The Role of Musical Development in Early Language Acquisition

2018 ◽  
pp. 565-591
Author(s):  
Anthony Brandt ◽  
L. Robert Slevc ◽  
Molly Gebrian
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Developmental Disorders ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Early Language ◽  
Music And Language ◽  
Language And Music ◽  
Infant Brain

Language and music are readily distinguished by adults, but there is growing evidence that infants first experience speech as a special type of music. By listening to the phonemic inventory and prosodic patterns of their caregivers’ speech, infants learn how their native language is composed, later bootstrapping referential meaning onto this musical framework. Our current understanding of infants’ sensitivities to the musical features of speech, the co-development of musical and linguistic abilities, and shared developmental disorders, supports the view that music and language are deeply entangled in the infant brain and modularity emerges over the course of development. This early entanglement of music and language is crucial to the cultural transmission of language and children’s ability to learn any of the world’s tongues.

Learning and the Evolution of Language: The Role of Cultural Variation and Learning Costs in the Baldwin Effect

2002 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Munroe ◽  
Angelo Cangelosi
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Structural Properties ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Baldwin Effect ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Specific Language ◽  
Acquisition Device ◽  
The Baldwin Effect

The Baldwin effect has been explicitly used by Pinker and Bloom as an explanation of the origins of language and the evolution of a language acquisition device. This article presents new simulations of an artificial life model for the evolution of compositional languages. It specifically addresses the role of cultural variation and of learning costs in the Baldwin effect for the evolution of language. Results show that when a high cost is associated with language learning, agents gradually assimilate in their genome some explicit features (e.g., lexical properties) of the specific language they are exposed to. When the structure of the language is allowed to vary through cultural transmission, Baldwinian processes cause, instead, the assimilation of a predisposition to learn, rather than any structural properties associated with a specific language. The analysis of the mechanisms underlying such a predisposition in terms of categorical perception supports Deacon's hypothesis regarding the Baldwinian inheritance of general underlying cognitive capabilities that serve language acquisition. This is in opposition to the thesis that argues for assimilation of structural properties needed for the specification of a full-blown language acquisition device.

Making Use Of Students’ Native Language Potential Strategy To Increase Second Language Acquisition

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Gultom
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Alternative Learning ◽  
Potential Strategy

<p>Alternative learning strategies, in the concept of second language acquisition (SLA), concern more on the identification of second language students’ characteristic. One of the alternative learning strategies that will be discussed in this paper is about the role of native language (L1) with a demonstration of Papuan Malay language possessive pronouns and noun phrases in the context of teaching English as a foreign language (FL) in Jayapura, Papua. The discussion about the structure of Papuan Malay language possessive pronouns and noun phrases might give insight for second language (L2) teachers in Papua on making use their students’ L1 as a potential strategy to help them to increase their second language acquisition.</p>

scholarly journals An Inquiry into the Role of L3 Proficiency on Crosslinguistic influence in Third Language Acquisition.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Statistical Tests ◽  
Specific Interaction ◽  
Third Language ◽  
Third Language Acquisition ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Crosslinguistic Influence ◽  
Cloze Test

Abstract: With the rise of multilingualism, studies have proliferated that investigate the interaction of the different languages. The study presented here sets out to examine the role that proficiency plays on the occurrence of a specific interaction, namely interlanguage transfer from a prior non–native language (L2 German) upon another non–native language (L3 English) at the level of syntax in Spanish/ Catalan bilinguals. Data were collected from 80 learners of L3 English who were at different proficiency levels (as indicated by a 30-item cloze test), while data for the analysis of transfer was elicited using a story telling task. Statistical tests revealed significant differences across proficiency levels, i.e. low and pre–intermediate (p= .032), low and intermediate levels (p= .000), and pre–intermediate and intermediate levels (p= .018). Título en español: “Una indagación sobre el papel de la proficiencia en L3 sobre la influencia transversal en la adquisición de terceras lenguas”Resumen: Con el crecimiento del multilingüismo, han proliferado los estudios que investigan la interacción entre diferentes lenguas. El presente estudio se plantea examinar el rol que desempeña la proficiencia en la ocurrencia de un tipo específico de interacción, a saber, transferencia entre interlenguas de una lengua no nativa (L2 Alemán) a otra lengua no nativa (L3 Inglés) a nivel sintáctico en bilingües Castellano/ Catalán. Se recogieron datos de 80 aprendices de L3 Inglés que estaban en diferentes niveles de proficiencia (como indicó un cloze test de 30 ítems), mientras que los datos para el análisis de la transferencia se elicitaron empleando una tarea narrativa. Los tests estadísticos realizados revelaron diferencias significativas entre niveles bajo y pre–intermedio (p= .032), bajo e intermedio (p= .000) y pre–intermedio e intermedio (p= .018).

scholarly journals Prototype constructions in early language acquisition

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Ibbotson ◽  
Michael Tomasello
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Functional Significance ◽  
Early Language ◽  
General Applicability ◽  
Multiple Cues ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Linguistic Cues ◽  
Reliability And Availability

AbstractIn this paper we bring together several lines of cross-linguistic research to demonstrate the role of prototypicality in young children's acquisition of the transitive construction. Much research has shown that young children are slow to form abstract constructions because they fail to see the more general applicability of syntactic markers such as word order and case marking. Here we attempt to explain this fact by investigating the nature of the language children do and do not hear, specifically, the reliability and availability of the linguistic cues they are exposed to. We suggest that constructions redundantly marked with multiple cues could have a special status as a nucleus around which the prototype forms—which makes it difficult for them to isolate the functional significance of each cue. The implications of this view for language acquisition are discussed within a usage-based framework.

What Is the Role of Reinforcement in Early Language Acquisition?

1988 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grover J. Whitehurst ◽  
Marta C. Valdez-Menchaca
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Early Language

scholarly journals Which Melodic Universals Emerge from Repeated Signaling Games? A Note on Lumaca and Baggio (2017)

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Ravignani ◽  
Tessa Verhoef
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Sound System ◽  
Musical Rhythm ◽  
Music And Language ◽  
Lab Experiments ◽  
Language And Music ◽  
Computer Scientists ◽  
Psychological Evidence ◽  
Study Participants

Music is a peculiar human behavior, yet we still know little as to why and how music emerged. For centuries, the study of music has been the sole prerogative of the humanities. Lately, however, music is being increasingly investigated by psychologists, neuroscientists, biologists, and computer scientists. One approach to studying the origins of music is to empirically test hypotheses about the mechanisms behind this structured behavior. Recent lab experiments show how musical rhythm and melody can emerge via the process of cultural transmission. In particular, Lumaca and Baggio (2017) tested the emergence of a sound system at the boundary between music and language. In this study, participants were given random pairs of signal-meanings; when participants negotiated their meaning and played a “game of telephone” with them, these pairs became more structured and systematic. Over time, the small biases introduced in each artificial transmission step accumulated, displaying quantitative trends, including the emergence, over the course of artificial human generations, of features resembling properties of language and music. In this Note, we highlight the importance of Lumaca and Baggio's experiment, place it in the broader literature on the evolution of language and music, and suggest refinements for future experiments. We conclude that, while psychological evidence for the emergence of proto-musical features is accumulating, complementary work is needed: Mathematical modeling and computer simulations should be used to test the internal consistency of experimentally generated hypotheses and to make new predictions.

scholarly journals The role of automatic reinforcement in early language acquisition

1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark L. Sundberg ◽  
Jack Michael ◽  
James W. Partington ◽  
Cindy A. Sundberg
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Automatic Reinforcement ◽  
Early Language

scholarly journals Using a developmental-ecological approach to understand the relation between language and music

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica H Wojcik ◽  
Daniel J. Lassman ◽  
Dominique T Vuvan
Keyword(s):  
Adult Brain ◽  
Ecological Approach ◽  
Learning And Development ◽  
Music Learning ◽  
Early Language ◽  
Early Music ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Music And Language ◽  
Developmental Theories ◽  
Language And Music

Neurocognitive and genetic approaches have made progress in understanding language-music interaction in the adult brain. Although there is broad agreement that learning processes affect how we represent, comprehend, and produce language and music, there is little understanding of the content and dynamics of the early language-music environment in the first years of life. A developmental-ecological approach sees learning and development as fundamentally embedded in a child’s environment, and thus requires researchers to move outside of the lab to understand what children are seeing, hearing, and doing in their daily lives. In this paper, after first reviewing the limitations of traditional developmental approaches to understanding language-music interaction, we describe how a developmental-ecological approach can inform not only developmental theories of language-music learning, but also contemporary neurocognitive and genetic approaches. We then make suggestions for how researchers can best use the developmental-ecological approach to understand the similarities, differences, and co-occurrences in early music and language input.

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