Research Book 3/5

   The time has come to find out “What Children Learn about Language”. I found it rather remarkable just how much children know, and how much they learn in such a short period of time. The two major reasons that babies and young children learn so much about language is that first, we are actually born with a certain knowledge about language and secondly, we have great tutors surrounding us at all times (parents, siblings, and grown-ups). When babies are born, before they can even speak, they are able to distinguish different sounds such as “l” or “r”  in any language, with no regards to the language that is being spoken at home. This is rather difficult to accomplish by a Japanese adult because when we are accustomed to a specific language it changes and molds the way we respond to specific sounds, but it seems to come natural for a newborn whose one month old. At first, babies place the sounds they hear in their language into various categories, so that these sounds can be smoothly incorporated into words, they reach this phase by the time they are about twelve months old. This is easily noticed when babies begin to babble. As it turns out babies who heard Spanish sounds, babble in a way that sounds Spanish!, and the same goes for every other language, this is when babies start to take up the sounds of their individual culture. This baby babbling is a crucial process for babies to get to know the language they are learning because it appears they are actually “creating a kind of mouth-to-sound map, relating the movements of their speech articulators…to the sounds they produce” (124). This idea reveals how inborn speech and language clearly is.  Grown-ups and family members are a big part of this learning process, but not as much as the mothers themselves and their Motherese language. Motherese is referred to the way mothers speak to their babies, in that affectionate and slow, dragged out pronunciation of words. If babies had a choice in what to listen to, they would definitely choose motherese, because there’s a comfort level associated with it, and it is also a universal language. Motherese consists of  clean short words or sentences, with clearly pronounced sounds that are usually repeated over and over. This simple unconscious everyday talk brings together, nature and nurture to aid these babies through their never ending journey of language.

EUPHORIA

“That's the difference between me and the rest of the world! Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria!” Bill Watterson.

Euphoria which is a noun but can also be an adjective (euphoric) and it means a feeling of great happiness, well-being or elation. The etymology of this word  dates to 1727, when this word was a physician’s term for “condition of feeling healthy and comfortable”. Euphoria among many of our English language words originates from Greek and is obtained from the word “Euphoros”. Some time later this word was taken to Latin where it became “eupherein”  the “eu” means good and “pherein” means to bear. Since this word has it’s roots in Greek it is therefore, borrowed. I chose this word because earlier this week I was watching television with my friend and there was a commercial for a perfume called “Euphoria” and we both happened to be unsure of what it meant, so we goggled it together and now we have both added a word to our ever expanding vocabulary. 

Option # 2

Dear Lucy Linguistics,


I’m so glad to hear that Dr. Jerskey thought of me in regards to a recommendation for your research book. As Dr. Jerskey might have informed you by now, I chose The Scientist in The Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About The Mind  by Alison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff and Patricia K. Kuhl. This book has been a huge eye opener for me as it might be for you as well, even though  this book is for a language class, it goes way  beyond just language. This book is all about babies and young children and what they know from the time they are born, to what they learn from all of the objects and people around them. Just as described in the title, babies are similar to scientists because they too are curious and question their every surroundings with an innate desire to find answers to these puzzling questions. I believe that everyone who is a mother or a father or has seen a baby should read this book, I feel that it relates to everyone because, after all we were all babies at some point and explains all of the mental  processes that we went though at such a young age, but have no recollection of anymore. As it turns out a lot of what babies know about language is there from the time they are born, by the time they are about six months they can differentiate certain sounds in various languages even before they can speak themselves. For example a 4 month old that doesn’t come from an English speaking family can tell the difference between the r sound and the l sound in English, or Spanish or any language. But this is not true for adults, it appears that for Japanese speaking individuals this proves to be a difficult task. This all changes by the time these same babies are one year old, they can no longer tell the difference in other languages, but only in the primary language spoken in their culture and are no longer considered “citizens of the world” (106). Taking into account all the thousands’ of languages in the world it is astonishing how a baby can learn any of these languages and some even learn more than one. I for example, speak Spanish and English but my first language was Spanish which certainly is different compared to English but is similar to French because they are both a “system of grammatical gender” (120). I personally can relate to this gender based language because it is the language of my culture, but I hadn’t realized that is was a gender based language until I was presented with an article provided by Dr. Jerskey in ELL 101. According to this book a child that is learning to speak two languages will be capable of utilizing verb and noun endings shortly before an English speaking child, I think this explains just how much language can shape who we are as people and how we think about ourselves and others, because the fact is that, we have been doing this since infancy. Lucy I hope you take this book into consideration and if you do end up reading it, whether it’s for class or for fun I’m confident that you will enjoy it. Good luck!.
                                                                                                              Sincerely,
                                                                                                              Michelle Barreto

Research Book 2/5

  Moving along with my research book The Scientist in The Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About The Mind  for this week’s summary I read mostly about what children learn about objects and people. It appears that the very first things that children talk about are desires, perceptions and emotions what they and others, want, see and feel. Children are very influenced by other people’s minds and behavior, it is astounding just how much babies and children can pick up from just observing others. Just as they learn about deception at about the age of three or four because that’s approximately when they begin to understand about beliefs and how they can be different from person to person. Although it seems that a newborn can be excited to see their mother’s face or hear a familiar voice, they are ecstatic about stripes and edges!. I found this quite interesting because it demonstrates just how simple everyday things, can be complex and eye catching to newborns, so much so, that designs for baby toys are taken right from Developmental Psychology journals. By the time these newborns are 3 months they learn that what they do can have an affect/ influence on the world around them, a simple understanding of cause and effect. All of the research done in this book goes to show how much children learn from the people around them, but it also makes it clear that a big deal of it is innate and we are only here to push them in the right direction. For next weeks blog, I will finally be reading up on “What Children Learn about Language” tune in next week!.

How To Say [mɪʃɛl]

My name is Michelle but it sounds more like “mishell” . While in Nagaland if I were to transcribe it to a linguist utilizing the International Phonetic Association chart it would look like [mɪʃɛl]. The initial consonant sound [m] is a voiced, nasal, bilabial, followed by the rhyme [ɪ] which is a high front vowel. Then there’s a voiceless, palatal, fricative [ʃ] which in turn is followed by a mid front vowel of [ɛ] and the ending consonant sound [l] is a voiced, liquid alveolar [mɪʃɛl]. Now, if I were to explain it to a local from the country of Nagaland then my explanation would be quite different. First you would have to make the beginning sound of mmmamma, by putting your lips together and then slightly opening your mouth to make the beginning sound of “iiidiot” then you would have to make a “ssshh” sound like if your trying to tell someone to be quiet. And lastly the ending sound to my name would be just like the letter “L” as the beginning of “EELLephant”

Research Book 1/5

So after reading about 1/5 of  The Scientist in The Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About The Mind, it is difficult to view babies and young children the same anymore. The very beginning of this book was more of an overview of what we originally thought we knew about babies  and of what we have come to discover years later through various forms of research and close observation. This book pointed out to me that unfortunately, the study of  children’s development, Developmental Psychology is a fairly recent field of study and the ground work was put together mostly by two people in particular, Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Thanks to their earlier work, and recent research we have now adopted a new theory that an infants’ brain is like a computer, and not a blank slate as it was thought of before. Technology has also significantly affected Developmental Psychology because, now we have what Piaget and Vygotsky did not, camcorders and now psychologists have learned new amazing facts about babies, like the fact that six-month-olds can tell the difference between Swedish and English! Fascinating stuff. I also learned that babies start to understand that they are similar to others, and that we can feel upset or happy about certain things. Babies are so much smarter than I actually thought, this book finally explained to me why the “terrible two’s” are in deed so terrible, and it’s for the simple fact that children do (bad) things just because we don’t want them to. I think this shows a deep understanding of other people, and how they feel, because this demonstrates that children are acting with a purpose. So far into the book there hasn’t been much talk concerning language, but I skimmed through the table of contents and it’s coming up soon, in chapter 4 approximately 3/5 into the book, but meanwhile I will be reading all the other cool elements about “What children learn about things” next.

Research Project

While reading down the list of books from which to choose from for our research, I was immediately drawn to two specific books, You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in Conversation and The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind . After a few minutes of internet research and a brief reading of the first chapters I decided that the second option was going to be my book of choice. There were certain key factors which assisted me in my decision. First of all, after reading a page or two I saw that it was a bit witty, which was a major attraction because who doesn’t like some humor in their life?. Secondly, this book is very captivating and full of interesting facts about children that will not seize to shock you, and this is what this book mostly consists of. It explores the world of young children and infants and tries to explain to us as adults and parents that they are not what they seem. That children are curious minds and think about issues just as we do, perhaps not the same issues but the point it that they think. I personally do not have children of my own, but I do hope to someday have a family and this book seems to be a great tool to help me through the undiscovered journey of parenthood. Lastly, I am going to be sincere and say that I am also taking a developmental psychology course and this book is closely related to the material, that I felt inclined toward this book in an endeavor to kill two birds with one stone.