WHAT IS LANGUAGE Sign language non verbal facial expressions Can define a culture Different cultures have different languages and ways of expressing things Communication honey bee dance Sometimes twins can develop a language between them that nobody else understands Spoken written language Generally language is a system of symbols and rules used for the purpose of communications has sounds phonologly has meaning semantics has structures morphology syntax has social rules pragmatics Specifically language refers to spoken form of the language spoken language oral auditory communication Symbols needs to be Abstract arbitrary Without a clear set of rules a system cannot be considered a language Social Rules culture Our words sounds are sets of symbols Very abstract symbols Our numbers are as well Language requires a high level of abstract thinking WHAT IS READING De coding sounding out the letters to form a word Mapping between written symbols and your sound symbols Reading refers to the process of mapping spoken form to written form visual form of the language Oral Words to printed out kaet c a t Reading shares many language properties sounds meanings and stuctures English language is hardest worst to learn because so many words mean the same things Reading is a learned behavior WHY STUDY LANGUAGE AND READING DEVELOPMENT Can communicate with others tell when something in a child adult is not functioning or developing correctly understand how to teach help Learning to speak and reading is an important part of child development Language and reading serve a wide range of purposes for the developing child helps children interact with others express their wishes control others behavior explore and understand their environment Many children are having language and reading difficulties 4 in 10 in America have reading difficulties National Reading Panel charged by Congress via National Institute of Child Health and Human Development NICHD and the Secretary of Education National Research Council NRC Committee on Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children CONTEMPORARY LANGUAGE AND READING RESEARCH Psycholinguistics o Linguists and psychologists combined to study language or reading whether the linguistic systems described by the linguist systems described by the linguist has psychological reality in the mind of speakers or readers o EX linguists say kiss kiss es Psycholinguists how do children acquire How do adults do LANGUAGE RESEARCH METHOD Equipment o Voice recorder o Video recorder Transcription of the data transcriber o Writing out as exactly as possible everything that is said or use a CHILDES Child Language Data Exchange System computerized child language data base CLAN Child Language Analysis computer software to code the data Observations observe children s language and reading activities in a natural setting Use standardized language and reading measures ex Woodcock Reading Mastery Test 1987 Experiments Design your own language and reading tasks for children then record language and reading performances for analyses Longitudinal approach study over a period of some weeks months years Cross Sectional approach study simultaneously many children in each of different age groups What is phonology The study of the sound system of the language The sounds that the language uses as well as the rules for their combination There are around 200 sounds used in languages throughout the world No on language makes use of all 200 sounds English has over 40 different sounds What is the relationship between letters and sounds in English between phonology and the actual spellings Letters are the written symbols for sounds English has 26 letters for over 40 sounds o As there can be no one to one correspondence between letter and sound a about fat fate farm fall says the a is pronounced differently in different words Linguists therefore refer to words as being made up of speech sounds or segments rather than letters The IPA is a means of representing the 200 sounds found in languages including the over 40 found in English p 64 Classifying Speech Sounds Two major categories o Vowels Sounds made with an unobstructed vocal tract about 16 ex ae in cat I in bid o Consonants Sounds made with the constricted vocal tract 24 ex p and t in put Consonants are further classified by o Place of articulation Made with lips bilabial Place tongue on or near the ride of gum between teeth alveolar Labiodental interdental glottal palatal verlar o Manner of articulation o Voicing stop consonants p b t d k g upper and lower press fricatives produced by airstream friction in the mouth f v s z nasals produced through nose m n glides more constriction than vowels semivowel j w liquid more constriction than glides no friction r l voiced produced through vocal cord vibrations otherwise voiceless p b t d f v s z What is a Phoneme Phonemes are defined as the contrasting sounds in a language o Phoneme is the smallest sound unit o Has no meaning by itself in general o Changing a phoneme will turn on word into another Ex lot rot l r are two distinct phonemes What is a syllable A phonetic unit larger and more stable than phoneme A syllable consists of an onset and a rime and a rime in turn consists of a vowel and final consonant s Onset initial consonent Syllable rime combines vowel final consonant Ex Cat one syllable word onset c rime at Suprasegmental features Superimposed on the sequence of vowels and consonants Two major features pitch tone stress o TONE same sequence of phonemes with different tones in meaning o STRESS content words have stress in one of their syllables Phonotactics Are there words that are impossible Blink or bnick Phonotactics are the rules that govern permissible sound combinations o True and plot but not rtue or lpot o No two stop consonants at the beginning pb Learning the rules of phonotactic arrangment is an important component in phonological development Phonological Development States Early perception of speech sounds o Infants 1 4 months can discriminate sound pairs Ex b and p in bah pah o Infants 3 days can identify and prefer listening to own mothers voice o Infants can also discriminate sound pairs not used in their native language before 6 8 months Suggests born with this sound distinction ability o Infants gradually lose their ability to detect sound pairs not used in their native languages about 6 months later Suggests language experience is important Babbling 6 15 months o Vocalize