- Language is a system that relates sounds or gestures to meaning. Spoken language usually involves four distinct but interrelated elements: phonology, semantics, grammar, and pragmatics.
- Infants use visual cues about sounds. 7 and 8-month olds can listen to sentences and recognize the sound patterns that they hear repeatedly. Stress is one important cue to picking out words. Infants identify words through their emerging knowledge of how sounds are used in their native language. Infant-directed speech helps infants master language sounds.
- Deaf infants and toddlers seem to master sign language in much the same way and at about the same pace that hearing children master spoken language. Language development was enhanced in children with cochlear implants but these results must be taken with caution.
- At two months, infants begin cooing, which is followed by babbling. At roughly 8 to 11 months, infants use intonation. The ability to produce sounds, coupled with the 1-year-old's advanced ability to perceive speech sounds, sets the stage for the infant's first true words.
- At about their first birthday, most infants say their first true words. Between 9 and 13 months, infants realize that sounds form words that refer to objects, actions, and properties.
- Some children have a referential style of learning language while other children have an expressive style to learning language. Most children are somewhere on a continuum between the two extremes.
- Most children’s vocabularies grow slowly at first but at about 18 months, a naming explosion occurs. Most children learn the meanings of simple words through fast mapping. Children learn words when adults have joint attention, when the word is used in ongoing conversation, and when they overhear others use novel words. Constraints on word names help children learn new words, as do sentence cues and cognitive factors. These rules for learning new words are not perfect as children sometimes make naming errors.
- To learn new words, children need to hear others speak. Parents can speak to them frequently, name objects that are the object of a child's attention, use rich, and grammatically sophisticated language, read books with children, and ask them questions. Viewing television, such as Sesame Street, can help word learning under some circumstances.
- When infants learn two languages simultaneously, they often progress somewhat slowly at first but by age 3 or 4, children separate the languages and they are proficient in both by elementary school. Bilingual children have a total vocabulary that is greater than monolingual children and surpass them in other language skills. Research shows that the best method for teaching non-English speakers when they begin elementary school is through a combination of the child's native language and English.
- Children use several basic rules to express meaning when they are in the two-word stage. Beginning at about the second birthday, children move to three-word and even longer sentences filled with grammatical morphemes. Children learn general rules about grammatical morphemes and extend their speech beyond the subject-verb-object construction that is basic in English. Between ages 3 and 6 years, children learn to use negation and begin to comprehend the passive voice.
- According to behaviorists, all aspects of language are learned through imitation and reinforcement. Chomsky, and other linguists believe that children are born with mechanisms that simplify the task of learning grammar. Cognitive theorists believe that children learn grammar through powerful cognitive skills that help them rapidly detect regularities in their environments. Social interaction theorists believe that children master language and grammar in the context of social interactions.
- Language development can be promoted by talking with children frequently, using a child's speech to show new language forms, encouraging children to go beyond minimal use of language, listening, and making language fun.
- To communicate effectively, children must learn to take turns, to speak effectively, and to listen well.
- Caregivers scaffold youngsters' attempts to converse. By age 2, spontaneous turn taking is common.
- After the first birthday, children begin to use speech to communicate and often initiate conversations with adults. By the preschool years, youngsters begin to adjust their messages to match the listener and the context. Preschool children give more elaborate messages to listeners who lack critical information. School-age children speak differently to adults and peers. Some African Americans speak African American English. Even very young children seem to understand that when listeners misunderstand, speakers need to do something.
- A skilled listener must continuously decide whether a speaker's remarks make sense. If they do, then a listener must make an appropriate reply. By 3 years, children are more adept at continuing conversations by marking remarks that relate to the topic being discussed. However, as listeners, young children often do not detect ambiguities and understanding nonliteral meanings of messages develops slowly.
