Chapter 3: Building Blocks of Language

single dimension of human behavior that consists of three interrelated domains: content, form, use

• form (phonology, morphology, syntax)
• content (semantics)-vocab
• use (pragmatics)-how we use the lang

acquiring sensitivity to prosodic cues, develop internal representations of the native lang phonemes, and producing vowels and consonants intelligibility

acquiring communication functions, developing conversational skills and developing sensitivity to extralinguistic cues (body lang, proximity, proper use of proper lang)

acquiring inflectional morphemes and derivational morphemes

increasing utterance length, acquiring different sentence modalities and developing complete syntax

building a lexicon, learning new words and organizing the lexicon for efficient retrieval

at birth if not before

• 1. using cues to segment streams for speech (intonation, pauses etc)
• 2. developing a phonemic inventory
• 3. becoming phonologically aware

• parsing the stream of speech
• infants use specific cues to parse speech stream into smaller units (words) and to separate simultaneously occurring speech streams

• infants use their familiarity of word and syllable stress patterns strong-weak patterns or the rhythm of lang to break into the speech stream
•     knowledge of word stress patterns
•     knowledge of pausing

phonotactic cues

• sensitivity to the probability with which certain sounds occur both in general and in specific positons of syllables and words
• knowledge fo probabilities and improbabilities is an important tool for the infant to segment novel words out of a continuous stream of speech

• ability to attend to phonological units of speech through explicit or implicit analysis
•     syllable counting
•     identify rhyming words
•     identify the first sound in a word
•     initial sound elision (what is the word when we take away the b)

the bridge btw lang development and reading achievement, the written script represents phonemes by using letter to sound pairings for individual letters (B=/b/) and letter sequences (ough=/o/)

phonological awareness

teaches children the relationships between letters and sounds

rate at which children learn new words

• acquiring the rules of lang that govern how lang is used in social interactions for instrumental purposes
• aspects that emerge during early childhood:
•     1 using lang for diff functions or intentions
•     2 developing conversational skills
•     3 developing......

intention behind every utterance reflects mental states, beliefs, desires, and feelings

children's development of form and content is fostered in.....

• conversations-exchanges with other
• schemas-building blocks of cognition, internalized representations of the organizational structures of various events
• conversational schema initiation and establishment of a topic, a series of contingent turns that maintain the topic and resolution and closure
• joint attention-infants and caregivers focus attention on a mutual object the infant must coordinate her attention between her social partner and the object of interest
•     provide child with early schematic representative of conversational organization
• proto-conversations-highly scripted routine which focus on talking about what the object is