the
U niversity of H awaii for his importa nt comrnents on morpheme learn ing,
P rofessor j ulia H ersehen sohn of th e Un iversity of Seattle for her insightful
suggestions on aspects of C ho msky's Universa l Grammar and Professor j un
Yamada o fHiroshima University for his useful comments on my new th eory
of grammar, Natural Grammar. These scholars, it must be not ed, do not
necessarily agree with th e views expressed in the chapte rs,
xvi PREFACE

Our appreciation is extended ro the editors, Professor Geoffrey Horrocks,

Professor Geoffrey Leach, Casey Mein, Verina Pettigrew and to former
editor Elizabeth Mann for their encouragemen t, help and patience in bringing
this book to publication in the finest form possible. We thank Dorothy
McCarthy for her proofing of our original manuscript .

DDS
Saitama, J apan
l1 September 2000
 List of Tables

1.1 T wo-word child utt eran ces and their semantic analysis 9
1.2 How psychological variables explain order of learn ing
of morphemes 12
2.1 Background of Ame rican and Japanese subjects and
number of iterns learned 88
2.2 Results for Kon rad: Summ ary of words, phrases, and
sentences learned 89
2.3 Samp ie of items learned by Konrad over 15-l1lont h period 90
6.1 Psychological factors and social factors affecting
second-language learnin g for children and adults 177
12.1 T he Nature of the ab Lan guage 356
 List of Figures

2. 1 Finge r spelling: One- and rwo-handed methods 57

2.2 M aking sentences in American Sign Language 61
2.3 Som e British Sign Language vocabulary 63
3. 1 Speed of learning kOllji and kana is determined by
meaningfulness of speech form uttered 105
I l.l The brai n: Overhead and side views 310
11.2 Langnage areas of the brai n 322
11.3 So me speec h and reading processes 323
13.1 C ho msky's reso urce gramma r perfo rma nce model 374
13.2 Schem a of Dik's ' Functional G ramma r' ( 1991) 377
 Publisher's Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright

material:

Figure 2.1 and the top illustration in Figure 1 l.l from Tbe COlllbridge
Encyclopedia ofLtmglloge Cambridge University Press (Crystal, D. [987); Figure
2.2 frorn American Sigu LOllgtloge Syntax Mo nton De G ruyter (LiddelI, Scott
K. 1980); lower illustration in Figure 11.1 from Psycbolinguistics: Learning and
Using 0 Langnage Prentice H all Inc. (Taylor, I. and Taylor, M. 1990); Figures
11.2 and 11.3 from Speech and Brain Mecbanisms Princeton University Press
(Penfield, W . and Roberts, L. [959); Figure 13.2 from Linguistic Theory
and Grammatical Description J ohn Benjamins Publishing Co . Amsterdam/
Philadelp hia (Droste, F. G . and j oseph, J. E. eds 1991).

Whi lst every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material,
in a few cases this has proved impossible and we take this oppo rtunity to
offer our apologies to any copyright holders whose rights we may have
unwittingly infringed.
This page intentionally left blank
Part

1
First-Language Learning
This page intentionally left blank
 1
How Children Learn Language

W e have minds and in our minds we have th e means for producing and
co mpre he nding speech. But how did we learn to produ ce and compreh end
speech? At birth we cann ot co mpre he nd speec h, nor can we produ ce
speech. Yet, by the age of 4 years we all learn th e basics of our Iangu age. W e
acqu ire vocabulary and gramrnatical rul es for creating a variety of sent ence
struc tu res including negatives, questi on s, and relative clauses. And altho ugh
4-year-o lds still have passives and some other elahorate syn tactic struc tu res
to learn, along with a never-ending stock of vocabu lary items, by rhar age
the y will have overcome the most difficult obsracles in langnage learn ing.
T his is tru e of children the world over, what ever the langu age may be.
In deed, the langn age profi cien cy o f the 4- or 5-year-old is often the envy
o f th e adult second-Ianguage learner, who has bee n struggling for years to
rnaster th e langu age. It is one of the fund amental tasks of psych olinguists to
explain how children learn langu age.
For reasons that will becom e appare nt later, we will separa te langnage
learning into two distinct, but related, psychological proc esses: speecb pro-
duaion and speecb comprebension, W e will deal with each in turn and then
co nside r how they are related ,

1.1. The Development of Speech Production

1.1 .1 . From Vocalization to Babbling to Speech

1.1. 1. 1. Vocolization to babbling

Pri or to utt er ing speech sounds, infan ts make a variety of sounds, cryi ng,
cooing, gurgling. Infanrs everywhere see m to make the sarne variety of sounds,
even children who are born deaf (Le nne berg, Reb elsky, & Nich ols, 1965).
T he ability and pr op ensity to utter such sounds thu s appe ar to be unlearned.
4 PSYCH O LIN GUI STI CS

Later, around the seventh month, children ordinarily begin to babble, to

produce what may be described as repeated syllabies ('syllabic reduplication'),
e.g. 'baba', 'gigi', 'panpan'. W hile most of the syllables are of the basic Con-
sonant + Vouiel type ('baba' and 'm omo'), some consist of dosed syllables of
the simp le Consonant + Vowel + Consonant variety ('panpan') . T his strucrure of
babblin g has been found to be produced by children in all srudied languages.
T he sounds which infants make involve many but not all of the speech
sounds which occur in the languages of the world. For example, English
sounds like the 'th' in 'tbough' and the 'th' in 'tbin' are rare, as are the d ick
sounds commo n in various African languages such as Zulu. In time, how-
ever, such vocalizations take on the character of speech. Fro m as early as
6 months of age, even before they utt er words in th e language, infants from
different language communities begin to babble somewhat distinctively, using
some of the intonation of the language to which they have been exposed
(Tonkova-Yampol'skaya, 1969; Na kazima, 1962; Lieberman, 1967). A1though
this has not been firmly established , research does indicate that in Ianguages
where the intonation contours are quite distin ctive, native speakers could
tell the difference between the babble of infants who were learning their (the
native speakers') language as opposed to the babble of infants learn ing other
languages (de Boysson-Bardies, Sagart. & Du rand, 1984).
T he production of sounds using the into natio n conto urs of the first lan-
guage is obviously a learned phenomenon because when infants babble they
follow the into natio n contours of the language which they hear. This is
something that deaf infants deprived of hearing speech do not do. While such
infants are able to vocalize and cry, they do not progress to babbling . In ter-
estingly, deaf infants who have been exposed to sign language from birth do
the equivalent of babbling - with their hands (Petitto & Ma rentette , 1991).

t.t. 1.2. Babbling to speech

Ir is fro m the advanced stage of babbling that children move into utt ering
their first word s. Often this occurs at are und one year of age but can occur
much earlier or much later. When children begin to utter words, somewhat
surprisingly only some of the sounds which they have utt ered in babbling
appear in speech. T he other sounds must be reacqu ired . And there may be
some order to the acquisition of speech sounds. For example, sounds like lxi
(as in Bacb), Ik / , Igl, and 11/ which commonly occurred in vocalization and
babbling prior to speech may now tend to occur later, after the acquisition
of such sounds as Ipl, It/, Im I, lai, and 10/. T here is, then, some discontinuity
between babblin g and meaningful speech where the kinds of sounds which
occur in babbling are not always imm ediately realized in meaningful speech.
Only a few studies show some contin uity between babbling and early
speech (Vihman, Macken, Miller, Simmon s, & MiIler, 1985); most research
shows a lack of continuity. For example, Oller and Eilers (1982) found that
 HO W CH ILD REN LEARN LAN GUAGE 5

while vowels which occurred more frequent ly in babbling were related to

th e frequ ency of those vowels in th e infan ts' native language, th ese sounds
were not stro ngly related to the infants' subsequent meaningful speech.
As babbling progresses to meaningful speech, thou gh, th e relation ship seems
to get stronge r. For example, Stoe l-Gammo n and Cooper (1984) and Kent
and Bauer (1985) found th at advanced babbli ng begi ns to approach the
co nsonant-vowel combinations of later meaningfu l speech. The relation-
ship , however, is not a streng one.
Why is th ere some degree of discon tin uity from babb ling to th e prod uc-
tio n of speec h sounds? In our view, th e discontinuity issue involves, as th e
emi nent linguist ] esperson (1933) noted many years ago, th e distin ction
between inte ntional and non-inten tion al vocalizatio n. Babblin g is non-
int ention al in th e sense th at particular sounds are not und er central cogn it-
ive cont ro l; th e infant does not inten tionally make th e parti cular babb ling
sounds which occur. T hey seem to happen by th e chance coordination of
speech articulato rs. (Infants do the same with th eir own hands. Afte r they
first notice a hand th ey can stare at it for hours, trying out movemen ts.)
T he case of meanin gful speech is quite different, however. Here, sounds
must not be utte red at random bur must rnatch previously heard sounds which
are conventionally associated with certain objects, needs, and so forth . In order
to accomplish this feat, it is necessary that th e child discover which sound is
created by which speech articulators (rnouth, tongue, vocal cords, etc.), It is
this knowledge th at th e child must acquire in order to speak meaningfully.
While babbling is different frorn speech with respect to intentionality, never-
th eless speech is dependent ro some degre e on babbling. In babblin g, th e
child will chance on many of th e various articulatory mechanisms for pro -
ducin g speec h and give practice to th e use of th ose artic ulato rs. The connec-
tions established by such exercise of the articulatory mechanisms und oubtedly
aid the child later in acquiring speech when int en tion al connections to th e
articulato rs for th e purpose of activati ng speech must be firmly established.

1. 1. 1.3. Explaining the acquisition order of consonants and vowels

In th e mean ingful speech phase, it appears th at consonants are acquired in
a front-tc-back order, where 'front' and ' back' refer to the origi n of the articu-
lation of th e sound. T hus, Iml, Ip/, /b/, It/, and Idl tend to precede /kl,
Ig/, and lxi. Co nversely, vowels seem to be acquired in a back-te -front order,
with lai (ball) and 101 (low) preceding l il (rneet) and l AI (mild). ] akobson
(1968) devised a theory based on his distin ctive feature th eory of phon o-
logical oppositio ns which attemp ts to predict th e orde r of th e acquisitio n of
speech sounds . In th e main, however, empirical stu dies have not supported
his predictions (Velten, 194 3; Leopold , 1947; Brain e, 1971; Ferguson &
G arni ca, 1975). There is much more variatio n in th e order of acquisitio n
th an th e th eory predicts, Acrually, thi s may weil be expected, since th ere
6 PSYCHO LI NG U ISTICS

could be a great dea l of chance invo lved whe n a chi ld searches for the pro per
articulators of speech with whic h to ma ke a sound,
As far as the esrabl ishment of intentional connections is concerned, our
opi nio n is rhat rwo variables domi nate this process, visibiliry o[ articulators
and ease o[ articulation (first pro posed by Stein berg, (982) . When the chi ld
beco mes motivated to produce meaningfu l speech (th is occurs after th e
child has leamed to understand some words whic h ot her peop le say), the
child begi ns to seek ways to produce desired sounds. T he chi ld th cn becomes
alert to ducs rhat relate to the articulation of the speech sou nds.
The child observes where spe ech sou nds come fro m and notes the rela-
tions between sou nds and rhe position of no ticea ble speech articulators,
particularly the mou th and lips (Ku hl & Meltzo ff, 1988; Legerstee, 1990). It
is mainly movements which the ch ild ohserves and im itates, Since no ticeable
mou th and Iip movern ents are prim arily involved in the articulation of certa in
consonants, it is not surprising, therefore, th at childre n ren d to produce
th ese consonants, suc h as Im/, I p/, and I b/, before the others. Consonanr
sound s like the sto ps Ikl and 191 and the fricatives Isl and /z l, whic h invo lve
the movemen t of no n-visible articulato rs, are gene ra lly learned later.
As for vowe ls, since mo st involve th e use of largely unseen articulators,
chil dre n get litt le aid from direct observation. Rather, they must indu lge in
a lot of trial and erro r in order to secu re th e pro per positions for articu lators .
It see ms tha t th ose sou nds whic h are dosest to th e resting pos ition of
articulators, e.g . back vowe1s such as lai (ws rch), are easier to create and are
learned earlier while rhose sou nds which require more motor contro l to
crea te, e.g. a tensed fro nt vowel suc h as Ii/ (feet), are learned later.
However, over and above the op eration of these variables of ease and visib-
ility, th ere is (as first mentioned above) th e im portant one of cbance. It see ms
that children may d iscover hy chance a particular artic ulator-sound connec-
tion, e.g. th e daughter of Leopold (1953), H ildegard, was able to pronou nce
the word 'pretty' with precision yet she was unable to pron ounce other wo rds
com posed of similar sounds, Interestin gly, although th e word 'pretty' was pro-
nounced accurat ely at first, over time, as her pronunciation of words de-
veloped, the pronu nciation of tha r word dereriorated . Tt seems that if a word
is to be reta ined, the chance discovery of an articul ator-sound con nection must
be followe d by its incorporation with in th e overall develo ping sound system.

1.1 .2. Early Speech Stages: Naming, Holophrastic, Telegraphic,

Morphemic

1. 1.2. 1. Naming: one-word utterances

When do ch ildren sta r r to say their firsr words? Ir may su rprise yo u to learn
th at research on this basic question is no t at all co ndusive. Actua lly thi s is
not o nly beca use th ere is a very wide range of individual differences but also
 HOW CHI LDR EN LEARN LA NGU AG E 7

because the precise determination of just when a word has been learn ed is
not easy to make and is not standar dized .
T he mere utterance of speech sounds, e.g. ' rnama', may or may no t ind ic-
ate word knowledge. Childre n can be said to have learn ed their first word
when (1) they are able to utter a recogniza ble speech form, and when this is
done (2) in conjunction with some object or event in the enviro nment. T he
speech form may bc imperfect, e.g. 'da' for 'daddy', and the associated meaning
may be inco rrect, e.g. all people are called 'd a', but, as long as the child uses
the speech form reliably, it may be concluded that the child has acquired
some sort of wor d know ledge .
First words have been reported as app earing in childre n from as young as
4 months to as old as 18 months, or cven older. O n the average, it would
seem that children ut ter their first ward areund the age of 10 months, Som e
of this variability has to do with physical developrnent, such as the musculat-
ur e of the mouth , which is essentia l for the proper articulation of sounds.
Cerrain brain development is also involved since the creation of speech
sounds must come und er the control of speech areas in th e cerebral cortex
(Bares, Thai, & j anowsky, 1992).
T he naming of objects is one of the first uses to which childre n put
words, e.g. 'rnama' is said by the child when the mother walks into the roo m.
H owever, naming may be preceded by wor ds which accompany actio ns,
such as ' bye bye' in leave-taking (Greenfield & Smith, 1976).
Ir appears th at children first use noun s as proper nouns to refer to specific
objects (Moskowitz, 1978), after which they may or may not extend the mean-
ing correc tly for common nouns (E. C lark, 1973). For example, while 'dada'
may first be used to identify one parti cular person, it may or may not be
exten ded to includ e all men or all peop le. O r, 'wow-wow' llIay be used to
refer to one dog, and the n be extended to refer to all animals, soft slippers,
or people in furs. In time, of course, th e prop er restr ictions and extensions
are learn ed.

t. 1.2.2. HoJophrastic funetions: one-word utterances

However, childre n do no t only use single words to refer to objects; they also
use single words to express complex thou gh ts which involve those objects , A
young child who has lost its mother in a departrnent sto re llIay cry out 'ma ma'
meaning 'I wanr mama'. O r a child may point to a shoe and say 'mama', mean-
ing 'The shoe belongs to marna', Research has show n that the young child
can express a variety of seman tic functio ns and complex ideas by the use of
single words (Greenfield & Smith, 1976; Bloom, 1973; Scollon, 1976). In such
cases, the child uses a single ward to express the thoug ht for which matu re
speakers will use a whole sentence. Ir is because of th is who le sente nce func-
tion that th is aspect of one-wo rd speech is often referred to as ' holophrastic',
where 'holo' ind icates whole, and ' phras' indicates phrase or sentcnce .
8 PSYCHOLIN GU ISTICS

Actua lly, it is quit e remarkabl e how inventi ve children can be in th e use

of single words. Researchers have noted that children may describ e a com-
plex situatio n by using aseries of single-word holophrases. For exarnple,
'peach, Daddy, spoon' was used to describ e a situation where Daddy had cut
a piece of peach that was in a spoon (Bloom, 1973), and 'car, go, bus' was
used to describ e a situatio n in which hearing th e sound of a car rerninded
the child that she had been on a bus th e day before (Scollon, 1976). These
str ings of words are not yet sente nces, because at th e end of each wor d the
child pauses slightly and uses a fallin g int onation of the sort that is used by
mature speakers to signal the completion of a sentence.
It is often not easy, of course, to interpret what a child is intending to
convey by the single word . And, while knowing the child, th e child's previous
experiences, and elements of the present situatio n will serve to aid in th e
int erpretation of an utterance, even the most attenti ve parents are frequ entl y
un able to interpret utteran ces which th eir children produ ce. Such failures
in communication may provide children with an imp etu s to imp roving their
conununicative language ability. T hey will discover th at longer, more elabor-
ate constructions will better serve thei r communicative needs, needs which
becom e mor e varied and complex as they grow older. Incidentally, we ofte n
use the traditional term 'utterance' rather th an 'sentence' in or der to avoid
disputes as to whether what th e child says is tru ly a sente nce or whethe r it
is gra mmatical. T he advant age of th e term 'utterance' is that it describ es
what the child says without having to wor ry about th e assignment of
sente nce hood or grammaticality to what was said.

1. 1.2.3. Telegrophic speech: nvo- and three-word utteronces

C hildren do not proceed as rapidly to two-word utteran ces as one migh t
expect. Why thi s should be the case is a matte r of conj ecture, although it
is our view th at children must first becom e aware th at adding mor e word s
will imp rove communication , e.g. 'tu mmy hurt' is more effective than just
'hurt' or 'tummy' . In any case, around 2 years of age or so childre n begin to
produce rwo- and three-word utterances.
Table 1.1lists a number of typical two-word utterances along with what
a matu re speaker might say in th e same circumstances . T he possible pur-
pose of each utt erance is indicated, as are some of the semantic relations
involved.

Variety of pllrposes and semantic relations

T he most stri king features about the dozen and a half or so very ordin ary
utterances shown here are the variety ofpllrposes and the complexity of semantic
relations which they exhibit. Regarding purpose, th e child uses langua ge to
requ est, warn, name, refuse, brag, question , answer (in response to questions),
and inform. In ord er to gain th ese ends, the utterances involve such semantic
Table 1.1. Two-word cbild utterances and tbeir semantic analysis

Child utterance Mature speaker utterance Pur pose Semantic relations (expressed or im plied)

Want coo kie. I want a coo kie. Requ est (Experience r)-State-Object
More mil k. I wan t so me more milk. Requ est (Experiencerj-Stare -Object; Quantificatio n
J oe see. I (Joe) see you . Inforrning Experiencer-S tate-(Object)
My cup. T his is my cup. Warni ng Possession
Mommy chair. T his chair belo ngs to Mommy. Warning Possession
Mommy chair. T his chair belo ngs to Mommy. Answer to Q uestion Possession
Mommy cha ir. Mommy is sitti ng in the chai r. Answer to Q uestion Location
Big boy. I am a big boy. Braggin g Attrib ution
Red car . T hat car is red. Naming Attribution :I:
T hat car. T hat is a car, Naming Equation o
:E
No sleep . I don 't want to go to sleep. Refusal Experiencer-State-Negation n
:I:
Not tired. I am not tired. Refusal Experiencer-State -Negation r-
Where doll? Wher e is th e doll? Q uestion Location Cl
;0
m
Truck table. T he tru ck is on the table. Info rming Location Z
D add y run. D addy is ru nning. Informing Agent-Action r-
m
Joe push. I (Joe) pushe d th e cat . Informi ng Agent-Action-(Obj ect) :>
;0
Push cat. I pushed th e car. Informing (Agentj-Action-Objecr z
r-
G ive candy. G ive me the candy. Requ est (Agen t)-Action- Receiver-O bject :>
z
Cl
c
:>
Cl
m

co
10 PSYCHOLI NGUIST ICS

relation s and concepts as agen t, action, experiencer, receiver, state, object,

possession , location, artribution, equation, negation, and quantification .'

Low incidence offimetion words

A second fearure of the child's ut terances is the low incidence of function
wor ds such as articles, prepositio ns, and th e copula 'be' . Rather, it is nouns,
verbs, and adjectives which mainly appear in the utterances, T his is not
sur prising when one considers that these are the most infor mative dasses
of words and would be the first that children would learn to und erstand.
T hc meanings of function words, toJohn, witb M ary, tbe car, candy and cake,
could never be determ ined if the meanin gs of nouns, verbs, arid adjectives
were not known. Given knowledge of th e words ' toy' and 'table', a child
could guess what function a preposition like 'o n' migh t signify when hearing
the sente nce 'T he toy is on the table' in a sirnat ional context where a toy is
'on' a table. In othe r situations the idea 'under', for example, may be suggested.
Fro m a listen er 's point of view, a similar siruation obta ins, A child's
utterance which consisted of 'The is on the' (acrually children never create
such utterances) obviously would have less communicative irn pact th an 'toy
table'. It is because children's utteran ces at this stage appear to have the
cha racter of a telegram message, i.e. they are short and mainly composed of
conte nt words, that this phase of speech dcvelopm ent is often re ferre d to as
th e telegrapbic stage. T his is not to imply that the child is purposefully
omitting function words, as a matu re speaker does when writing a telegram.
but rather th at the child has only learned content words and has yet to learn
funct ion words,

Close approximation of tbe la1zguage's word order

The final feature of th e child's utterances which might be noted is th e closc
correspond en ce of th e child's word order to that of proper sente nces. The
child learn ing English tends to say 'My cup' rath er than 'Cup my', 'Not
tired ' rather th an 'T ired not' , and ' Daddy come' rath er than 'Come Daddy'
when describing the arrival of Daddy. T hus, even with rwo-word ut terances,
the child exhibits some learning of th e wor d or der of the langnage. This
is not to say th at th e child does not produ ce significant deviation s, nor is this
a sufficient basis for d aiming that th e child realizes that different ward
ordcrs signal different semantic relations. Yet it does show th at the child has
acquired a signifieant aspect of th e grammar of Eng lish which will later
enable th e child to comprehend and produce appro pria te utteran ces.

Sy ntactic vs. semantic analysis

It is worth observing here that the speec h prod uction evidence for the
conceprual developrn ent of young children has appeared relatively recentl y,
mainly in the 1970s. It was only in th e 1960s that child langua ge acquisition
research was seriously begun. T he focus was on syntax, not semantics, because
 HOW CH ILD REN LEA RN LANGUAGE 11

C ho msky's syntactic- based the ory of grammar was looked to as a sourc e of

ideas fo r analysis and C ho msky did not detail the semant ic component in
his gramma r. T heorists, during that period, sougilt to characte rize children's
utterances wholly in terms of syntactic for m.
Fo r children at th e two- and three-wo rd stage, th ere was little for the-
ori sts following such a theory to do but d assify utterances in term s of
seque nces or grammat ical classes, e.g. 'M ommy chair' = Nooun + Noun, and
'Truck tablc' = Noun + Nooun (Braine, 1963; Brown & Bellugi, 1964; M cN eill,
1970). H owever , characterizing utt erances wholly in terms of syntactic form
fails to unc over irnporta nt inform ation : th e variety of serna ntic relat ion s and
purposes for which utterances are used. Simply analysing th e word dasses
yields data of littl e imp ortance, Fo r example, while 'Mommy chair' and
'Truck table' are both Noun + Nooun sequences, the first may involve the
conce pt of possession ('Mommy's chair ') while the seco nd may involve th at
of location ('T ru ck on table'). Such conce pts would be missed in a simple
word -dass analysis. Because childre n in using two- and three -wor d utter-
ances tend to use only a few gramma tical d asses (nouns, verbs, adjectives),
th e result is relatively few uniqu e sequen ces of word dasses. Co nsequendy
little is revealed by werd-elass analyses and the so-called 'Pivot-Open' gram-
mars which were attempte d to account for such data. (For goo d detailed
cr iticisms of chi ldren's grammars based on word classes, see de Villiers &
de Villiers, 1978: 70; and Ingram, 1989: 263-7.)
An increasin g awareness of semanti c aspects of language arose in the
late 1960s with th e prop osal of semant ically based grammars such as those
of th e Ge ne rative Semanti cists and o f Fillmo re 's Semantic Cases. M ost
child langu age ana lysts have been giving serious consideratio n to semantics
ever smce.

I. 1.2.4. Morpheme acquisition

O nce two- and three-word ut terances have been acquired, childrcn have
some thing on which to elabo rate , They starr to add function words and
inflections to th eir uttera nces. Fun ction words like th e prepositions 'i n' and
'on ', th e articles ' the', 'a', and 'an' , the modals 'ca n' , and 'will', and the auxili-
aries 'd o', 'be', and 'have', begin to appea r, togeth er with infieaions such as
the plural Isl o n 'cats', and /zl on 'dogs' , and tense markin gs such as the It l
past tense form o n 'wo rked' .

Tbe Broum morpbeme acquisition researcb

The most no tabl e piece of research on morphem e acquisition to date is th at
done by the noted psycholinguist Roger Brown (1973). In a long-term and
detailed srudy with three children, Brown focused on th e acquisition of
different function wor ds and inflections in English. He fou nd that children
acquired the mo rph em es in a relati vely similar order,
 10

Table 1.2 . How psychological variables explain order of learning 0/ morpbemes

Morpheme name and concept Example Learnin g variables

Ob servability Meaningfuln ess Soun d signal Sum mary

of referent of referent for referent
PSYCHOLI NGUIST ICS

I. (Prese nt) Progressive: M ary playing H igh H igh H igh H H H

conti nuing action
2. Prep ositions: location in, on H igh H igh High H H H
3. Plu ral: 1 vs. more th an 1 object Is/, /z/, l izl H igh High Low H H L
4. Past Irregular: past time came, wellt, fell Low/Med H igh H igh UM H H
5. Possessive: possession Is/ , /z/, li zl Hi gh Hi gh Low H H L
6. Co pula 'be' U nco ntractible: What is it? Low Low Hi gh L L H
connecto r with tense
7. Articles: one; previous reference a, an, the Low Me dium High L M H
8. Past Regular: past time It/, Id / , l idl Low/Med M edium Lo w UM M L
9. T hird Person Regular : Is/ , /z/ , l izl Low Low Low L L L
3rd person present singu lar
10. T hird Person Irregular does, has Low Low H igh L L H
11. Auxiliary 'be' U ncont ractible: Is Mary happy? Low Low Hi gh L L H
tense carrier
12. Copula 'be' Contractible: M ary 's hun gry. Low Low Low L L L
connector with tense
13. Auxiliary 'be' Co ntractible: M ary 's playing. Low Low Lo w L L L
ten se carr ier
 HOW CH IL D REN LEARN LANG UAG E 13

Broum 's order of morpbeme acquisition

Table 1.2 shows the list of morphemes and the general order in which they
were acquired . Other studies have genera lly confirmed Brown's results , Even
tho ugh other researchers have found some variation among children in terms
of the speed in which they learned the morphemes, noneth eless the order
was generally the same (Lahey, Liebergott, Ches nik, Me nyuk, & Adams,
1992). A similar acquisition order of these English morphemes has also been
foun d for childre n with language disorders (Paul & Alforde, 1993).
IncidentaIly, while Table 1.2 appears to present 13 different morphemes,
actually the number is 14 since 'on' and 'in' are really two separate morphemes;
they are treated by Brown as one because they are similar in functio n and
were acquired at about the same time (Brown, 1973, P: 274). Also in the table,
sampie child utte rances are sometimes presented. T his is done to iIlustrate
more clearly certain of the various mor phemes.
Mo rphemes towards the top of the table are acquired before those towards
the bottom . T hus, we see that Present Progressive/ Prepositions ('in' and
'o n'), and the Plural were learned weil in advance of mor phemes like the
Article, T hird Person (Regular and Irregular), and the Auxiliary 'be' in both
its Uncontractible and Contrac tible forms.
A note is in order here on Co ntrac tible and Uncontrac tible forms and on
the uses of 'be'. An 'Uncontracti ble' form is one where contraction is not
permitted. T hus, for example, in 'What is it?' or 'ls Mary happy?' the copula
'be' is considered uncont ractible because the contrac ted form of the ques-
tions, 'What's it?' or 'S'Mary happy?', is generally ungrammatical or not
widely used. Incidentally, here the function of 'be' is that of the main verb
of the sentence, a copula which joins othe r basic parts of a sentence. T his is
different from the function of the auxiliary 'be' in 'Jo lm is eating ice-crearn'
where 'eat' is the main verb and where 'be' is used to serve that verb as a
. marker of time such as present or past ('is eating' as opposed to 'was eating') .
As for a Co ntractible form , 'Mary's hungry' is as grammatical as its corres-
ponding non-co ntracted form, 'M ary is hungry'.

Why this order ofacquisitioni

T hat the morphemes should have been acquired in this order has been the
subject of much speculation. Brown checked frequency of occurrence of the
morph emes in adult speech to see if more highly used morphemes were
learn ed faster by th e child. H e found no relationship. H e the n considered
that the order reflected an increasing order of semantic or grammatical
complexity. For example, Plural is learn ed early because it only requires the
idea of ' number', whereas the copula 'be' is more complex because the child
needs to apply both number and tense to select which form of the copula
to use (Kess, 1992, p. 294). Others, like Du lay, Burt, and Krashen (1982),
for example, suggest that there is a sort of predetermined order in the
child's mind which is governed by as yet un knoum mechanisms, and that the
14 PSYCHOLINGU ISTICS

morphemes app ear in th e orde r they do because of such mech anisms. W e do

not agree. A less meraph ysical explanatio n is available.

Our explanation of tbe order ofacquisition

Altho ugh it has been nearly three decades since Brown 's theory of morpherne
acquisition was first presen ted, no th eory to date ot her th an th at of Steinberg
(1982, 1993) has adequate ly explained that order. The order of morpheme
acqu isition can be explained directly and simply by applying psychological
learning prin ciples, principles that are un iversal and accepted. As such, th ey
will hold for childre n learning the gra mmatical morpheme s of any language.
T he three variables which we posit to explain th e general or der of acquisi-
tio n, according to Steinb erg, are: (1) Ease of Obseniability of Ref erent, (2)
lvleallillgfllilless of Ref erent, and (3) Distinctiueness of tbe SOl/lid Signal tubich
lndicates tbe Ref erent. T he three variables are further based on the prin ciple
th at generally what th e child first und erstand s will be th at which th e child
first produces. T hese variables affecr second- Ianguage learning as weil.

Variable I: ease of obseruability of rejerent

Wheth er an object, situation, or event is or is not easily observed by th e
child is essential for learning. The more easily a child can see or hear or
othe rwise experience th e referent, e.g. seeing a dog, smelling a coo kie, hear-
ing a car , feeling hu ngry , th e more likely are such refere nts - in conjunction
with the speech sounds spo ken by oth ers - to be stored in mem ory. For
exampl e, if someone were to say 'The dog is barking' as opposed to 'The
do g barked ' or 'The dog will bark ', the refer ent in th e first sente nce will be
more saliently observable because it involves a present ongoing action , and
thi s difference will affect learning.

Variable 2: 11Ieallillgfllilless of referent

Referent objects, siruations, and events which are of intere st to th e child and
abo ut which the child desires to co rnm unicare will be learn ed faster th an
th ose which lack such interest, Ir is only natu ral th ar th e child will rem em ber
th e more highly meaningful referen ts.
C hild utteran ces reflect th e concepts which the child wishes to communic-
ate, e.g. 'Car table', 'Car goi ng ', 'D oll sitti ng', ' Doll walking'. When these
highl y meaningful iterns are compa red to such gramrnatical function irerns
as th e Arti cle, Auxiliary ' be', Copula 'be', and T hird Person marker, it is
clear th at function items have little inh erent meaning for the child who is
just beginn ing to learn th e lan guage. T hese are not, th erefore, item s which
we would expec t a child to learn qu ickly.

Variable 3: distinctiueness ofsound in signalling tbe referent

In orde r to learn amorpheme, besides th e observa bility and meaningfuln ess
of th e rcferent, it is essential th at the child be able to identi fy th e speech
sound that signals that rnorphem e. The greater th e sound distincti on involved,
th e easier it will be for a morpheme signal (consisring of on e or more
 HOW CHILDR EN LEA RN LA NGUAGE 15

phonemes) to be learne d. For example, compare the U ncontractible Co pula

in 'What is it?' with the C ontractib le Auxiliary 'Mary's playing'. T he form er
case with 'is' is more distin ctive from a hearin g point of view because it is a
separate wor d with a vowel, and, as a separate word, it rece ives some degree
of stress in a ph rase or sentence. This gives prominen ce to th c sound. In
con trast, - ' 5 is a consonant which is manifested as a suffix and does not
receive stress. Sim ilarly, the differen ce between 'M ary playing' and 'Mary's
playing' is com paratively slight, again because th e -'5 is with out a vowel and
does not rece ive any stress; in normal rapid speech such asound difference
between th e two senten ces is no t easy to distingu ish.

Rating tbe morpbemes 011 these variables

Let us rate the morphemes in the Brown stu dy on each of these variables,
assigning a value of Hi gh (H) , Medi um (M), or Low (L) depending on th e
degr ee to which we estimate th e morpheme to manifest that variable. T hus,
for example, for th e child's utteran ce of No. I, 'Mary playi11g', we assign
a Hi gh on Ob servability (the conti nuing actio n is easy to see), a High on
M eaning fulness (the whole event is of great interest to the child), and a
H igh on Sound Signal because th e '- ing' suffix is easy to distinguish ('play'
vs. 'playing') when the child hears this spoke n. T hus, in the Summary
column th is morpheme receives a H -H-I-I patrern .
In contrast, for No o. 13, Auxiliary ' be' Contractible, we assign a Low on
Obs erva bility because even with ou t th e -'5 th e child probably assumes th at
the '-ing' in ' playing' already imp lies pr esent tim e in addition to cont inuing
actio n. U nt il th e child learns to und erstand and wan ts to express ideas of the
past which involve a continuing actio n, like 'Mary was playing' , th e child will
not be inte rested in such amorpheme. A Low is also given on M eaningfulness
for the same reason . Since th e - '5 is barel y discernible at th e end of a noun ,
it is assigne d a Low on Sound Signal. T hus, in th e Summary colurnn, th is
mo rph eme receives an L-L-L patt ern.
Looking at the top of th e Summary column, we see th ree Hi ghs for
N o . I , (Present) Progressive, and No o. 2, Prepositions. As we proceed down-
ward s in th e order, th e number of Highs decreases on the Observability and
Mea ningfu lness variables; there is H -I -I-L for No. 3, Plura l, until at the
bottom we see L-L-H for No. 11, Uncont racti ble Auxiliary, and L-L -L for
both No. 12, Co ntracted Co pula, and No. 13, Co ntractible Auxiliary. C learly,
the more H ighs for a morpheme, th e faster th e learn ing, and, converse ly,
th e more Lows, th e slower the learn ing.
The data are remarkably uniform with respect to the postu lated variables.
T his could hard ly be otherw ise, on re flection, given th e stro ng psychological
drive which mo tivates the child in its search for meanin g in speech. Thus,
morpheme referen ts which are mo re observable and carry more meaning
will be mor e quickly learn ed th an those which are no t; this is why we find
morphernes whose referents are less observab le and less meaningful, genera lly
the so-ca lled grammatical function morphemes, towards the bottom of the list.
16 PSY CHOll NGUISTICS

The morphemes in the top thi rd of the table are undoubtedly qualit-
atively different from the morphemes in th e bottom third of the table. The
summary ratings reflect that intuition. This being the case, we can conclude
th at the th ree variables provide a general explanatio n for the learning or der
of morph emes.

Explaining the orderof some morpbemes by the three variables theory

Let us now look in some detail at how the variables operate with one another
so as to provide th e learning outco mes that they do . In this regard, it will
be inst ructive to consi der three qu estions on morpheme acquisition order
which highlight the opera no n of these variables. T hey are: (1) Why are
Progressive and Pr epositions 'in' and 'on' learned earliest?; (2) Why is Plur al
and Possessive learn ed befor e Third Person ?; (3) Why is Past Irregular
learn ed before Past Regular?
1. J,Vby are Progressive and Prepositions 'in' and 'on' learned earliesti Objects
in the child's world are of great importance to the child. T he Progressive
(conti nuing action) morph eme involves th e action of those objects, while
prepositions involve the physicallocati01l of those objects.
The Progressive morph eme relates to th e action of objects, where th e
action continues th rou gh present tim e. A cat jumping, a car moving, a baby
crying, for example, all involve objects in actio n, A mother says, 'T he dog
is barkin g' or 'The car is coming'. T he events which interest th e child
stimulate the child's int erest in what the mother is saying . H owever, not all
verbs are used with -ing at th e sarne time. T he Progressive tends to appear
first on verbs involving durative, non- completed, events such as 'play' and
' hold' (Bloom, Lift er, & H afitz, 1980). This would serve to increase the
meanin gfuln ess of th e Progressive morpheme since durative actio n would tie
in with the meaningfulness of the word s that the child has learn ed; these are
usually associated with continuing events such as 'pl aying' or 'running'. T he
Progr essive is used on non-durative verbs such as 'break' and 'spill' later in
the child 's speech development.
Not only are children interested in the actions of objects, th ey are inte r-
ested in their location as weil. T he prepositions 'in' and 'on ' are highly
meanin gful because they sign al the locations of objects, objects which are
imp ortan t in terms of meanin g and communication , e.g. 'Doll 0 11 box' as
opposed to 'Doll in box'. T he prepositions 'in' and 'o n' are learn ed prior
to other prepositions for rwo reasons. (1) T hey are linearly sandwiched
berween rwo con crete nouns (e.g. 'doll in box'), the referents of which are
meaningful and easily observable in the physical environment. (2) The refer-
ents re rna in stationary in physical space with respect to one ano the r, thu s
allowing for ease of observability. Such clear ly observable object- plus-object
relations make these part icular prepositions relatively easy to leam. On the
other hand , other prepositions such as 'to', 'at', and 'with' often involve
more com plex sernantic constructions, e.g. Action + Relation (prepositio n)
+ Obj ect: 'walk to th e schoo l', 's tand at the door', 'go with Daddy'. The
 HOW CHILDREN LEARN LANGUAGE 17

grearer the semantic complexity, the slower will be the learnin g (all other
thin gs being equal),
2. Wby are Plural and Possessive learned before Tbird Person? Since all three
regular morphemes of the Plural, Possessive, and T hird Person Singular are
suffixes which have exactly the same sound forms, for example, 'dog/zl'
(Plural), 'Bob /z/' (Poss.), and 'sing/z / ' (Third Person), all end with /z/. In
facr, the three forms of each suffix for each morpheme are exactly th e same,
/s /, /z / , and / iz/. The selection of these suffixes is governed by the sarne
sound conditions (the final sound of the word), Since the three different
morphemes have exactly the same sound patte rn characteristics, the reason
for thei r differential acquisition order must be due to factors otber tban the
sound system; these facto rs are Observability and Meaningfulness.
T he Plural and Possessive are much more involved with observable and
meaningful referents for the child than the Third Person Singular. T hese
[wo morphemes involve physical events, siruations, and objects that are readily
observed in the environment, e.g. for the Plural the child can easily distin-
guish one versus [wo cookies and one versus [wo or more cats, while, for the
Possessive, the child can easily distinguish his or her toys from ano ther
child's toys. T hus th ese are morphemes whose referenrs are easily noticeable
and, in addition, involve referents which are highly meaningful to the child.
T he T hird Person morpheme, on the other hand, involves th e noting of
a singular T hird Person referent , a much less obvious kind of object, being
defined by a more abstract relationship. T he child rypically must pick up the
use of the abstract first and second person (speaker-Iistener) relationship
(I and You) before making the Other (non -speaker, non-hearer) distinction.
We call this an 'abstract' relationship because the '1' changes on the basis of
who is speaking, and the 'You' changes according to who is listening. T he
Person role is more abstract than the unchanging concrete objecrs which are
named in the Plural and the Possessive.
Further more, the idea of T hird Person presupposes prior awareness of
the Plural morpheme because the T hird Person is on ly applied in th e singu-
lar case ('T he boy uiants candy' but 'T he boys tuant candy'.) T hen, too, the
T hird Person serves little to advance communication since even witho ut
it the child can und erstand the speech of others and can be perfectly under-
stood when he or she speaks. T he learning of the Third Person is thus
a formidable task when contrasted with the relatively simple morp heme
aspects of plurality and possession.
3. Wby is Past Irregular leam ed before Past Regzdar? Since the idea of past
is involved with both the Past Irregular and Regular forms, the explanation
for the order of acquisition of these [wo types of past forms must lie other
than in O bservability, i.e. noting that a certain sound indicates th at what is
being said concerns an event which occurred in the past. T hat leaves the
othe r [wo variables: Meaningfulness and Sound Signal. Before we focus on
these variables, it will be instructive to compare th e verb forms of the present
tense with those of the past, for both Irregular and Regular verbs:
18 PSYCHOLING U ISTIC S

b n glllar in Present/Past: eome/enme, golwent, eat/a te, break / broke, fallIfeIl,

run/ ron, singlsang
Regular in Present/Past: jump/ jum ped, jog/ jogged, want/wanted

If one says these pairs alo ud it will be obvious that th e sound ehanges
fro m Present to Past are mu eh more no tieea ble for th e irregular verbs th an
for th e regu lar ones , T he soun d suffixes of th e Regular Past forms are Itl
( jumped), Idl (jogged), and l id l (wantedi), with the first (Wo (/tl and /d/)
being especia lly hard to hear. Sinee asound differenee must first be notieed
and bro ug ht to atte ntion before it can be learn ed, we woul d expee t th e very
noti eeable irregular forms to be learn ed faster, and th at is th e ease. So , th e
So und Signa l is a erucia l vari able here. H owever, Meaningfu lness is also
at work here beea use, although th e regu lar ver bs are mo re nu merous, th e
ir regular ver bs tend to be highly im po rta nt ones in everyday life. T hese are
th e so-ea lled 'strong' vcrbs of E ng lish. T his extr a mean ingfulness gives th e
irregu lar fo rrns an additio na l boo st in th e proeess of learning, whieh is
why in T able I.2 the Past Irregu lar is given a High on Meaningfulness bur
th e Past Regul ar is on ly given a Medium. But th is is not th e who le story.
Beeause th e irregula r verbs are the most eommo n ones in everyday Iife, th ey
tend to oee ur mo re frequentl y (as ind ividu als) tha n the regu lar verbs. This
higber frequency ofoccurrence o f irregul ar ver bs would also serve to make these
verbs easier to learn. Then, too, there is a wild eard operati ng here whe n we
eo mp are th e Irr egular with the Regul ar Past. T he Irregul ar involves the
learning of a nu mb er (unspecified) of spe cial words for the past forms. T he
Regular, however , in volves th e learning of a rule. We are likely to think that
learn ing a ru le is more diffieult th an learning a number of single wo rds,
This, th en , is ano the r variable to th ro w into the predietion equation.
Fro m th e examp les given above, it is clear th at th e three cornrnon psyeh o-
logieal learn ing variables of Referent O bserva bility, Referent Meaning fulness,
and distin etiven ess of Sou nd Signa l adeq uate ly serve to explain th e learning
of various morphe mes and th e o rder in whieh they are learne d. Fre que ncy
of oeeurre nee operates too but only with in th e eonfines of th e th ree det er-
mining varia bles. See Gi llette, G leitman, G leitma n, and Lederer (1999) for a
reeen t eonsideration of obse rva bility as pro viding an informational eue on
voca bulary learning.

1.1.3. Later Speech Stages: Rule Formation for Negatives,

Questions, Relative Clauses, Passives, and Other
Complex Struetures
With the produetion of lon ger utteranees, simple struetu res are e1aborated
to yield mo re eom plex ones. Negative sentenees, qu estion forrns, passives, and
relative clauses are just a few of the many eomplex mi es whieh ehildren aequire
in the ir first five years. (Rules are used here in a genera l sense and may be
 H OW CHI LO REN LEARN LAN GUA GE 19

interpreted as principles, parameters, limits, etc. Chomskyan theory is by no

means necessarily implied by the use of these terms.) Although rnany other
rules are also being acquired, we will sclect for considera tion the complex
rules used in forming negations, questions, relative clauses, and passives. Since
this is the general order of acquisition of strucrures, we will use this orde r in
presenting these constructions. It should be borne in mind, however, that the
learning of some of these constructions sometimes overlaps, such as in the case
of negation and question , which share a number of grarnmatical fearures.

I. 1.3. I. Negation formation

Negation deuelopment
Before presenting some of the acquisition data concerni ng negation, it may
be useful to review some of the fcarures of the negarion process. Let us
consider some sente nces and their negations.

I. Affirmative:Kim is hungry.
I. Negative: Kim is not hungry.
Kim isn't hun gry.
2 Affirmative: Kim
I. wanted some candy.
2 Negative:
I. Kim did not want any candy.
Kim didn't want any candy.

Features of negation
In learn ing to produce these negations, the child must learn a number
of different things. In considering these fearures, let us make negative the
affirmat ive sentence of:
Kim wanted some candy,
I. Where to insert the negative marker.

(a) If the verb is 'be', then NEG is placed after rhe copula 'be' form . T hus,
'Kim is NEG happy' becomes 'Kim is not happy'.
(b) If the verb is not 'be ', then 'not' is placed before the verb. T hus,

Kim no t want + PAST some candy ,

2. When and where to insert auxiliary 'do'.
Insert 'do' when the verb is one ot her than 'be' ('have' is a special
verb, e.g. 'Kim did not have any money' and 'Kim had no money',
which will not be considered here). T hus, we get
Kim do not want+PAST some candy.
'do ' is not inserted if th ere is a modal (will, can) or auxiliary (be, have)
present, as in 'Kim will not want to go'.
3. When auxiliary 'do' is used, then the tensejrom the verb is shifted to the
auxiliary 'do'. T hus, from 'Kim do not wanr + PAST .. .', we get
20 PSYCHO LING UI STICS

Kim do + PAST not want some candy.

T hen, lexicalization (the asterisk here and elsewhere indicates
ungram maticality):
• Kim did not want some candy.
4. Lexical Concordances must be made in the case of the negative, e.g.
'some' must change to 'any' so as to yield the grammatical
Kim did not want any candy.
5. Op tionally, AUX + NEG ('di d' + 'not') can be contracted to 'di dn't',
T his would provide us with
Kim didn't want any candy.
The above features of negation must be raken into account by any theory
of grammar. While in the above exarnple, for simplicity's sake, operations
were applied to an affirmative sentence, a semantic or conceptual representa-
tio n of such a sentence can (and should) be the point of origin. Negation
featu res therefore may include meaning term s. T he surface string of words
must be the same whatever theory of grammar is being considered, as must
be the features of negation.
Negation is one of the earliest sentence structure rules acquired by chil-
dr en. According to the classic research of Klima and Bellugi (1966) and
others who later replicated their wor k, there is a consistent pattern in this,
with negation being acquired in three main periods. Sampie sente nces
and their analysis follow below for each period. Incidentally, these data are
those taken from the same three children whose morpheme acquisition was
described above in the Brown srudy.
Period 1. 'N o money', 'N ot a teddy bear', 'No play that', 'No fall', 'No the
sun shining' , 'No singing song' .
In this, the earliest period, a negation marker (NEG), in the form of 'no'
or 'not', is placed at the front of an affirmative utterance (U). Thus we see
utterances typically of the form , Neg + U ('No fall'). Children everywhere
seem to use much the same pattern in early acquisition of negation. French
children place 11011 or pas before U (Gregoi re, 1937), while ]apanese children
place the ] apanese negative marker nai after the U (U + N eg) in accordance
with the struc rure of their language (McNeili & M cN eill, 1968).
Period 2. 'I don't want it' , ' I don 't know his name', 'We can't talk', 'You
can't dance', ' Book say no', 'Touch the snow no', 'That no Mommy', 'T here
no squirrels', 'He no bite you', 'I no want envelope' .
In this second period, the negative marker tends to appear int ernally
within the utterance rather than outside it as in the previous period, and the
auxiliaries 'do' and 'can' appear with the negation marker. Klima and Bellugi
believe that children treat 'don't' and 'can't' as single words and do not
analyse them as Aux + Neg. T hat the uncontracted form s of 'do' and 'can'
do not appear in the dara is one argument which they present in support of
their view , Utte rances are still of a rather crude nature, though, and negative
imperatives, 'Touch the snow no' ('Don' t touch the snow'), are as poorly
 HOW CH ILDREN LEARN LAN GUAGE 21

fonn ed as the y were in the previous period (''No0 play that' ('Don' t play with
that'), 'No fall' (' Don' t fall': in one interprerationj ).
Period 3. 'Paul can't have one', 'This can't stick', 'I didn't did it', 'You
didn 't caught rne', 'Cause he won't talk', 'Donna won't let go', 'I am not a
doctor', 'This not ice crearn', 'Paul not tired' , 'I not hurt hirn', 'I not see you
anymore', 'Do n' t touch the fish', 'Don'r kick my box'.
In this thi rd period, the period before perfecr negatives are formed , the
copu la 'be' and the modal 'will' appear with negatio n and imperative negat-
ives are fonned with 'do' rather than th e simple negative (' Don't touch the
fish' as opposed to 'Touch the snow no' in earlier periods) . The child now
has a goo d idea of when 'do ' must be inserte d ('You didn' t caught me' , 'I
didn't did it', 'Don't kick my box') and when 'do' is not inserted ('I am not
a doctor ', 'Donna won' t let go') . T he child still makes errors but seems to
grasp the basic notion th at 'do' is not added when th ere is a modal ('can ',
'will': 'This can' t stick [adherer]', 'Donna won't let go') or when 'be' is th e
verb ('I arn not a doctor '), The children's rnastery of negation at this period
is nearly complete. Only a number of relatively rninor problerns, such as
assignment of tense to AUX ('You didn 't caught me', 'I didn 't did ir'),
rernain to be resolved. In th e forrner case the child seems to be confused
about the morpheme structure of 'caught' as 'catch + PAST ' prob ably be-
cause it is an exception whose present form is 'catch', In the latter case, the
child may have confused th e 'do' of the main verb with th e 'do' of AUX.
After th is period, it is only a matter of months before most of th e prob -
lems in negative marking are successfully dealt with, altho ugh children may
rnake occasional mistakes for years after . (The first author observed such
occasional errors in the speech of his 5-year-old niece along with errors in
other morp hemes involving exceptions.)
T he Klima and Bellugi contention that the negative rnarker first appears
outside of the utterance and then makes an internal shift in the second stage
has been criticized by some. In a srudy of children other than the three in
the data used by Klima and Bellugi, Bloom (1970) found that most of th e
utterances in which negation occurs in the initial position could be traced to
a denial of a previous adult utterance. Thus, instead of ''No 0 doll sleep' being
a single sentence indicating 'doll is not sleeping', as per Klima and Bellugi's
analysis, the utterance is regarded as ''No o. Do ll sleep', where the ''No
0' is con-
sidered as a separate response indicating, for example, "That is not correct',
T he whole utterance may then be interpreted as rwo sente nces, in effect,
'That is not right, T he doll is sleeping.'
Drozd (1995) similarly argues that th e utterance initial negation rnarker
can often be explained in context as exclamatory negation. For exarnple, a
child's utterance such as 'No Na thaniel a king' in response to his moth er's
teasing hirn about his [Nathaniel's) behaviour with 'Is 'No athaniel a king?'
could just as easily be explained by understand ing the negation as 'It's not
tru e that I [Natha niel] am king' or in (Wo sentences, 'It's not tru e. N athaniel
22 PSYCHO LI NG UISTICS

is not king.' N ath aniel's respo nse also could be unde rstood as ' Do n't say
arhani el is a king' . H op efully, furt her research will be able to provide a
'No
resolutio n of this issue.
With regard to progress th rough the period s of negation, Klima and Bellugi
found th at the three children in th eir study all took abour six mo nt hs to pass
throu gh all th ree periods. T here were great ind ividual differences, however,
as to when they first began to use the negative (the first period): one of the
chi ldren began as early as 1 year 6 months of age, while the ot hers didn't
begin until they were 2 years 6 months. T he child who began earliest reached
Peri od 3 by 2 years , while th e others reached that same period around
3 years 6 mon th s. Such a difference dramatically demonstrates how vast
individual differences may be in the acquisition of speech . O ne child may
be uttering only single-wor d utterances at 24 months, while anothe r may be
pro ducing elaborate sentences. On the other hand, when they do start, most
seem to pass throug h a similar qu alitative sequential patt ern of development .

I . 1.3.2. Question formotions

T he learni ng of question forms also dem oristrares a com plex abstract task
which young children can solve. Two basic forms of th e questio n that have
been the focus of much research ar e Yes-No questions and WH questions. Yes-
No questions are ones which solicit a yes or no answer, e.g. ' Is Kim hu ngry?',
' Does Kim want some candy?' The WH question is on e that uses wbo, wbose,
wbat, wbere, wben, bow, wby, etc. and is a request for informa tion, 'Who
wants candy?', 'When will we go? ' Tag questions consist of seirences with
question endings such as: ' Peter will go, uion't be?' , 'The do g ate it, didn 't be?'
Some no tes on Yes-No questions and WH qu estions are now present ed.

Yes-No questions
The formation of Yes-No quesrio ns involves the same basic syntactic con-
siderations as in the formation of negatives. Declarative sentences which
have a copula 'be' , mod al, AUX, etc. must have th at item in th e front of
the sentence in a qu estion (Yes-No questio n Type I). For example,
'J ohn is a very tall boy' and 'ls J ohn a very tall boy?'
Here, copula 'be' is fron ted.
' Bobby can go to th e store' and 'Can Bob by go to the sto re?'
Modal is fro nted.
'M ary is singi ng now ' and 'Is M ary singing no w?'
AUX is fro nted.
In th e case of a lone verb (not a cop ula, no modal or AUX), AUX 'do '
must be added. And furt her , as in t he negative, the tense shifts from th e ver b
to th e AUX (Yes-No question Type 2). For exarnple,
'Kim wanted some candy' and 'Did Kim want allY candy?'
AUX added to front, tense shifts to AUX , lexical concor d,
 HOW CHILOREN LEARN LAN GUAGE 23

WH questions
T he WH que stion is so-called because of the similarity of the initial sound
of the various question word s: who, what, wbere, when, how, why, etc, In a
sense \VH words are PRO (reduced substitute) form s since they are form ed
by substitu ting the phra se which is targeted for questioning with an appro-
priate \VH word . T he WH word is always placed ar the beginni ng of the
sentence. As the following example sent ences show, making \VlI questions
involves a high degr ee of comp lexity which th e child must recogn ize and
inte rn alize:
' Tbe girl jump ed on the tab le' and 'Wbo jump ed on the table?'
WH for Subject N P.
'The girl hit tbe boy' and 'Wbo(m) did the girl hit ?'
WH for Obj ect 'No P.
'The baby is on the table' and 'Wbere is the baby?'
\VH for Pr ep Ph rase of Location .
'The monkey will be 01/ the table? become s 'Wbere will the monkey be?'
M odal fro nte d to follow \VH .
'T he monkey is sitt ing on tbe table' becomes 'Wbere is the monkey sitti ng?'
AUX fronted to follow "VH .
T he acquisition of question form s follows a basic pattern for children
(Klima & Bellugi, 1966; McNeill, 1970; Cazden, 1970). Interestingly, chil-
dren take the easy way and begin the pro ductio n of question s not th rou gh
the use of sentencc structu rc but by using inton ation. This is natu ral since in
hearing a sentence witho ut knowin g its meaning it is thc into nation pattern
that dom inates one 's att ention . The first period of question acqu isition is
thu s marked by the use of rising intonation, which may bc used with sing le
words or with phrases, such as 'Sit chair?', 'Ball go?', and some set ph rases
with 'whar' and 'where' , 'What's th at?', 'Where coo kie?'
The next phase consists of the use of Wl-l questions which are simply
tacked on to the beginning of an utteranc e in a similar pattern to nega-
tio n: 'Wbere my mittens?', ' H?1Jy you smiling?' , ' Wb at he can ride in ?', ' fVby
kitty can't stand up?' At th e same time Yes-No T ype 1 fronti ng is used,
'Will you help me?', as weil as Yes-No Type 2, 'Did I caug ht it?', 'Does lion
walk?'
T he final stage consists of the gradual emergence of tag questi ons with ,
at first, no negation on the tag, e.g. " He'1l catch cold, will he?' and then the
final emergence of the co rrect form , e.g., 'We had fun, did n't we?'. T hc full
form is usually acquired by the time children are 4 years old (Brown &
H an lon , 1970).
The order of acquisition of \VH wo rds follows a predictable sequence.
Typically, 'whar' and 'where' are learn ed first, with 'why' app earing next,
and then 'how' and 'when' (M. Smith, 1933; Tyack & Ingram, 1977). T he
order described here is usually explained as one of cogn itive growth on
the part of the child from th e co ncrete to the abstrac t; 'what' and 'where'
24 PSYCHOLINGUI STICS

referring to concrete entities and 'why', 'how', and 'when' to abstract concepts
such as motive, manner and time.
Ho wever, cognitive growth may not be the only factor affecting this order
since studies in second-Ianguage acquisition (Felix, 1976; Lightbown, 1978)
purport to show that older children who would have already developed both
rhe concrete and abstract concepts in their first language nonetheless acquire
the WH question forms in the same order in the second language! Bloom,
Merki n, and Wootten (1982), however, argue against this order, c1aiming
th at what is more likely to be operating here is the relationship of WH
forms to the verbs which th ey appear with. The WH words learned earliest
('what' , 'wherc', 'who'), they say, appear with verbs like 'be' and 'do', while
WH words learned later ('why', 'how', 'when') appear with descriptive verbs.
The learning of WH words may thus be related to learning the use of
certain types of verbs. T his may be true, but the order of WH word acquisi-
tion mayaiso lu ve to do with abstract or concrete concepts. A combination
of effects is quite possible.
There is also always the danger that the researcher will ascribe too much
knowledge to the child. T he child Illay not only be producing language
through use of grammatical rules, but also may be using other strategies
such as memorized chunks of language. For example, in the Bloom et al.
(1982) data, 'what' and 'where' often appeared in what might be considered
unanalysed chunks ('What's that?', 'What (X) doing?', 'What happened?',
'Where (X) go?'). O n the other hand, 'why' and 'how' did not appear to be
used as unanalysed chunks. Perhaps it is the frequent use of unanalysed chunks
that accounts for the earlier acquisition of 'what' and 'where' by children.

I. 1.3.3. Passive formation

Children begin to use more complex forms such as the passive much later
in their language development, perhaps due to its relatively infrequent use
by adults in speech to children (Wells, 1978). T he passive occurs so rarely
in children's spontaneous speech that researchers usually resort to analys-
ing the child's comprehension of the passive form or eliciting production
thro ugh imitation tasks. T he simple passive is related to the active in the
following way:
'T he boy pushed the truck'
'Tbe truc]: pushed tbe boy'
Agent subject and object NPs are reversed.
'The truck pushed by the boy'
'by' appears before agent NP.
'The truck be pushed by the boy'
AUX 'be' appears before the verb.
'The truck was pushed by the boy'
AUX is assigned same tense as on verb.
 H OW CH I LDR EN LEARN LAN GUAG E 25

The full passive can be produced, as in this example, or an abbreviated

('trunc ated') passive may be constructed where certain other subject N Ps do
not appear. Thus, 'The door was opened', where the agent NP is not real-
ized. Whil e certain complex passives may involve separate processes from
the active, the above steps provide the essential fearures of what a child must
know in comprehending the meaning of the passive and then producing it.
Ch ildren 's comprehension of the passive form does not begin until they
are around 4 years old. Production occurs much later. Before this, they rely
on word order or the probability of an event occurring. For example, in a
sentence like 'The candy was eaten by the girl' there is really only one likely
way to interpret the meanin g, that is, th e girl ate the candy since candy
doesn' t eat people.
H owever, someti mes the passive form is semantically reversible, when
both the subject arid th e object can serve as agent . Consi der 'The donkey
was kicked by the horse'. If children, as they do in the early stages of
acquisition, apply the strategy of interpreti ng the first noun as being the
agent of the utt erance (Bever, 1970), then they will arrive at the mistaken
interp retation that the donkey kicked the horse. T he children apply the
strategy of interp reting the subject as the agent rather than using the full
syntact ic structure to gain proper comprehension. At a later srage, children
will apply both semantic and syntactic cues for comprehension of passives,
and they do so in languages other than English as weil (Sinclair-de-Zwart &
Ferreiro, 1970; Caprez, Sinclair, & Studer, 1971). Interestingly, because many
langu ages have less complex passive forms than English, children learning
such a language, like Sesotho, may use the passive form of their language as
early as the age of 2 years (Dernuth, 1989, 1990).
In English, though, even arou nd th e age of 5 certain verbs used with the
passive still cause some comprehension prob lems for childre n. Action verbs
in passives are more easily understood ('T he mouse was bitte n by the squir-
rel') than are stative verbs ('The man was rememhered hy the boy') (Maratsos,
Kuczaj, Fox, & Chalkley, 1979). Yet there is more to be learned. According
to H organ (1978), it is only hy the age of 13 years (!) that children correcdy
produce agent-fi nal full passives with 'by' ('The door was opened by a man')
and instrumental passives using 'with' ('The door was opened with a key').
T he research mentioned earlier suggests that children are able to comprehend
and respond to such passive forms weil in advance of thei r heing able to
produce them.

1. 1.3.4. Other problems

Structures wirb tuio or 111O"e uerbs

As may be expected, th e acquisition of complex sentences, utterances con-
taining two or more verbs, occurs much later than the forms discussed
26 PSYCHO LING U I ST IC S

above, and may not be complete until the age of 11. Limber (1973) analysed
the emergence of these forms as they began to appear around the age of 2
or 3 years. Almost all of these complex forms consist of clauses thar are
attachcd to the end of utrerances, e.g, 'I want Bill to go'. Only much later
da clauses appear wirhin the utterances, e.g. 'T he man who lives bere is gone'.
Initially, object complernents such as 'I wanna go bome' appear. (An object
comp lement consists of the object plus anoth er verb.) Although the verb
'want' seerns to be the most comm on at this stage, as can be attested to by
any parent, othe r verbs also take corn plements. For exarnple, utterances such
as 'Watch me draw cirdes' and 'I sec you sit down' occur around the same
time. However, the verb 'want' is used in a wider range of const ructi ons and
may serve as a guide for children as they add other verbs to their vocabulary
that must follow similar rules.
Later, WH-dauses appear with abstract adverbials ('Can I do it toben
tue get bomei '). It is interestin g that the adverbs 'when', 'where', and 'how'
emerge before th e noun s that they rep lace. For example, one child produ ced
the sentence 'I show you where we went' with the adverb of place 'where'
about one mont h before producing 'I show you the place we went ' in which
the N P 't he place' is used instead of the adverb of location 'where' . Limb er
argues that this occurs because producing a sentence using adverbs like
'where' is less complex than one using ' the place' and hence the Wl-l -adverb
will tend to appear earlier. However, if one takes a meaning-based view
of gram mar, the WH-adverb is not likely to be a PRO fonn in the first
place, Rath er, phrases like 't he place', 'th e time', and 't he way' are lexical
realizations which derive from these ' VH fonns and thus occur much later
in sentences.

Ve,-b problems
Carol Cho msky (1969) found that some complex gram matical struc tu res
may not be acquired until quite late, even at the age of 10 or 11 years. She
looked at the application of the Mi nimal Distance Principle (MDP)
(Rosenbaum, 1967). When children use the M DP, they somet imes apply it
inco rrectly depending on the verb in the main clause. For example, in the
sentence "[obn told Bill to sbouel the driveway' it is clear to children that Bill
will do the shovelling. On the ot her hand, in a sentence such as 'John
promised Bill to shovel the driveway', children apply the same strategy and
assign the shovelling task to the d osest noun 'Bill' when they ought to be
inte rpreting the meaning so that it is J ohn who will do the work.
Another verb which causes the same problem is 'ask', Childre n ofte n
canno t distinguish berwccn the sentences 'I asked Mary what to do' (where
'I' is the subject of 'do') and 'I told Mary what to do' (where 'M ary' is the
subject of 'do'), In the beginning, 'ask' and 'tell' are not differentiated. T he
rwo verbs can becom e differentia ted, however, when a WH-dause is used;
to 'Ask Peter the colour of the doll's dress' children give th e answe mstead
 HOW CHILDR EN LEARN LA NGUA GE 27

of asking for the answer, but to 'Ask Peter tobat colour this tray is' they do
properly ask a question. There is confusion too betwecn 'ask' and ' tell' with
Wll-clauses where the subject does not appear; the child responds to both
as ' tell'. Thus, for examp le, we have the following interchange (C . Chomsky,
1969, p. 57):

Researcher: Ask Ellen what to feed th e do ll.

C hild: Feed her hamburgers.
Researcher: All right now, tell Ellen what to feed her.
C hild: Again?

It is c1ear that between the ages of 5 and 10 children are still m the
process of learning the more complex aspects of their Ianguage .

1.2. The Development of Speech Comprehension

T hus far, we have been focusing on the chi ld's development of speec h
production. Now we would like to focus on th e child's develo pment of speec h
comprebension, When, for example, does the und erstandin g of speec h begin
and how does it relate to prod uction ?

1.2.1 . Fetuses and Speech Input

Before dealing with newborns, let us begin at the real beginning with research
which is concerned with stimulating language development even before the
child is born. Can speech sounds reach the fetus while it is still in the uterus?
Benzaquen, Gagnon , Hunse, and Foreman (1990) put a microphone inside
the uterus of pregnant women to see if speech sounds could reach the ear of
the fetus over the background sounds of the women's heartbeat and blood
flow. The rnother's speech sounds uiere found to be able to reach the ear of
the ferus above the background sounds. However, whether the ear of the
fetus is devcloped eno ugh to send such sou nds to the brain is unknown.
In another srudy where loudspeakers were placed next to pregnant women,
two experimental groups were presented with sound sequences in different
orders : one group was exposed to /babi/ + /biba/ while the other received
the reverse order /biba/ + /babi/ (Lecanuet, Granier-Deferre, & Busnel, 1989).
Later, after a number of presentations, the rwo sound sequences were played
in varying orders to both groups of women and measurements were taken,
Measurements of the feruses' heart rates showed a differential effect for the
rwo groups during the testing period. The hearr rate of the ferus was higher
when the sequence they were trained on was played. The effects of the
mother's voice on the ferus's intrauterine lisrening may explain post-birth
28 PSYCHO LINGUI STICS

listening preferences of th e neo nate (newborn baby) for the mother's voice
and for th e language th e moth er spo ke while pregnant.
DeCasper and Fifer (1980) reco rded mother s reading a story, T hen th eir
3-day-or-younger infants were given a pacifier connected to a computer
which would play recordings of the moth er' s voice or of another woman's
voice. A high rate of sucking on rhe pacifier would activate the playing of
a moth er's voice. Comparing chan ges on the sucking rate with the infant 's
baseline rate, the researchers found th e infants sucked more in order to activate
the tape with their moth er's voice than to hear th e voice of anothe r woman!
T he requirement was then change d so that the infants had to suck ar a
louier rate th an normal in order to hear th eir mothe r's voice. T he infants
quickly changed to slower rates , thus demonstrating th at they could distin -
guish the sound of their moth er's voice and that of another wo ma n, Locke
(1993), however, suggests tha r the learning of the mother's voice may acru-
ally have occurred, not prenata lly, but with in the first 12 hours after birth
when the moth er was talking to th e newborn. Since the measurements were
taken after the 12-hour period, this could weil be the case. If so, then the re
may not have been any prenata l learning.
It is worth mentioning that even if a fetus could hear sounds from th e
outside world, those sounds would have to be th rough the medium of
a liquid in th e fetal sac. T hat being the case, speecb sounds are virtually
indistingu ishable. How much, for example, in ter ms of speech sounds, can
one hear when one is underwater in a pool? General sounds are all tha t
come through, euen toben YOIl knot» the !allgllage. Wh ile th is may be enough
of a basis for a fetus later to distinguish among different voices, it is certa inly
insufficient for identifying speech sounds.

1.2.2. Newborns (Neonates) and Speech Input

Infants may even prefer their native language ar birth . In two studies on
babies' preferential listening (Mehler, ] usczyk, Lambertz, Ha lsted, Bertoncini,
& Amiel-Tison, 1988; Berto ncini, Morais, Bijeljac-Babic, McAdams, Peretz,
& Mehler, 1989), the neonates chose to listen to French, th e language th eir
mothers spoke while pregnant, rather than Russian which the ir mothers did
not speak; children born to moth ers who did not speak French did not
demo nstrate th e ability to discriminate between th e two languages. T hus,
the fetus may have been affected by the vibrations from the moth er's voice
that reached its developing ears thro ugh the body tissues. T his ability to
distingu ish the language spoken by th e mother could be ascribed to intona-
rional differences between the langu ages which the fetus receives.
However, there is a problem with this study, the same one as with a srudy
in th e previous section. The newborns could have done th eir learn ing after
birt h since testi ng was don e when the infants were already 4 days old. A
further srudy by Mehler (1989) fai1ed to find th e same discrimination for
 HOW CH ILD REN LEARN LAN GUAGE 29

infants within 12 hours of birth. Thus, whether language perceptio n begins

in the womb is still an open question. Even if the finding is negative for
fetuses, it is remarkable that newborns are so responsive to sounds within
such a short time of birth . T hey are ready for speech sounds.

1.2.3. Speech Comprehension Occurs without Speech Production:

The Case of Mute-Hearing Children
Wh ile the ability to utter speech in appro priate situatio ns is a good indicator
of language knowledge, the absence of the ability to produce speech may
not indicate a lack of language knowledge. T here are many hearing persons
who are born mute. People such as these may be born with cerebral palsy
or some other abnorma lity that proh ibits them from articulating speech.
Yet such persons may learn to compre hend all that is spoken to them. Let
us consider some cases here so as to better understand this import ant
phenomeno n. Following this we shall consider the development of speech
comprehension in normal children, which, we shall see, also relates to this
phenomenon .

Cbristopber No/an
Christopher Nolan is an Irish writer of some renown in the English lan-
guage. Brain damagcd since birth , No lan has had little contro l over the
muscles of his body, even to the extent of having diffi culty in swallowing
food. He rnust be strapped to his wheelchair because he cannot sit up by
himself. Nolan cannot utter recognizable speech sounds.
Fortunately, though, his brain damage was such that Nolan's intelligence
was undamaged and his hearing was normal; as a result he Iearned to under-
stand speech as a young child. It was only many years later, though, after he
had reached 10 years, and after he had learned to read, that he was given a
means to express his first words. He did this by using a stick which was
attached to his head to point to letters. It was in this 'unicorn' manner,
letter-by-Iett er, that he produccd an entire book of poems and short stories,
Darn-Burst of Dreams (N olan, 1981), while still a teenager. (He was born in
1965.) T his was followed some years later by an autob iographical book,
Under the Eye of the Clock (Nolan, 1988), also written in the letter-by-letter
mode. Nolan's writing is of such quality that it has been compared to the
works of Yeats and Joyce. It was for Under the Eye of the C/ock that 'No olan
received the prestigious Whitbread Award for Biography in 1987. For an
Irish man to receive this British prize was a further mark of the esteem in
which his work was held.

Anne McDona/d
Co incidentally, the fi rst author came across another case similar to 'No
No lan's
while reading the Neui Y01·ker magazine (Specter, 1999). It was that of Anne
30 PSYC H O LI NG UISTIC S

McDonald, another remarka ble person . She was born in Austra lia in 1961,
but du e to brain darnage duri ng birt h Mc Donald has never been able to
control her muscles and speech articulators. H er hearing was fine th ough .
Like Nolan she too has to be strapped to a wheelchair; she uses an elaborate
comp uter device on her lap for issuing recorded messages.
At 16 years of age Mc Donald weighed only 28 pounds (about 13 kg) but
it was at that time that her life changed . Fr iends too k her to an arr gallery
whe re for the first time she discovered art and was 'transfixed by the Ma tisses',
her friend said. De spite her hand icaps, this wornan was then motivated to
study the Philosophy of Science and Fine Ans at th e University of Me lbourne .
She later published a book and continues to write.

Rie
Rie was a litt le J apanese girl whom the first aut hor had the opporrun ity to
study while he was a visiting professor at H iroshim a University back in the
1970s. From bir th Rie was mute, except for being able to utter rwo weakly
whispere d sounds, roughly lil and l ai . Such sounds were not used in any
communicative fashion. In ce ntrast to the conditions ofNolan and Mc Donald,
however, Rie's other rnotor skills appea red normal. She could run and jump
and, when th e firsr aut hor rnet her at th e age of 3 years, could even ride a
tricycle. While Rie pro bably had some sort of brai n darn age to the motor
area of speech, the exact cause of her mu teness was not known.
O n being teste d for her ability to compre hend speech, Rie could respond
appropriately to such complex com mands (in j apanese) as 'Put the red paper
und er the table' and ' Bring rne the little do ll from the other roo m' . H er level
of speec h comprehension was similar to that of other 3-year-olds.
Rie was 3 years old when, wit h a graduate student in psychology from
Hiroshima Un iversity, the first aut ho r began a project to teach her to read
j apanese (Steinberg & C hen, 1980). T he pur pose of the research was to
demonstratc th at you ng mute childr en could be taught to read . After being
given reading instruction for about 10 minutes per day, Rie learn ed to read
over a period of nine months nearly 100 different kanj i words (kanji being
the j apanese version of C hinese characters). Rie ind icated the meanings
of the written words by point ing to objects or by making some behaviouraI
response.
C learly, like Nolan, Rie learned to compreh end speech and even to read
in the absence of any ability to pro duce speech.

Some otber reported cases of mute-bearing pe1'S01lS

Lenne berg (1962) reported on a boy who could compre hend and respond
appropriately to questio ns and commands, but could not speak. In another
case, one that is similar to that of N olan's, Fourci n (1975) stud ied a mute
subject who was able to com pre hend speech and learn to read . It was only
 H OW CH ILD REN LEARN LANGUAGE 31

many years later, at the age of 30, that Fourcin's subject was provided with
a means for expressing language, a special typewrit er . Almost irnmediately,
on learn ing the mechanics of the typewriter, the person began to communic-
ate by typi ng out grammatical sentences!

Conclusion
Persons who are mute but hearing can develop the ability to comprehend
speech toitbout their being able to produce speech, so long as their basic
intelligence is intact. But how are such people able to comprehend the
sente nces that they do, given that such sente nces reflect the essential char-
acteristics of langua ge, i.e. comp rehension of an unlimited number of novel
grammatical sen tences, recog nitio n of synonymy, of arnbiguity, etc.P (See
Chapter 12 for a detailed descrip tion of such characte ristics.) The answer
must be that these mute persons developed a grammar, a mental gramml/l'
based 011 speecb comprebension, that enabled them to understand the speech to
which they were exposed!
Is the same true for no rmal children ? Let us now consider this question .

1.2.4. In Normal Children Speech Comprehension Develops in

Advance of Speech Production
T hat children are unable to utter words or sent ences for the purpose of
comrnunication without gaining an understanding of the speech first could
hard ly be oth erwise. If childre n did not first learn to und erstand the meaning
of word s and sente nces, they would not be able to use wor ds or sentences in
a meaningful way. T hey observe what others say and how what is said relate s
to objects, situations, and events .
To say tha t comprehension of a langnage precedes production does
not rnean a child must understand all of the langn age before being able to
pro duce someth ing . Rather, progress goes bit by bit. As the comprehension
of some word, phrase, or grammatical form is learned, some of that learn ing
may be produced in speech (Ingram, 1974). T hat speech und erstand ing
always precedes produ ction is the pattern that continues throughou t the
acquisitio n process (Ingram, 1989) wheth er it be for first word s (Clark &
Barron , 1988), elaborate syntax such as passives (Go linkoff & H irsch-P asek,
1995), or the later acquisitio n of idioms and figur ative speech (Levorato &
Cacciari, 1995).
Ir should also be noted that th e rwo systems of comp rehension and pro-
ducnon do not develop separately for the norm al child. As the child acquires
an aspect of gram mar for comprehension, the child will then try to figure
out how to use it in production . T hus, the child attemp ts to coor dinate
production to confonn to the system that has been dcveloped for compre-
hension (Clark & H echt, 1983).
32 PSYCHOLINGU ISTIC S

Pre-speecb normal infants

Babies can recognize words as early as 6 rnonths of age. T incoff and )usczyk
(1999) had 6-mon th -o ld babies watch two TV monitors, one with a picture
of the baby's mother and the ot her with a pictu re of the baby's fath er, While
being held, and facing one of the images on the TV, a synthesized voice said
'mommy' or 'da ddy', After a numb er of presentations of voice and picrure,
the baby then heard the voice say one of the words. Mo re ofte n than by
chance, the baby would turn to look at the picture being named. T hus, when
th e voice said 'mommy' the child would look at the video image of the
mo ther, and when th e voice said 'daddy' the child would look at the video
image of the father.
Understanding at 6 months is earlier than most research ers had previ-
ously supposed . As Tincoff and jusczyk note, 'Most of th e previous work
on comprehension indicated it was 8 or 10 months of age when kids star red
to attac h language labels to particular objects.' Whatever the case, it is d ear
that the comprehension and prod uction processes develop in a parallel mode
with produ ction always trying to keep up with comprehension .

T he H uttenlocber study
Hutten locher (1974) studied four young childre n, aged 10 to 13 month s,
over a six-month period and found that they were able to comprehend
speech at a level beyond th at to which th ey had progressed in pro ductio n.
T he children were able to select familiar objects such as 'bottle' or 'dia per'
which were named for them and were able to respond appro priately to
com mand s even though they did not use such words and structures in their
own speech . O ne boy, for example, respon ded appro priately to such dis-
tinctions as 'ba by's diaper' and 'yo ur diaper', and 'baby's' bettl e' and 'your
bottle' (the 'baby' referred to here is the boy's younger sister) . Even if, as
In gram (1989) not es, a scrambled word or der should also have been tested,
th is would not change the interpretation of the outcorne, For it is a fact
thc boy did give approp riatc responses to combinatio ns, combinations which
involved comp lex possessive distinctio ns which he himself had never used
in speech.

The Sachs and Trusuiell study

In ano ther important srudy, Sachs and T ruswell (1978) found that children
who could only produ ce single-word utterances (they were at the one-word
stage of speech production) nevertheless could comprehend syntacti c struc-
tures composed of more tban one uiord. Words for the testi ng were selected
from th e childre n's own productions, e.g. the verbs 'kiss' and 'smeIl' and the
nouns 'ba ll' and 'truck'. T hese words were placed toge ther in novel com-
binations in the imperative form , for example, 'Kiss ball' and 'SmeIl tru ck'.
T he children did what they were told: th ey kissed the ball and smelied the
 HO W CHILDREN LEARN LANGUA GE 33

truck! Obviously the childre n's level of speech comprehension was weil in
advance of their level of speech producn on.

A Rending before Speaking Study

Parents have always noted that children are able to understand more than
what the children are able to say. Steinberg and Steinberg (1975) went one
further. T hey taught their son to read (understand the meaning of) many
written words, phrases, and sentences even before he was able to say them.
T hus, he was able to respond appropriately to words and sentences, e.g.
'O pen the doo r,' whether they were in speech or in writing and euen toben
be bimselfdid 1I0t soy tbose uiords. The items that he had been taught to read
were on ly those items that he could comprehend when such items were
spoken to him. Later he was able to comprehend novel combinations of
those written items.

1.2.5. Relative Paucity of Comprehension Studies

Unfortunately, altho ugh speech comprehension plays a crucial role in
langnage acquisition, comparatively few studies have been devoted to its
investigation. Most of the language acquisition studies have been concerned
with the development of speech production. T he reason for this is simple:
production studies are easier to do. T he product of the speech production
process, the child's utterance, is something thar can be directly observed
while the produet of the comprehension process, meaning, cannot, Corn-
prehension can only be inferred on the basis of relevant behaviour. Con -
sequentl y, those researchers testing comp rehen sion have had to rely on
indirect methods, such as asking children to perform an action in response
to requests or to answer questions if they can.
The difficulty involved in attempting to gather relevant dara from young
children in these regards should not be underestimated. Consider the experi-
ence of some researchers (Brown & Bellugi, 1964, p. 135) with a 2-year-old:

Interviewe r: Adam, which is right, 'two shoes' or 'two shoe'?

Adam: Pop goes the weasel!

A child may not even answer and run away. Whi le this in itself does not mean
that the child has not understood, the researcher does not get the desired data.
One method of testing understanding used measuring event- related
porentials (ERPs) in which electrodes are positioned on the child's head so
as to measure electrical activity in the brain in response to language input.
Another method, one used by Hirsch-Pasek and Golinkoff (1991, 1993), has
followed children's visual preference by observing which of two video screens
they warch in response to a specific language stimulus. If the child prefers
the video screen displaying an action which corresponds to the sentence
34 PSYCHO LING UISTICS

th e child has heard , they argue th e child has shown some comprehe nsion
(Go linkoff & H irsch-P asek, 1995). Very indirect data but quite sugges tive
no nerheless,

1.3. The Relationship of Speech Production, Speech

Comprehension and Thought

1.3.1. Speech Comprehension Necessarily Precedes

Speech Produdion
In learn ing any of th e world's languages, the child mu st first be able to
comprehe nd the meaning of the langn age before they themselves can pro -
duce it, Though children may ar tim es appear to speak an occasional word
or phrase intelligibly, these are usually insta nces of echo ed sounds spoken
withou t knowledge of their meanin g. The basis of all language is meaning,
and witho ut having had the oppo rtu nity to hear an d und erstand word s,
phrases, and sentences with in meaningful contex ts, children could not begin
to produce langu age meaningfu lly.
C hildren first need to be exposed to ut terances with a clear connection to
th e art icles referred to before th ey th emselves can begi n to say such utter-
ances. Since children are not born with th e knowledge of any particular
langu age, e.g . Eng lish or Chinese, ir is necessary rhar th ey be exposed to
a language in or der to learn it. H owever, simple exposure is no t eno ugh
for langu age acquisition to occur. Ir is also necessary th at the speech to
which childre n are exposed be related to objects, events, and situa tions in
their physical enviro nment, and to subjective events in their minds such as
pain, hun ger, desire, Children will not learn lan guage if all tha t th ey are
cxposcd to is speech sound, no ma tter how many tim es it is uttered. T hus,
for example, even if one heard the speec h sound Inekol a hundred times,
one would have no way of knowi ng that it mcans cat (in j apan ese) un less
there was some environm ental elu e. T he sound form of a word must be
associated with some thing that gives a elue as to its mean ing. Wi thout a
sound-meaning association, the mer e utterance of the sound form is of littl e
comm unicative significance.
C hildren may sometimes re peat word s or phra ses they hear, but th is is
not evide nce for learni ng unless the sounds are used in a meaningful context
that is suitable for those sound forms. Onl y when speech sounds are used
appropriarely in situations is there a basis for imputing langu age knowledge
to the utterer. T here are birds, for exarnple, that can imitate the wor ds of
th e language very elearly but gene rally th ey cannot do so in a meaningful
contex t, (Som e birds though can learn language. In their remarkable research ,
Pepp erb erg (1987 , 1993) and Pepperberg and Kozak (1986) have shown that
 H OW CH I LDREN LEARN LA NGUA GE 35

a parrot can learn as much or more than apes! For deta ils see C hapter 4 on
animals and language learning.)
Speech comprehension precedes and is th e basis of speech production.
How could it be the orher way? It is unimaginable for a person to have the
ability to produce speech without having the ability to comprehen d speech
(or any ot her physical mode of expression - sign, touc h, writing). While we
know of peop le who can comprehend speech without being able to produce
it (the cases of Nolan, Rie, etc. above), the reverse situation does not exist,
T his is necessariiy so and could not be ot herwise for two reasons : (I) A
learner must firsr hear speech sounds before the person knows what sounds
to make, and (2) A learner must hear the speech sounds in coordination with
the experience of objects, situations, or events in the environ ment or the
mind befor e the person can assign a meaning to the speech sounds.

1.3.2. Thought as the Basis of Speech Comprehension

T he meanings that und erlie speech comprehension are concepts that are in
a person 's mind . Speech does not provide such conc epts. Speech sounds
initially are simply sounds signifying nothing. T he conte nts of th ought are
provided by the child's experience of tbe enuironment, i.e. dogs, cats, people,
food, and events concerning those objects, and th e child's experience of its own
feelings, emotions, desires and conceptual constructions (tbougbts), Without such
contents of thought, the child would have nothing to assign as the meanings
of words and senrences. As we discuss in Chapter 9, 'Langu age, T hought,
and Culture' , thoug ht necessari!y precedes language . For example, while we
can fi nd cases of persons who have no langnage (deaf people and children
raised in isolation without language: Chapter 2), we cannot find cases of
perso ns who have language but no thought. Nor are we ever likely to, except
in the form of a computer.
Of course, for those who already know some language, rhe meani ng of
a word may be conveyed through rhe descripti ve use of other words. We
might explain to you that grogr01ll is a coarse fabric of silk, usually mixed
with wool (all th is is true), and you can understand and learn the meaning of
th at word. T he source of the meaning or function of the individual words
rhar we used to describe grog ram, i.e, 'a ', 'coarse', 'fabric', 'of', 'silk', 'usu-
ally', 'mixed', 'with', 'wool', and th e syntactic structure in which these words
are ordered, is ultimately based on a prior experience of objects, situations,
and events in association with the speech soun ds, O ne cannot begin to learn
such abstract word s as 'clever', 'interesting', 'special', and 'proappletreeist'
(a fake word) without fi rst learning words for objects which are directly
observable in the world. Once we have basic words and morphemes we can
guess at th e meaning of other words like 'proappletreeist' , where 'ist' is a
person , 'pro' indicates favouring, 'appletree' indicates apple trees, and the
who le word means someone who wants to save or plant apple trees. T he
36 PSYCHOLING UI STI CS

basic language principle is that a combination of speech sounds rep resents

some thin g other than itself, i.e. has a meaning, a meaning which is rooted in
non-language experience.
T he same is tru e in learn ing the meaning of syntactic strucrures. Simply
hearin g the speech sounds 'Jo hn chased Bill', and knowing the meanings
of the individual word s 'Jo hn' , 'chased', and 'Bill' is insufficient informa-
tion for det erm inin g who is doing the chasing and who is being chased.
One mu st hear sentences in conjunction with related events in the world
in or der to learn that English has an Agent-Action-Object sequence. T hus,
by hearin g the sente nce 'J ohn chased Bill' along with an experie nce of the
event of J ohn having just chased Bill, the child is provided with a basis for
learn ing that it was 'John' who did the chasing and tha t it was 'Bill' who was
being chased.
Langua ge is a system which allows for the labelling of thoughts in terms
of physical sou nd so that the thoughts may be commun icated to others.
Thought, however, is inde pendent of language, including as it does ideas,
feelings, percepts, emotions, etc , (See C hapter 9 for details.) As such, though t
provides the basis for speech comprehension, which in turn provides the
basis for speech production .

104. Parentese and Baby Talk

1.4.1. Parentese
During th e 1960s, C homsky's theori zing about inn ate language knowledge
had a dampenin g effect on the study of experie ntia l input, both langu age and
enviro nmental, with respect ro the learn ing of langu age. A sort of mystical
aura do minated the field. Language was not 'learned' bur somehow mysteri-
ously 'acquired'. Typical of views at the time was that of the language philo-
sopher, J erry Fodor. At a talk at th e Un iversity of Hawaii in 1965 (which
the first aut hor attende d), he suggested that a child could learn language
simply by being exposed to sentences, with little or no necessity for relevan t
enviro nmenta l stimuli (objects, events, situations),
T he speech of parents and others was not considered to be special in
assisting the child in learnin g language. A similar view was voiced by McNeili
(1966):

Ir is as if he [the child who is learning language] were equipped [innately]

with a set of 'te mplates' [grammars] against which he can compare the
speech he happens to hear from his parents, T his speech is a haphazard
sampie (at least initially), not at all contrived to instruct a child in basic
grammatical structure. (p. 36)
 H OW CH ILD REN LEARN LAN GUAG E 37

Research has since shown, however, that the natu re of the speech and
environ mental input which children receive is essent ial and is often con -
trived to assist language learning. For example, children who have the mis-
fortu ne to have been exposed to language mainly th rough television or by
overhearing adults ' conversations do not acquire significant language know-
ledge (Todd, 1972; Snow, Arlmann-R upp, Hassing, ]obse, ]ooksen, & Vorster,
1976).
Parentese (coined by the first author in Steinberg, 1993, p. 22) is the sort
of speech th at children receive when th ey are young. Pare ntese is also re-
ferred to as 'Motherese', 'caregiver speech', 'Adult-to-C hild Language' (ACL)
(Reich, 1986), and as 'C hild-Directed Speech' (CDS) (Pine, 1994). All of
these terms take into consideration th e fact that th e child receives input
from many sour ces - mother, father, siblings, relatives, friends, etc, ( N wokah,
1987; Bavin, 1992) - and that such input has speciallinguis tic characteristics.

1.4.2. Characteristics of Parentese

Immediacy and concreteness

T he speech which parents and othe rs use in talking to children has a numb er
of distinctive characteristics which evidently aid language learning. For ex-
ample, parents genera lly talk to their children about what is happening in
the immedia te enviro nment and not about abstract or remote objects and
events (Phillips, 1973; Slobin, 1975). A sente nce like 'The dog wants water'
and not 'Speech comprehension precedes speech productio n in langnage
learn ing' is what a 1- or 2-year-old is likely to hear.

Grammaticality of input
Ge nerally, the speech directed to children is highly grammatical and sirn-
plified, Ungramm atical sente nces arc found to occur but rarely. Newport
(1975, 1976), for example, in a long-term study with 15 mo the rs, reports an
incidence of only one ungrammatical utterance in 1500 in their speech. Such
grammatical consistency undoub tedly is useful to the child who is searching
to discover the strucrures which underlie sente nces, These research findings
are not perhaps surprising, and they lend evidence against Chomsky's claim
that children learn language despite being exposed to a high proportion of
'dege nerate' sentences (Chomsky, 1967b). Incidentally, Chomsky used this
claim to support his th eory of innate language knowledge, arguing that a
perfect grammar could not be learned fro m irnper fect data , unless inna te
language ideas were available to assist acquisition. (See Chapter 10 for more
details on C homsky' s arguments and our counter-arguments .)

Sbort sentences (lud simple structures

Speech directed to children by adults also tends to consist of short
sentences with simple rath er than comp lex structures (Snow, 1972; Ga rnica,
38 PSYCHOLI NGU ISTICS

1977a; Seitz & Stewart , 1975), such as 'The dog wants water' as oppose d to
'T he dog which has been runn ing a lot wants to drink some water'.

Vocabulary: simple and Sh011

The vocab ulary typically used by ad ults is simple and restricted (Phillips,
1973; Seitz & Stewart, 1975), e.g. 'see' instead of' notice', 'hard' rath er than
'difficu lt' , and has simp lified phon ology and struc ture (Ferguson, 1964, 1977;
DePaulo & Bonvillian, 1978). For exarnple, consonant plus vowel wor d pat-
terns such as 'rnama', 'wawa', and 'hyebye' are used rather th an the more
co mplex sound patterns of 'mo ther', 'wate r', and 'goodbye'.

Exaggerated intonation, pitch, and stress

Furtherm or e, adults exaggera te inton ation and use a slower tem po (Ga rni ca,
1977b; Drach , 1969; Cross, 1977), and frequently repeat or rephrase what
they or their childre n say (Snow, 1972; Brown & Bellugi, 1964; Newport,
1975; Kobashigawa, 1969). For exampl e, adu lts tend to use high er pitch,
slower speech, with more and clearer pauses between utterances, and they
place more distin ctive stress on words than they do when speaking with
ot her adults, Additionally, adult speec h to childr en refers more to the con-
text of the conversation (Phillips, 1973; Snow, 1972), and often serves to
clarify the children's utterances (C ross, 1977). T hese changes will vary de-
pendi ng o n the age of the child the adu lt is talking to (Garnica, 1977b;
Sno w, 1972); the speech addresse d to 2-year-olds will be different in modi-
fications fro m that addressed to l O-year- olds. For those few children who
are particularly slow to talk, even slower and more carefu lly articulated
speec h may be help ful.

Older cbildren too adapt tbeir speecb

It is inte rest ing that not only adu lts but children, too, ten d to use simplified
speech in talking with younger chi ldren . For exarnple, 4-year- old childre n
prod uced simplified speech when talking to 2-year-o lds but no t when talk-
ing to adults, even th ough some of the -l-year-olds did not have younge r
siblings (Shatz & G elma n, 1973). It seems, too, no n-parents also sim plify
speech (Sachs, Brown, & Salerno, 1976), so much so that, in adjusting th ern-
selves to the level of children, wome n with children do only slightly better
than wom en who are not moth ers (Sno w, 1972). T he simplificatio n of speech
may weil be a universal pheno menon (Blount, 1972; Snow et al., 1976).

Fatber uersus Mother speecb

T here are some differences in how childre n are spoken to. T hough fath ers
and moth ers for the most part make the same adjustme nts in st ruc tu ral
aspects of a language, fathers tend to employ different pragm atic appro aches
in the speech th ey use with children. For example, fath ers more often wait
for children to initiate conversations (H ladek & Edwards, 1984), show more
 H OW CH ILD REN LEARN LANGU AGE 39

control through directives and imperatives (Andrews & Bern stein-Ratn er,
1987), and use more difficult vocabulary (Bernsrein- Rame r, 1988).
T hese differences suppon th e 'Fa the r Bridge H ypoth esis' (Berko-Gleason,
19 75) which sta tes th at the child is for ced to make mor e adjustme nts roward s
the father' s speec h such that these adjust me nts direct th e child towards more
complex use of speech as he or she must make grea ter cha nges in orde r to
co mmunicate . This draws the child away from the simplified speech used in
interaction with rhe moth er towards the complex speech employed by the
speech comm un ity in which the child will live. T he refo re, the father's dif-
fere nt style acts as a brid ging device between th e dose child-mother COl Il -
rnunication and communication with o the rs.

1.4.3. Baby Talk

Baby T alk is a fonn of Parentese but with its m\TI cha racteristics. While
Parentese uses vocab ulary and syn tax, tho ugh simpler than that addr essed
to oth er adults, Baby T alk involves the use of vocabulary and syntax th at is
overly simplified and reduce d. Curious, thou gh , from a psycholinguistic view,
is th e facr thar most of th e features which Baby Talk ado pts are th ose which
have their basis in th e early speec h of children. Par en ts and others evidendy
believe that rho se fearures , when reintroduced back to th e child, serve to
fester communi cati on , H owever, it shou ld be rememb ered thar Baby Talk
is someth ing th at parents learn from ot he r adu lts and involves standard ized
vocabulary, Ir is 'standard' in th e sense that such vocabulary is cu ltu rally
tran smi tred over generatio ns.

Vocabulary
M ost Baby T alk involves modificati on s in vocabulary. There are already
established words like 'bow-wow' (dog) , ' pee-pee' (urine), and 'choo-choo'
(train) in Eng lish and, in J apan ese, 'wan- wan' (dog : the standard word for
which is i1l11), 'shee -shee ' (urine : the sta ndard word is nyoh), and 'bu-bu' (car:
the standa rd words for which are jidosha or kuruma). From such examples,
we can see th at th e main sound structure of such words tend s to be domi n-
ated by a Conso nant + Vowel syllable unit which is often repeated (redu-
plicated). Som etim es it involves a d osed syllable as in 'wan-wan' . T his
sound struc ture o f Baby T alk wor ds, [C + V + (C)] x N (where'Nocan be any
num ber), is corn mon to languages around th e world.
Ano ther co nstruction prin ciple for many Baby Talk wor ds is that they
are supposed to re present th e sounds which various th ings make, i.e. they
are on ornatopoeic, Thus, English ' bow-wow' and J apanese ' wan- wan' are
apparend y sirnulations of th e barkin g o f dogs, J apanese ' bu-bu' is supposed
to be the sou nd made by a car engi ne, and English 'choo-choo' the sound
made by a train, The fact that such asound as 'choo-ch oo' in En glish is
meant to ap proxi rnate ro the largely extinct ste arn locom otive bo the rs
40 PSYCHO LI NGUIS TICS

neither parent nor child. H ere the word has becom e an entry in standard
Baby Talk vocabulary.
Besides standard Baby Talk voca bulary ('sta ndard' in the sense that the
item has already been coined and accepted by othe rs), it is not uncomm on
for a family to create and use its own wor ds, wo rds which are not used
outs ide of the family. Often these words derive fro m mispronoun ced words
which their child pro duces. For example, in atte mpting to imitate th e word
'vo mit', one child said 'vompo', After that the parents used 'vompo' instead
of 'vomit' in talking to th e child. Sometimes a few such vocabulary ite ms
migh t be retai ned by pare nts for senti me ntal reasons, occasionally to the
later embarrassment of the child when it is grow n.
In English Baby Talk, it might be men tioned in passing, it is common to
add th e sound / iy/ to words ending in a co nsona nt, e.g. 'birdy' for bird,
'horsy' for hor se, 'kitry' for kitte n. T his provides the vowel for th e comp le-
tion of th e paradigm atic Consonant + Vowel syllable. Since the /iy/ suffix
also serves a diminutive and affectio nate function in English, this also helps
to promot e its usage.

Syntax
Syntax plays a less prom inent ro le in Baby Talk tha n does vocabulary. Parents
seem only occasionally to use Baby Talk syn tax, When they do, their utter-
ances are strikingly similar to th ose in the child ren's telegraphic stage of
speech production. A moth er might say, for example, something like 'Mommy
give T on y banana' instead of th e syntactically pro per 'I will give you a
banana'. In such an utterance, neither the mo dal 'will' nor the article 'a' has
been includ ed. And the names 'Mommy' and 'Tony' have been substituted
fo r the more difficult perso nal pron ouns '1' and 'you '. Substituti ng prop er
names for personal pron ouns is a commo n featu re of Baby Talk which is
not usually found in speech berween adults (Elliot, 1981). Certainly, fixed
prop er nouns are easier for the young child to und erstand than are items
involving shifting speaker- listener relatio ns. It is later that the child learns
to cope with the speaker-listener complexities of '1' and 'yo u' , Such proper
narn e substitutions, it sho uld be noted, also occur in Parentese and thu s are
not solely features of Baby Talk.

Should Baby Talk be used?

Whether Baby Talk sho uld or sho uld not be used is sometimes a concern of
parents, with intensity of concern varying from country to country. In Canada
and the U SA, th ere seems to be little concern, while in Ja pan ther e seems
to be a lot. Since Baby Talk is a transition phase, in that it is no t continued
for very lon g (children themselves will soo n replace it rat her than take the
risk of being rega rded as babies by older childre n), and since Baby Talk (Iike
Pa rentese) appears to be an almost universally occur ring natu ral phenomenon
(see Pye, 1983 for exceptions), it woul d seem that Baby T alk could weil be
 HOW CH ILDREN LEARN LANGUAGE 41

beneficial to some degree for the child in learning language (see next section).
Certainly, there is no good reason to think of it as being harrnful. T hat most
parents (and grandpare nts) derive special enjoyment from using Baby Talk
with their children might weil serve to reinforce the social solidarity of
parent and child.
A caution should be added here regarding the regular use of nonsense
talk and mumblings to the child. It may be used for fun, but only occasion-
ally, since it does little to further language learn ing.

1.4.4. The Effect of Parentese and Baby Talk in Language Learning

Do Parent ese and Baby T alk facilitate language learnin g? The studies
done on these questions demonstrate a positive but small effect ( ewport,
G leitrnan, & G leitman, 1977; Furrow, Nelson, & Benedict, 1979; Kemler-
Nelson, Hirsh- Pasek,Ju sczyk, & Cassidy, 1989; Murray, J ohnson, & Peters,
1990). Other research also provides evidence that Parent ese may be effective
but only for children who are very young (G leitrnan, ewport, & Gleitrnan,
1984).
T he effects of Parentese have been found to depend as much on the child
as on the parent (Hampson & N elson, 1993), and on the interaction between
the child arid parent (Yoder & Kaiser, 1989; Hoff-Gin sberg, 1990). As long
as the child receives appropri ate language input which is c1early related to
environmental and mental experiences, and is appropriate for the child's
cognitive level, there is no good reason to believe that a child would not
learn language at a level near that of his or her peers who do receive Paren-
tese and Baby Talk. Even the majority of abused children learn language
in due course .

1.5. Imitation, Rule Learning, and Correction

1.5.1. w hat is Learned by Imitation

Mo st ordinary people believe that language is learned by imitation. By irnita-
tion it is meant that the child copies and repeats aloud the words which he
or she hears. Through imitation, children learn how to pronounce sounds
and words and they seem to enjoy imitatin g the sounds which they hear
(Masur, 1995). All this is fine. However, it must be kept in mind that there
is an obvious limitation, which is tha t imitation can apply only to speecb pro-
duction and not to speecb comprebension. Since we know that speech compre-
hension precedes speech production, we can say that imitatio n cannot be
involved in the primary process of language learn ing, comprehension. A
furth er limitation is that even in the domain of production, imitation is not
42 PSYCHO LINGUI STI CS

involved in th e construction of sentences, Abstract ru les canno r be imitated

for the simple reason th at rules do not exist in the physical world. Of course,
th e outpur of ruIes, speech, exists in the world but not th e ru les the mselves;
rules are formu lation s which involve observable entities, T his is not to say
th ar imitation is not important , Ir is, bu t only for the developm en t of th e
articulation of speec h sounds,

1.5.2. Productivity by Rule

T he child's prod uction o f certa in novel words and sen ten ces canno t be
explained by imita tion, C hildren com mon ly produ ce un grammatical words
like:

I. 'shee ps', ' mouses', and 'gooses', regarding th e PL URAL, and

2. 'goed', 'comed', 'falled', and 'breaked', regarding th e PAST .

Why do they utter such word s? Ir can no t be because of imitation because

no one says such words far them to imitate . Similarly, why do chi ldren utt er
such un grammatical sente nces as:

I. 'No heavy' and 'No th e suns hine ', regarding th e N egative, and
2. 'When we can go?' and 'He is doin g what ?' , regarding th e Q uestion .

T hey cannot be imitating such speec h because no one says th ese things for
the chi ld to copy.
Clearly, chi ldren have formulated ru les in their minds according to which
they const ruct novel utterances, T hey learn the P LURAL morphem e and
the PAST ten se morph erne and then app ly those to new cases. T his works
when the new words are regu lar, such as har/ hats and fish/fishes, and carry/
carried and push /pushed . H owever , when the new word is an exception, the
child must learn th at it is an exceptio n and no t apply th e ru le. T his explains
why th e child pr oduces PLURAL words like 'she eps' and 'mo uses'.
What are re ally im eresting are th e cre ations tha t th e child rnakes with th e
PAST regular rule: 'goed ', 'comed', 'falIed' , 'breaked '. T ypically before the
PAST ru le was learn ed, the child had already learn ed many of the PAST
irregular forms, especially go/wem and come/ca me. T he power of thc PAST
rule is so streng th at th e formerly learn ed irregular past forms of 'wem' and
'ca me' are disrcgarded or confused. Sometimes th e child will even produce
forms like 'wen tcd' and 'camed'. T hus, the child typ ically slips back and
loses some of th e earlier learn ed past irregular forms . T he child has then to
rclearn the rn,
The same thing happens with sente nce ru le learning as in 'No heavy' and
'When we can go? ' Again, these are not utt erances that the ch ild can imitate
because no one says them. T he child devclops rules in the mind and th en
 HOW CH ILDREN LEARN LANGUAGE 43

uses th ose ru les to make th ese novel creatio ns. These rules are so powerful
that th ey strongly control th e child's ourput,
In th is regard, consider th e following anecdote cite d by Mc Ieill (1966,
p. 69; emphasis ours):

Son: 'Noobo dy don 't like me.

Mother: N obod y likes me .
Above sequence rep eated eight times.
Morher (in desperation): Now, listen carefully. Nobody likes m e,
Son: Oh! N obody don 't likes rne,

While som e pro gress was achieved (the '5' on 'like'), th e major con cern o f
th e mother , rhc occurrence of rhe auxiliary 'do', was not perc eived by th e
child as needing correctio n! The child was applying the Insert AUX 'do' rule
as he usually did, T his rul e had so powerful an influence on his speec h that
it even affected his listening ability: he was unable to beco me aware that the
mother was not saying the word 'don't'! Actua lly, th e child did not know
that since 'nobody' is th e negative of 'somebody', English does not crea te a
negati ve struc tu re by adding AUX .
Morpheme and st ruc ture rules are learned by childre n and when th ey are,
they may stro ngly affect production . Undo ubredly the prop er form s can be
understood when such fo rms are spoken to th e child. Ir is a different matter
however for the child to Iearn the restric tive application of such rules.

1.5.3. The Frequent Futility of Cerreetion

It used to be th ought by many that th e correctio n of childre n's speech is
essential to improvem ent. Research has show n, th ough , th at such is not the
case, with parents typica lly paying littl e attention to the gra mmatical cor-
rectness of their childre n's speech (Brown, 1973; Brown , Cazden , & Bellugi,
1969). When parents do attempt to correct their children's speec h, th e
resul ts are ofte n fruitless and frustra ting. The above exarn ple with the moth er
and son where the mother set out to correct the child' s grammar is typica l in
this regard , She was not successful.
U ndoubtedly, th er e are cases where parents' corrections, parti cularly with
older children, may directly resu lt in improvement . However, because gr am-
mati cal corrections are relatively rar e with respect to the number of deviant
utterances tha t a child actually produces, it is reasonable to conclude that
correction does not play an impo rtant rol e in grammar learning. Eventua lly,
th e child does notice his or her own incorrect speech and th en makes the
necessary revision.
Ir is worth noting th ar 'correction ' typically takes th e form of a cor rected
rep etition of the child's utterance. This may not be helpful because, in orde r
to improve, th e child must: ( I) note the difference berween the child's own
44 PSYCHOLI NGUISTICS

utterance and that of the parenr, (2) determine what the nature of the error
is, and (3) figure out a way to perrnanently change his or her grammar or
strategies so that it yields the paren r's utterance in the future. T his is quite a
burden for a child, so much so th at the child typically ignores the attempr
at correction. T he alternative of telling the child whar the nature of the
problem is would, of course, be absurd, e.g. 'Now,Johnny, because "Nobody"
is already negative, you don't add "do" and a negative marker in front of
the verb.'
Most parents are not interested in the ungrammaticaliry of the utterances
of their children. Rather, they are more interested in the truth value, social
appropriateness, or cleverness of what their children say. A child who says, 'I
no broked it' when she did commit that act will not receive a grammatical
correction such as 'You should say, "I didn' t break it" ', bur more likely will
receive a scolding for lying. Similarly, a child who says to a visiting aunt,
'Mommy no like you' will be given a scolding not on grammaricality but on
good manners. Conversely, the child who notices that her dog is unhappy
on a hot day and then says, 'D oggie want drink ' will not be corrected for
grarnmaticality but will be praised for her perceptiveness.

1.6. Learning Abstract Words

When acquir ing the meanings of words, children begin with the concrete
and go on to the abstract, T hey begin with physical objects ('mama', 'dog',
'ball', 'table') and direct actiuities (' run', 'jump', 'play', 'give') then move to
relations and statiues ('on', 'sitting'). Soon following will be words involving
mental experiences and relations ('hungry', 'hurt', 'happy', 'want') which then
yield such utterances as 'Mary hurt', 'Jo hn thirsty' and 'Kirry wanr eat'.
Later come complex abstract ideas ('I' (speaker), 'you' (listener), 'tru th', 'lie',
'honest', 'guess', 'hope', 'idea', ' thoughr').
But how are these learned, especially the complex and abstract ones?
Whil e simple association is sufficient for an itern such as dog where the
speech sound 'dog' is associated with the object 'dog', complex hypothesiz-
ing needs to be employed for learning the words for feelings and concepts
since these are not in the physical environment for the child to directly
observe. T he child must make inferences from what people say, and on the
basis of what happens in the environment and the mind, Such learnin g at
firsr glance seems to be so mysterious as to be almost magical, yet the fact is
that children da learn such words. As scientists we must try to explain how
such learnin g occurs.
For exarnple, how mighr the words ' hungry' and 'hurt' be learned? First
the child must take note of when such words are spoken by others and the
situations in which they occur. The child mighr cry and the moth er might
 HOW CHI LOREN LEARN LAN GU AGE 45

then say, 'Are you hungry?' T he mother says this because the mother guesses
what the child's internal state might be, based on when the child last ate,
for instance, If the child has the feeling of hun ger, the child may then
guess (after some repeated instances) that 'h ungry' refers to what he or she is
feeling. Or, the child might point to a banana and th e mother might say
in response, 'Do you want a banana?' and the child might get the meaning
of 'want'.
Co nsider 'hurt' . Perhaps the child falls and is bruised on the knee. T he
father might say, 'Poor girl. Does it hurt?' T he child's feeling of pain might
then be associated with the word 'hurt'. O r, on receiving an injection with
a syringe, the child cries, and the father says, 'Ir hurts, doesn't it? Poor
child.'
Ir is up to the child to remember what words were spoken, e.g. 'hungry'
and 'hurt' , and to relate them to part icular feelings thar the child has experi-
enced in the mind, 'hunger' and 'pain', After a number of such instances
where certain words (spoken by others) and certain feelings are experienced
together, the child will have enough information to make a guess at which
sound form relates to which feeling. When the child then experiences fur-
ther instances, the child can test whether he or she is correct, i.e. whether
the sound form of 'hungry' relates to the feeling of hunger and the sound
for m of 'hurt' relates to the feeling of pain. (See Gillette et al., 1999 for a
considered discussion on how verbs of mental experience, e.g. 'think', 'know',
and 'like', can be learned.)
Words like 'lie' (falsehood) and 'guess' must also have particular environ-
men tal situa tions and mental states for the child to bring together. T hese
will be more difficult to identify than feelings because they involve pure
(no n- feeling) ideas, T he child will have to make logical inferences from
complex situations in order to extr act such ideas, For example, suppose after
telling his mother something which he knows is untrue, 'I didn't hit her',
the little boy's mother might say angrily, 'Thar's a Iie!' Whar the litt le boy
must do to discover the meaning for this sound form of 'Iie' is to recall the
intention and what he knew in his mind before he said what he said. He
knows thar what he said ('I didn' t hit her') did not correspond with what
had actually happened before in the world (he did hit her). On ce he has
this siruation in mind, the boy can assign a meaning to the sound form of
'lie', thereby learning the meaning of the word 'lie'. He comes to realize that
the discrepancy betwecn what he says and the siruation or event in the world
is the meaning of the sound for m / lai/, arid then assigns this concept to the
sound form. Wheth er this hypoth esis is accurate or not is something the
child will test when he hears the word 'lie' again.
Regarding hypothesis testing, the third author recalls an interesting and
illuminaring personal experience. W hen Davy was about 4 years old, he
once accidenrally bro ke one of his rnother's favourite larnps. When his moth er
angrily asked him, 'Did you do that by accident or on purpose?', Davy had
46 PSYCHOLINGUI STICS

(0 make a choice. Since he knew the meaning of 'by accident' but not 'on
purpose', and he knew that an accident was something bad, he figured that
'o n purp ose' must be the bett er of the two alterna tives, so he spoke up and
said, '1 did it on purpose.' A bad choice. Wh ack to his rear end!
C hildren are forever hypoth esizing about the speech that they hear and
seeking confirmatio n about their hypoth eses. As we see by this exarnple,
confirmation can come in many different forms!
Even though the conn ection may be made berween the sound form and
the idea, it takes time for the child to learn the full range and restrictions of
the word in relation to the concept. Braine (1976) foun d that the child's first
use of a word was restricted to specific circurnstances. For example, the child
might use ' hurt' only when referring to his or her own pain ('Hurt knee'),
and only later expand the concept to pain feit by others ('H urt cat') . As a
word is experienced in other contexts, the child will expand its contexrual
use as he or she makes compa risons berween the new situation in which the
word is used and the old situations stored in memory.
The use of rnetaph or (00 will help children to comprehend abstract
con cep ts. The Lakoff and Johnson (1980) book, Metapbors W e Live 8y, is
very suggestive as to how children could learn abstract meanings by hearing
meraph or ical usage, altho ugh this is not the int ent of the book. For example,
a child hears his father tell hirn, 'I' m glad you saw the light', after the child
has told the truth about something he had been lying about. The child hears
the word 'light' used in this special way for the first time and tri es to guess
ar the intend ed meanin g. Considerin g the situation and the ordinary mean-
ing of light, the child hypoth esizes that it may mean something like the right
way or the correct thin g to do.

1.7. Memory and Logic in Language Learning

1.7.1 . Memory
U nderlying all of the remar kable accomplishrnents of the child in language
learning is one crucially irnportant psychological factor, that of memory.
Fo r, in the course of learnin g to identify the words of the language, devising
rules for their use, and relating speech to the environment and mind, the
child utilizes a phenomenal memory capacity. The child must remembe r a
multitude of particular words, phrases, and sente nces, along with the con-
texts, both physical and mental, in which they occurred. Such data provide
the basis for struc tu ral analyses and the acquisition of vocabulary.
If children did not rememb er many of the words, phrases, and sente nces
they heard, they would have linl e basis for discovering abstract meanin gs
and mies. The various syntactic struc rures that were mentioned and discussed
 HOW CH ILO REN LEA RN LANG UAG E 47

earlier, negation for instance, require that the child remember previously
experienced negative sentences. If the child cou ld not remember negative
sentences th at had been experienced previously, the child would have nothin g
with which to compare a presently occurring sentence, and thus could not
make significant inferences as to its structu re, W ith out a good memory,
language learn ing would not be possible.
Aside from the common observation that children often remember, word
for word, sto ries which th ey are told, children also learn a host of idioms
in phrase and sentence form . T here is no reason, therefore, not to believe
that childre n also store in memory a multitude of ordinary phrases and
sentences, which can serve them for analysis later. Children as young as
8 months begin to remember words. T his was dernonstrated by the infants'
preferen tial listening patt erns to words heard in children's stories which
were read to them (Jusczyk & H oh ne, 1997). The infants turned their heads
more towards th e sound of the words that had occurred in the stories than
towards unfamiliar words. Such a prodigious memory capacity, it is worth
notin g, is not unique to language. For in many other areas of life - in
rememb ering faces, objects, music, past events, and vast quantiti es of know-
ledge in a variety of fields - th e extent of a child's memory is similarly
remarkable.
Two basic types of memory operate in language learnin g: associatiue
lenrning, where a connection is form ed between an object and th e sound-
form name of that object, and episodic memory (Tulving, 1983), where whole
events or situations are remembered along with phrases and sentences that
others have spoken. Such types of memory are essential for determining the
semant ics of syntactic structures such as the Negative, Qu estion , etc., and
for the development of politeness. In th is latter regard, particular words and
struc tu res must be associated with various degrees of politeness in various
situations. T he child must learn that when talking to an adult , 'Wo uld you
please give me another cookie?' is fine, but that 'Give me another cookie' is
not . Similarly, asking an adult, 'How is your child?' is fine, but ' How's your
kid?' is not.

1.7.2. Logic
In learning language, the child must use both induction and deduction in
the analysis of words and senten ces and the formulation of grammar and
strateg ies.

Children use inductiue logic

Even in the early grammatical phase of learnin g basic morphemes, e.g. Pro-
gressive, Plural, and Third Person, children must use an inductive analysis.
T aking the Plural as an example, children must scan the sentences uttered
by matu re speakers and th en note that a suffix is added when two or more
48 PSYCHO LINGU ISTICS

objects are being talked about. T he children then formulate a rule in their
mind s. This rule is tested when the children hear other sente nces uttered by
the mature speakers. T his type of analysis, where (I ) there is a search for
characteristics in speech, and the n (2) those characteristics are related to
objects, siruations, and events, represents the essence of the use of inductive
logic. An abstract rule or principle is gleaned on the basis of acrual data.

Young cbildren use deductiue logic

T he child's produ ction of speech, even in th e early years, reflects a great
deal of conceprualization and thinking on th e part of the child. Suppose one
4-year-o ld child (Rose) says to another child (Tom), 'You have more than me!'
T his is said in a situatio n where an adult has put down a plate of cookies in
front of the rwo children and the children have made a grab for them. T hen
suppose that, after Rose has said this, T om, the child with the greate r number
of cookies, gives some to Rose, the child with the lesser number.
Now we may ask, why did Tom give Rose some cookies? W hat was it
about whar Rose said that persuaded him to behave the way that he did? In
th e opinion of the first author the following logical argum ent is implied by
Rose when she says, 'You have more than me!':

Premise 1 You have more coo kies than me.

Premise 2 W e should have an equal amount.
Conclusion You should give me some of your cookies to make it equal.

The fact that Tom responds to Rose's simple declaration, 'You have more
than me!' by giving her some cookies indicates that T om und erstood her
argum ent . H e did not consider her sente nce as simply stating a fact. Bot h
childre n understood the logical argument implied by Rose's sta terne n t,
Such an advanced level of conceptual development may sur prise many of
us, especially some Piagetian theorists, who, relying on such limit ed notions
as 'conservation', believe that deductive logic develops after the age of 6 years
(Piage t & Inh elder, 1969). A proper language analysis, such as the one
above, demonstrates that age nor ms for the development of deductive logic
must be drastically revised downwards, As for inductive logic, norm s have
yet to be established, but they surely would have to be below th e child's
second or first year.
T hen, too, according to Piaget, intelligence has its basis in the child
performi ng actions with respect to objects in the world . H ere, also, Piaget
was mistaken. Such actions are not essential to the developm ent of intelli-
gence or language. As we noted earlier with the cases of virtua lly paralysed
persons like Nolan and M cDo nald, their lack of such behaviour did not
prevent th eir developm ent of inteIligence and language.
The 1- and 2-year-o ld child is quite an inte llecrual marvel whose thinking
powers should not be und erestimated .
 HOW CHll DREN lEARN lANG UAGE 49

Notes
1. T he term experiencer is used differently frorn many theori sts here. \ Ve use it
as indicating a sentient being which experiences states or ideas, A receiuer is
an experiencer who is affected by an action,
2. Regarding Brown's naming of the first morph eme acquired as Present Pro-
gressive, it should probably be termed simply Progressive because only the
'- ing' suffix appears. However, the Present is implied in the child's utter-
ance because the child usually talks abour the here and no w , The auxiliary
'be' which goes along with the Progressive does not appear until much
later. Ir is for this reason thar Present is marked off with parenth eses.
References

Table of Contents

Autbors Index Su bject Index 38 1 38 1 392 395 428 437

Gramm Gram
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