Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-g5fl4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-28T01:11:42.774Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Why do infants begin to talk? Language as an unintended consequence*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

John L. Locke
John L. Locke*
Affiliation:
Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School
*
Address for correspondence: Department of Human Communication Sciences, 18A Claremont Crescent, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TA, UK. J.L.Locke@Sheffield.ac.uk.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Scholars have addressed a range of questions about language development, but for some reason have neglected to ask why infants begin to talk. Biologists often prefer ‘how’ to ‘why’ questions, but it is possible to ask about the immediate consequences of developing behaviours – an acceptable strategy for attacking causation – and psycholinguists can study the immediate consequences to the infant of behaviours that lead to linguistic competence. This process is demonstrated with a series of illustrative proposals as to the short- and long-term consequences of vocal learning and utterance storage, two developmental phases that lead to talking, as well as the act of talking itself. The goal is to encourage investigation of behavioural dispositions that nudge the child, by degrees, towards proficiency in the use of spoken language.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 1996 , pp. 251 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

This paper originated with a talk at the University of Warwick while the author was on sabbatical leave at the Sub-Department of Animal Behaviour, University of Cambridge. Gratitude is expressed to Glyn Collis for a stimulating discussion of the subject matter and to several ethologists, developmental psychologists, evolutionary biologists, and developmental psycholinguists, including Patrick Bateson, David Bjorklund, Robin Cooper, Kurt Fischer, Marc Hauser, Peter Hobson, Peter Mundy, Aniruddh Patel, Michael Smith, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, Colwyn Trevarthen, and Elke Zimmermann for helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. Thanks are also due to Julia Priest for editorial assistance.

References

REFERENCES

Abraham, J. L. & Cooper, R. P. (1994). Developmental changes in preferences for maternal infant-directed speech. (Abstract) Infant Behavior and Development 17, 480.Google Scholar
Asendorpf, J. B. & Baudonniere, P.-M. (1993). Self-awareness and other-awareness: mirror self-recognition and synchronic imitation among unfamiliar peers. Developmental Psychology 29, 88–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron-Cohen, S., Tager-Flusberg, H. & Cohen, D. J. (eds), (1993). The role of imitation in understanding persons and developing a theory of mind. Understanding other minds: perspectives from autism. New York: O.U.P.Google Scholar
Bates, E., Bretherton, I. & Snyder, L. (1988). From first words to grammar: individual differences and dissociable mechanisms. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Bates, E., Dale, P. S. & Thal, D. (1994). Individual differences and their implications for theories of language development. In Fletcher, P. & MacWhinney, B. (eds), Handbook of child language. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bavelas, J. B., Black, A., Lemery, C. R. & Mullett, J. (1987). Motor mimicry as primitive empathy. In Eisenberg, N. & Strayer, J. (eds), Empathy and its development. New York: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Benedict, H. (1979). Early lexical development: comprehension and production. Journal of Child Language 6, 183–200.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berntson, G. G. & Boysen, S. T. (1989). Specificity of the cardiac response to conspecific vocalizations in chimpanzees. Behavioral Neuroscience 103, 235–45.Google Scholar
Bertenthal, B. I. & Campos, J. J. (1990). A systems approach to the organizing effects of self-produced locomotion during infancy. In Rovee-Collier, C. & Lipsitt, L. P. (eds), Advances in infant research. Volume 6. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Boysson-Bardies, B. de, Vihman, M. M., Roug-Hellichius, L., Durand, C., Landberg, I. & Arao, F. (1992). Material evidence of infant selection from the target language: a cross-linguistic phonetic study. In Ferguson, C., Menn, L., & Stoel-Gammon, C. (eds), Phonological development: models, research, implications. Timonium, MD: York Press.Google Scholar
Bronson, W. C. (1971). The growth of competence: issues of conceptualization and measurement. In Schaffer, H. R. (ed), The origins of human social relations. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1995). Language and nature. Mind 104, 1–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collis, G. M. (1977). Visual co-orientation and maternal speech. In Schaffer, H. R. (ed), Studies in mother-infant interaction. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
DeCasper, A. & Fifer, W. P. (1980). On human bonding: newborns prefer their mothers' voices. Science 208, 1174–76.Google Scholar
Delack, J. B. (1976). Aspects of infant speech development in the first year of life. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 21, 17–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D'Odorico, L. (1984). Non-segmental features in prelinguistic communications: an analysis of some types of infant cry and noncry vocalizations. Journal of Child Language 11, 17–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Echols, C. H. (1993). A perceptually-based model of children's earliest productions. Cognition 46, 245–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fay, W. H. (1967). Marathon monologues of a three-year-old. Journal of Communication Disorders 1, 41–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fay, W. H. & Butler, B. V. (1971). Echo-reaction as an approach to semantic resolution. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 14, 645–51CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernald, A. (1993). Approval and disapproval: infant responsiveness to vocal affect in familiar and unfamiliar languages. Child Development 64, 657–74.Google Scholar
Fernald, A. & McRoberts, G. (1994). Prosodic bootstrapping: a critical analysis of the argument and the evidence. In Morgan, J. L. & Demuth, K. (eds), Signal to syntax: bootstrapping from speech to syntax in early acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Furrow, D. (1984). Social and private speech at two years. Child Development 55, 355–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giles, H. (ed) (1984). The dynamics of speech accommodation. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 46, 1–155.Google Scholar
Ginsburg, G. P. & Kilbourne, B. K. (1988). Emergence of vocal alternation in mother–infant interchanges. Journal of Child Language 15, 221–35.Google Scholar
Goldfield, B. A. & Reznick, J. S. (1990). Early lexical acquisition: rate, content, and the vocabulary spurt. Journal of Child Language 17, 171–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goodsitt, J. V., Morgan, J. L. & Kuhl, P. K. (1993). Perceptual strategies in prelingual speech segmentation. Journal of Child Language 20, 229–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gottlieb, G. (1991). Experiential canalization of behavioral development: theory. Developmental Psychology 27, 4–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. (1975). Learning how to mean: explorations in the development of language. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Harris, M. & Chasin, J. (1993). Developing patterns in children's early comprehension vocabularies. Proceedings of the Child Language Seminar, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, England.Google Scholar
Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J. T. & Rapson, R. L. (1994). Emotional contagion. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Hickey, T. (1993). Identifying formulas in first language acquisition. Journal of Child Language 20, 27–41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hogan, J. A. (1994). The concept of cause in the study of behavior. In Hogan, J. A. & Bolhuis, J. J. (eds), Causal mechanisms of behavioural development. Cambridge: C.U.P.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Izard, C. E. (1978). On the ontogenesis of emotions and emotion-cognition relationships in infancy. In Lewis, M. & Rosenblum, L. A. (eds), The development of affect. New York: Plenum.Google Scholar
Jusczyk, P. W., Friederici, A. D., Wessels, J. M. I., Svenkerud, V. Y. & Jusczyk, A. M. (1993). Infants' sensitivity to the sound patterns of native language words. Journal of Memory and Language 32, 402–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kent, R. (1992). The biology of phonological development. In Ferguson, C., Menn, L. & Stoel-Gammon, C. (eds), Phonological development: models, research, implications. Parkton, MD: York Press.Google Scholar
Kugiumutsakis, G. (1993). Intersubjective vocal imitation in early mother-infant interactions. In Nadel, J. & Camaioni, L. (eds), New perspectives in early communicative development. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K., Williams, K. A., Lacerda, F., Stevens, K. N. & Lindblom, B. (1992). Linguistic experience alters phonetic perception in infants by 6 months of age. Science 255, 606–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Landon, S. J. & Sommers, R. K. (1979). Talkativeness and children's linguistic abilities. Language and Speech 22, 269–75.Google Scholar
Lenneberg, E. H. (1962). Understanding language without ability to speak: a case report. Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology 6, 419–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenneberg, E. H. (1967). Biological foundations of language. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Leung, E. H. & Rheingold, H. L. (1981). Development of pointing as a social gesture. Developmental Psychology 17, 215–20.Google Scholar
Lieven, E. V. M., Pine, J. M. & Dresner Barnes, H. (1992). Individual differences in early vocabulary development: redefining the referential-expressive distinction. Journal of Child Language 19, 287–310.Google Scholar
Lieven, E. & McShane, J. (1978). Language is a developing social skill. In Chivers, D. J. & Herbert, J. (eds), Recent advances in primatology. Volume 1. Behaviour. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Lindblom, B. (1989). Some remarks on the origin of the phonetic code. In von Euler, C., Lundberg, I. & Lennerstrand, G. (eds), Brain and reading: structural and functional anomalies in developmental dyslexia with special reference to hemispheric interactions, memory functions, linguistic processes and visual analysis in reading. New York: Stockton Press.Google Scholar
Locke, J. L. (1993). The child's path to spoken language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Locke, J. L. (1994). Gradual development of developmental language disorders. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 37, 608–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mandel, D. R., Jusczyk, P. W. & Pisoni, D. B. (1995). Infants' recognition of the sound patterns of their own names. Psychological Science 6, 314–17.Google Scholar
Marchman, V. A. & Bates, E. (1994). Continuity in lexical and morphological development: a test of the critical mass hypothesis. Journal of Child Language 21, 339–66.Google Scholar
Martin, G. B. & Clark, R. D. (1982). Distress crying in neonates: species and peer specificity. Developmental Psychology 18, 3–9.Google Scholar
Masataka, N. (1992). Pitch characteristics of Japanese maternal speech to infants. Journal of Child Language 19, 213–23.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meltzoff, A. & Gopnik, A. (1993). The role of imitation in understanding persons and developing a theory of mind. In Baron-Cohen, S., Tager-Flusberg, H. & Cohen, D. J. (eds), Understanding other minds: perspectives from autism. New York: O.U.P.Google Scholar
Meltzoff, A. N. & Moore, M. K. (1992). Early imitation within a functional framework: the importance of person identity, movement, and development. Infant Behavior and Development 15, 479–505.Google Scholar
Mills, D. L., Coffey-Corina, S. A. & Neville, H. J. (1993). Language acquisition and cerebral specialization in 20-month-old infants. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 5, 317–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moon, C., Cooper, R. P. & Fifer, W. P. (1993). Two-day olds prefer their native language. Infant Behavior and Development 16, 495–500.Google Scholar
Nelson, K. (1973). Structure and strategy in learning to talk. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 38 (Serial No. 149).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, K. (1981). Individual differences in language development: implications for development and language. Developmental Psychology 17, 170–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, K. (1985). Making sense: the acquisition of shared meaning. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, K. (ed) (1992). Narratives from the crib. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Nygaard, L. C., Sommers, M. S. & Pisoni, D. B. (1994). Speech perception as a talker-contingent process. Psychological Science 5, 42–6.Google Scholar
Oiler, D. K. (1981). Infant vocalizations: exploration and reflexivity. In Stark, R. (ed), Language behavior in infancy and early childhood. New York: Elsevier/North Holland.Google Scholar
Oiler, D. K. & Eilers, R. E. (1988). The role of audition in infant babbling. Child Development 59, 441–9.Google Scholar
Papousek, M. & Papousek, H. (1989). Forms and functions of vocal matching in interactions between mothers and their precanonical infants. First Language 9, 137–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, R. & Jennings, P. (1992). Phonological behavior in toddlers with slow expressive language development. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 35, 99–107.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Peters, A. M. (1977). Language learning strategies: does the whole equal the sum of the parts ? Language 53, 560–73.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. & Bloom, P. (1990). Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13, 707–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plomin, R., Emde, R. N., Braungart, J. M., Campos, J., Corley, R., Fulker, D. W., Kagan, J., Reznick, J. S., Robinson, J., Zahn-Waxler, C. & DeFries, J. C. (1993). Genetic change and continuity from fourteen to twenty months: The MacArthur Longitudinal Twin Study. Child Development 64, 1354–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Plunkett, K. & Marchman, V. (1993). From rote learning to system building: acquiring verb morphology in children and connectionist nets. Cognition 48, 21–69.Google Scholar
Rescorla, L. (1993). Epidemiological investigation of expressive language delay at age two. First Language 13, 5–22.Google Scholar
Scaife, M. & Bruner, J. S. (1975). The capacity for joint visual attention in the infant. Nature 253, 265–6.Google Scholar
Schaffer, H. R. (1989). Language development in context. In von Tetzchner, S., Siegel, L. and Smith, L. (eds), The social and cognitive aspects of normal and atypical language development. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Shatz, M. (1994). A toddler's life: becoming a person. Oxford: O.U.P.Google Scholar
Snow, C. E. (1989). Imitativeness: a trait or a skill? In Speidel, G. E. & Nelson, K. E. (eds), The many faces of imitation in language learning. Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Speer, S. R., Crowder, R. G. & Thomas, L. M. (1993). Prosodic structure and sentence recognition. Journal of Memory and Language 32, 336–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Studdert-Kennedy, M. (1986). Sources of variability in early speech development. In Perkell, J. S. & Klatt, D. H. (eds), Invariance and variability in speech processes. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Studdert-Kennedy, M. (1991). Language development from an evolutionary perspective. In Krasnegor, N., Rumbaugh, D., Schiefelbusch, R. & Studdert-Kennedy, M. (eds), Language acquisition: biological and behavioral determinants. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Studdert-Kennedy, M. & Goodell, E. W. (1992). Gestures, features and segments in early child speech. Haskins Laboratories Status Reports on Speech Research 112, 1–14.Google Scholar
Thal, D., Oroz, M. & McCaw, V. (1995). Phonological and lexical development in normal and late talking toddlers. Applied Psycholinguistics 16, 407–024.Google Scholar
Thal, D., Tobias, S. & Morrison, D. (1991). Language and gesture in late talkers: a one-year follow-up. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 34, 604–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tinbergen, N. (1951). The study of instinct. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. & Farrar, M. J. (1986). Joint attention and early language. Child Development 57, 1454–63.Google Scholar
Trevarthen, C. (in press). The self born in intersubjectivity: the psychology of an infant communicating. In Neisser, U. (ed), The perceived self: ecological and interpersonal sources of the self-knowledge. New York: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Vihman, M. M. (1986). Individual differences in babbling and early speech: predicting to age three. In Lindblom, B. & Zetterstrom, R. (eds), Precursors of early speech. New York: Stockton Press.Google Scholar
Watson, J. S. (1981). Contingency experience in behavioral development. In Immelmann, G. B., Barlow, L., Petrinovich, L. & Main, M. (eds), Behavioral development. Cambridge: C.U.P.Google Scholar
Werker, J. F. & Polka, L. (1993). Developmental changes in speech perception: new challenges and new directions. Journal of Phonetics 21, 83–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, R. W. (1959). Motivation reconsidered: the concept of competence. Psychological Review 66, 297–333.Google Scholar