Learning a language is a staggering task
To properly understand how babies absorb a language we need to study the process from a number of different perspectives, linguist Claartje Levelt argues. She accepts her appointment as Professor of Language Acquisition on 27 March with an inaugural lecture entitled ‘Language in its infancy’.
Learning a language is a staggering task
For a new-born baby, its mother tongue is just an incomprehensible stream of sounds. The baby is not provided with a set of instructions on how to learn to hear words, analyse the structures of sentences or how to interpret the relationship between different words. In short, it has a huge task to complete. How does a language system establish itself? That’s the question that researchers from the specialism of language acquisition are concerned with. As Levelt explains, scientists have already gathered quite a lot of individual pieces to the puzzle. However, the field of language acquisition is further fragmented into numerous small specialisms that have all gathered information individually. Now, Levelt argues, the time has come to bring the different specialisms together and to unite all that information through collaborative effort.
Lacking cognitive skills
One such initiative involves behavioural biologists and linguists. From their collaborative research it has become apparent that there are interesting similarities to be found between how babies learn a language and how birds learn singing. In both instances they need to hear examples in their environment. But there’s also an important difference between them: animals lack the cognitive skills necessary for mastering languages. Research on the exact nature of that difference can provide scientists with more information about the process through which babies learn a language, Levelt argues.
A step-by-step plan ready at birth?
Another important issue that concerns Levelt is how the step-by-step plan for producing speech is shaped. When someone is trying to say a word, the first step is to extract from the memory the sounds that form that word. These sounds need to be grouped together to form syllables and a motoric plan of action needs to determined. To actually say the word, finally, a group of muscles in the mouth and throat region need to carefully coordinate their movements. For an experienced speaker that whole process takes just a few hundred milliseconds to complete. Levelt will be looking at whether that step-by-step programme is already present at birth, or whether it’s something that develops as part of the language acquisition process.
Claartje Levelt
Claartje Levelt (1965) is Professor of Language Acquisition. She specialises in the development of language in babies and the development of sound structure in particular. In the Leiden Baby Lab she studies what babies already know about language before they even utter their first word. She also researches the early mechanisms used for producing language and how these develop over time.
(26 March 2015)