How to Test Language in Babies
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 16 окт 2024
- How can we find out what babies know about language before they can tell us themselves? What methods can we use? This week, we look at some of the experimental techniques linguists use to get into those infant heads, and we also discuss some of the discoveries we've made about what's going on in there.
This is Topic #16!
This week's tag language: Russian!
Find us on all the social media worlds:
Tumblr: thelingspace.tumblr.com
Twitter: @TheLingSpace
Facebook: thelingspace/
And at our website, www.thelingspace.com!
Our website also has extra content about this week's topic at www.thelingspace.com/episode-16/
We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally.
Looking forward to next week!
Linguistics on RUclips. Great! I never heard or read about these tests before, learned a lot today. Thank you.
Bruce Aramayo Thanks for watching! Glad you got a lot of it. If you just found us, we've got a lot more videos up already on a variety of linguistics topics. ^_^
Rocking baby -- I mean video! Our phonology professor showed it to us. Now I'm about to write a fictional lab experiment with babies. Which language do babies prefer, their mother's first language or their mother's second language? It will employ the high amplitude sucking procedure to determine whether they can tell the difference; followed by the head-turn preference procedure to see which one they are "more fascinated by" as you put it. Thanks to the team!
So well done-- thank you very much! I sure appreciate laughing out loud at random little know-nothing babies who don't care about funky bones.
Out of curiosity, are these procedures mostly used in linguistics or are they common across multiple fields? I'd guess the latter and am now just imagining experiments to determine looking patterns reveal them to be rational economic actors or other less silly experiments.
Topics are so interesting! I love your videos, this helps a lot for my essay.
I just found your videos! I love them and you explain things so clearly.
Great videos! You mentioned how babies have been shown to understand questions through preferential looking. Do you know anything about how long after babies begin to understand these questions that they start to vocalise these answers? Thanks!
Jenny Yu Thanks for the question! There isn't as clear-cut an answer, unfortunately, because there's a factor in them talking back: their ability to produce language. To use the example from the video, a child may be able to have an idea of what's going on with a question like "What hit the keys?" But for vocalizing the answer, they might not have the vocabulary yet. A child can recognize the structure of a question without necessarily being able to get all the words to give a correct answer. Kids by 18 months may know a lot about their language already, but on average, they only have about 50 words they can produce, so if the words you want isn't in there, then they can't answer the way we may want. And also, the key there is average - on average, the first word is around 12 months, and there's 50 words by 18 months, but there is natural variation in timing for kids, as well. So if we're looking for full answers to questions with real nouns, that's tough if they don't have the words, even if they do have the structures. But getting out yes and no can come pretty early in the process. Hope this helps! ^_^
This is SO fascinating!
Ok, so babies can tell the difference between one language and another, e.g. between English and Dutch. How about languages that are closely related to each other? Could a Swedish baby tell the difference between a sentence in Swedish and one in Norwegian? How about English vs. Scots? Punjabi vs. Hindi? Austrian Standard German vs. German Standard German? Even adults have a hard time telling the difference between such pairs of languages, so, could babies?
In a previous video you mentioned that babies up to a certain age can tell the difference between any two sounds, whether it be in Inuktitut or Thai. So, this maybe a key to answering this question...
I don't understand what the 'tag language' in the description is.
Pop2323pop Thanks for the question! Every week, at the end of the credits, I've been saying "see you soon" or a similar phrase in a different language. Since I had some people ask me about what the languages were I was using, I started adding them to the video descriptions. This week's one is Russian. Glad you went and looked, though! ^_^
Was that Russian? Hmm...I actually speak Russian and I did not recognize that phrase. I would have said ‘_До свидания_’ or ‘_До втречи._’
thank you very much your channel is the best
Woah, this is enormously interesting! Thanks for all your hard work. :)
ClanNamedBlackbuck Thanks for the kind words! They're much appreciated. ^_^
This test WILL NOT work on Steward Griffin.