Language Development in Infancy

Tomorrow we will play a game that will help us learn how humans develop language. The idea for the game really comes from the notebooks of philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein. He was a philosopher who, among other things, tried to figure out if the way we understand language can tell us something about the way we ought to address philosophical questions.

• What are phonemes? Phonemes are basic units of sound in a language.


• Whole Object Constraint: One thing that facilitates children's world learning is the bias (ex: assumption) they have when they hear new words. Children behave according to a whole object constraint where they assume that a new word refers to the entire object they are paying attention to rather than about a part or quality of the object.


• Language Explosion: As children approach two years of age, they experience a language explosion. They learn about 10 to 20 new words each week. Most of those words are nouns.


• Over-extension & Under-extension: An over-extension is to refer to use a word to refer to more than its intended referent. An under-extension is to use a word to refer to less than its intended referent.


• Pragmatics: The ability to use background knowledge and context to understand language is called pragmatics.


• Language Development Theories: Nativism, Interactionism, Connectionism