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Babies' Language Learning Starts From TheWomb

"The dramatic fnding o this study is that not onlyare human neonates capable o producing dierentcry melodies, but they preer to produce thosemelody patterns that are typical or the ambientlanguage they have heard during their etal lie,

within the last trimester o gestation. Humanetuses are able to memorize sounds rom theexternal world by the last trimester o pregnancy,with a particular sensitivity to melody contour inboth music and language

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emantic !udgments help bootstrap

syntax.

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continued

ewborns preer their mother#s voice over other voices andperceive the emotional content o messages conveyed viaintonation contours in maternal speech $a.%.a. "motherese"&. Theirperceptual preerence or the surrounding language and theirability to distinguish between dierent languages and pitch

changes are based primarily on melody.

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'ootstrapping

(n linguistics, bootstrappingmay reer to either o three related andinterdependent theories regarding languageac)uisition*

yntactic bootstrapping is the idea that children use syntactic %nowledgetheyhave developed to help learn what words mean ++ semantics builds on top osyntax

Semantic bootstrappingin linguisticsreers to the hypothesis that children

utilize conceptual %nowledge to create grammaticalcategorieswhen ac)uiringtheir frst language. Thus, or example, categories li%e "type o ob!ectperson"maps directly onto the linguistic category "noun", category li%e "action" onto "verb", etc. This will get children started on their way to ac)uiring parts ospeech, which later can be supplemented by other linguistic inormation. Thehypothesis received some support rom the experiments that showed thatthree+ to fve+year+olds do, in act, generally use nouns or things and verbs oractions more oten than adults do. However, syntactic bootstrapping andlearning rom distributional patterns o the language have also been proposedas a way or children to ac)uire word+classes.

This concept is also used in the study o adult learners o a second languagein much the same way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguisticshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisitionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisitionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Language_acquisition_in_children&action=edit&redlink=1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguisticshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_categoryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_categoryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisitionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nounhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_of_speechhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_of_speechhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_of_speechhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_of_speechhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_of_speechhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nounhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisitionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_categoryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_categoryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_categoryhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguisticshttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Language_acquisition_in_children&action=edit&redlink=1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisitionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisitionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisitionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics

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Babies Use Their Own Names To Help Learn Language

- baby#s understanding o language may begin with his own name,which a baby uses to brea% sentences into smaller parts so it canlearn other words, according to new research by Texas -/0niversity psychologist Heather 'orteld, who studies languagedevelopment in inants and children.