![[development]] how do humans acquire language? lots of paradigms: - [[reinforcement learning]] ([[behaviourism]]) - [[1924 American descriptivism]] / [[generative grammar]] - [[Bayesian model of language acquisition]] ([[statistical learning]]) - [[usage based linguistic]] not from direct [[pedagogy|teaching]] from parents or teachers: see [[word acquisition]], [[prescriptive and descriptive linguistics|prescriptivism]], children of [[immigrant]] parents (see [[second language]]) - [[generative grammar]] holds that [[form|grammar]] is the essence of language; [[universal grammar]] is product of [[natural selection|phylogeny]] myth of "critical period" not empirically supported (failed to [[replica]]tion) # birth babies immediately cry: conveys emotional state but not grammatical start *cooing* within first few months # four to five months conceptualized things they can talk about [[associative learning]] # six months **babbling**: strings of syllables, including sounds not heard. Playing with vocal tract; no linguistic intention. Not all children do this. Hints of proto-linguistic behaviour: Taking turns in conversation, A few months in: intonation patterns recognize [[phoneme]]s: [[1996SaffranEtAlStatisticalLearning8MonthOld]] experiment # nine to twelve months understanding others as [[theory of mind|intention]]al agents with [[attention]]al / [[psychology and epistemology|mental]] states. *CRITICAL!!* ![[human inductive bias#cognitive skills]] nonlinguistic [[discourse|communication]] begins # one to two years basic [[human language]] / [[linguistic performance]] starts to appear: knows [[lexico|word]]s for body parts; [[holophrase]]s understands simple commands, stories, rhymes regularly learns new words some one-to-two word questions ("where mommy") Gradually tunes to environment; deaf children fall silent. Parents can identify babies # two to four years use rather [[idiom]]atic [[construction]]s # four to five years gradually perfect more [[abstract]] [[syntax]]; learned through [[symmetry|pattern]] recognition, [[human inductive bias]]es and [[statistical learning]] # sources [[1957SkinnerVerbalBehavior]] [[1958BerkoChildsLearningEnglish|wug]] https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/speech-and-language https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/06/reading-skills-and-struggles-manifest-earlier-than-thought ![[library.base#language acquisition]]