Early Childhood Language Development Essay Example

can equally differentiates between sounds /la/ and /ra/. This is due to the fact children from both places at this age are getting into critical stage of sound development where they attempt to master the sounds in their native languages. Nevertheless, the frequency tends to differ in these two places when the babies are between the age of 10 and 12 months (Chinchillas do it too). This is due to the fact that the sounds /la/ and /ra/ are more common in the English language and American babies are therefore in a better position to recognize the sounds in their native language as compared to Japanese babies (Chinchillas do it too). This evidence supports the fact that babies brain development is shifting and at this time the babies are preparing for their own language and at the same time becoming the language bound listeners. I support the above findings because there is a tendency of children becoming more conversant with the languages and the sound they hear often (Language Varieties). The sounds /ra/ and /la/ are much common in American English and that’s why children from America can easily recognize them as compared to those in Japan where such sounds are not common in Japanese language. Children who have a tendency of recognizing the sounds they ear most.

Description of how Linguistic Variation is related to Linguistic Change

Variation is a common characteristic of language and the same thing can be said in more than one way. Speakers are usually sensitive to what is possible in their native tongue. Linguistic variation tends to occur because of age-graded variation and people use the linguistic forms which are prevalent when reach

adulthood (Language and Society 16). Therefore, if the linguistic change in the progress, an individual can notice the variation over the broader range of ages. For instance, if the vowel sounds in ‘Caught’ are paired in a certain part of the country, for the word to be pronounced as ‘cot’, one would notice that the grandparents in a family would not merge the two vowels unlike the grandchildren who would find it easy to do it. As a consequence, this results to linguistic variation. Linguistic variation also differs based on gender (Language and Society 17). It is easy to notice language variations in females as compared to males. There is a tendency for one to notice language variation among people’s different generations. As shown above, people of different generations can pronounce different words in different ways when referring to the same thing and this amount to language variation.

The Shift in Creaky Voice

According to the research that has been conducted, creaky voice was being used mostly by the males as compared to Females. Nevertheless, the creaky voice is currently being used more by the females as compared to men. The creaky voice is associated with the educated as professional people. The fact that the creaky voice is characterized by educated and professional individuals and it therefore reflects social change (Gender and Language). This implies that the women are becoming more professional and educated as compares to the early 2000 when the creaky voice was mostly being used by males. The increased use of creaky voice by the females reflects a social change (Gender and Language). Unlike there before when the males were considered to be more

professional and educated as compared to females, the increased use of creaky voice by women reflects social change. It can be implied that women are equally becoming as professional and educated as men in the contemporary society more and more females continue using creaky voice. The number of females who graduate with certain certificates have significantly increased in the contemporary society.

Phenomenon Effect in the Picture

The phenomenon effect revealed in the picture is the pragmatic. The pragmatic encompasses the talk interaction and it studies how transmission of meaning relies on the structural as well as linguistic knowledge of a speaker and the listener (Speech Production 370). Furthermore, it also focuses on how the meaning of a word depends in the context in which the word is uttered, the knowledge of the people involved as well as inferred intent of a speaker (Speech Production 371). In this regard, pragmatic effect attempts to explain how the language users can overcome the apparent ambiguity since the meaning depend on the time, manner and place of the utterance. In the picture the second letter in both words are the same but when it comes to pronouncing the sound in /a/ in‘TAE’ is silent but it is audible in ‘CAT’. There is tendency of people understanding a certain word in different ways based on where on the place or time of utterance.

Structural Priming in Bilinguals

Hypothesis: There is a tendency for two different languages to have a possible syntactic structures or possible word orders. It is therefore possible to notice priming among the bilinguals who are conversant with languages which are closely related and there is a possibility of the bilinguals to

repeat certain sentence structures when speaking (Language Varieties). Different languages are localized in separate and specific brain. The differences in the cerebral representation are attributed to the natural variability in linguistic experience of the individuals. The cross-language syntactic priming in the dialogue shows that the interactive alignment of the syntactic representation may occur across the different languages.

Work Cited

1. Speech Perception : https://canvas.uoregon.edu/courses/55572/files/2522494?module_item_id=1542757
2. Anderson, A. Psycholinguistics: Overview. University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK. 2006.; https://canvas.uoregon.edu/courses/55572/files/2447230?module_item_id=152976
3. Language Varieties: https://canvas.uoregon.edu/courses/55572/files/2515496?module_item_id=1541998
4. Gender and Language: https://canvas.uoregon.edu/courses/55572/files/2595182?module_item_id=1551812
5. The Biological and Developmental Bases of Language . https://canvas.uoregon.edu/courses/55572/files/2440658?module_item_id=1528062
6. Chinchillas do it too: https://canvas.uoregon.edu/courses/55572/files/2447208?module_item_id=1529749