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How Children Acquire and Produce Language
It's gone! Zack may be walking but he faces another barrier to further progress.
Imagine what it's like for an infant to understand so very little of what's going on around it...
Hello. I'm looking for some lamps.
...to feel lost and excluded from the social world.
The closest we get to it is a holiday abroad.
These are too old; I want something new.
Trouble is, you can only get so far with mime and pointing.
No?
No.
Will you take me to the pyramids?
Yes, okay.
As a child, one thing you lack is an accurate way of explaining your desires, exactly what you feel;...
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...what you really want or any way really of telling your parents what to get for you.
What you need of course are words.
Every human culture has depended on them, be they spoken or written...
...like these hieroglyphics.
Words and language are the most important thing a child will ever learn.
Not just words to describe things you can point at like sand or rock,...
...but words to describe abstract things:...
...your past, your future, your fears, your hopes;...
...words to describe discoveries and ideas...
...to communicate into other people...
...down the generations, ever expanding the wealth of human knowledge and experience.
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The whole world we have built is built upon language.
And yet, it all begins so simply.
Mama.
It seems a miracle that 15-month-old Zack can begin to master the complex power of language,...
...an infinitely flexible symbolic system, and yet still needs nappies.
Bravo!
Even more impressively, Zack is learning English and his parents have a language, Greek.
When babies first learn to speak, they use a completely different part of the brain...
...from adults trying to learn a foreign language.
That's why it's so natural for babies and such an effort for adults.
Zacky!
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But it's not just Zack's brain that gives him his power.
A newborn baby has a vocal tract just like any other animal.
The larynx, a pipe at the top of the lungs, is positioned high up, right at the back of the throat.
It sticks up like a snorkel above the flow of milk to the stomach.
This ingenious arrangement allows the baby to breathe and suckle at the same time.
But with the larynx so high, it can't perform its major function in life, speech.
By the time Zack is a year old, the larynx needs to have dropped a whole three centimeters lower.
Zacky, where's Mommy?
The lowered larynx now lives up to its other name, the voice box.
With more space at the back of the throat, the voice box can make an extraordinary variety of sounds.
As air passes through the gap between the vocal cords, it causes them to vibrate.
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The tighter the cords are, the higher the pitch.
And the final sounds are shaped by subtle movements of the tongue.
To create just one recognizable word, Zack has to coordinate over 30 different muscles.
Mommy, Mommy! Mommy! Daddy!
Yeah, you're in the water.
Unfortunately, this lowered voice box makes humans especially vulnerable to choking on food.
As a species, however, this occasional problem is outweighed by the power of language.
The human larynx has evolved so that the way it changes suits each stage in life.
Zack can finally communicate.
Mommy.
What?
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We'll go later on the vroom vroom.
Later.
Over the previous year, Zack has progressed from baby to toddler.
But the pace of change does not let up.
Look ahead another year and the child will have raced ahead again.
My name is Moira Russell.
Oh, lovely! Look at that. Real good! That's such a high five for both of us, yeah!
Now I know my A, B, C.
This little girl is two and a half years old. Moira lives in a peaceful suburb in New Jersey.
I'm gonna go water.
Okay, have fun.
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Like all toddlers, she is learning a staggering ten new words a day.
It did seem quite quick that she was able to communicate or to describe things in detail. It seems really fast.
Thank you.
At one point, you think that she's able to sort of react with words...
...and then it's amazing when she's able to take words and think about the future and what could be possible.
Okay, guys. Do you know what this is over here?
What is it?
What do you see? What is it?
Turkey!
There.
Turkey.
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Yeah, you like turkey? Can you make the noise?
Gobble!
Gobble!
Gobble!
Gobble!
Gobble!
Gobble!
Gobble!
Gobble!
Gobble!
Moira has never seen a baby deer before and doesn't know the word for it.
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This is the first time she will ever say it.
Do you know what to call one of these things?
No.
Well, some people call them Bambi, but that's after the movie, yes? It's called a fawn.
Yes.
Can you say that word?
Fawn.
Fawn, yeah.
Not only is Moira an enormous sponge soaking up new words, she knows automatically how to construct them into proper
sentences.
Children have an instinctive knack for language and get the grammar right virtually all the time.
But there are occasional mistakes that are telling. It's almost always when the grammar is irregular.
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Moira, if I have one mouse and I had another mouse, I'd have two what?
Two mouses.
Two mouses?
There's another word that's plural for mouses. What is it, remember?
No.
It would be two "muh..."?
Two mice.
Two mice, that's right. Very good. Good job.
Moira created the word "mouses" herself by just adding an "s".
It's impossible for her to have imitated the word from an adult because they never use it.
Instead, she applied the logical rule for making a plural and has to be taught the exception.
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So, why is it that toddlers can learn language so rapidly?
The theory is that throughout the evolution, little children have always faced grave dangers.
The quicker they learn language and the better they understood the warnings, the more likely they were to survive.
Look at that!
In just the same way that the clam has evolved the tough shell to protect it, we have evolved language as our defense.
Guys, you need to be careful of the water; come back up here.
But language is not just a simple one-off trick like the clamshell.
It's power and flexibility are unique.
It's given rise to our rich social world, delivering us a decisive advantage over other animals.
Look mama, what's this I got?
Alongside language, children learn another skill, a skill adults rarely give much thought to.
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You and I know this is me but we also know that this is me too. It's so simple, it sounds silly.
But in fact, though we take our ability to understand mirrors completely for granted,...
...we're one of very few animal species that has the slightest idea what's going on with them.
A monkey can't recognize itself in a mirror but a chimp can.
Interestingly, it's a skill humans are born with.
14-month-old Julia ignores the red dye painted on her nose.
She fails to recognize the reflection as her because she doesn't yet have a proper sense of herself.
Julia lacks self-awareness, unlike Moira who is over a year older.
Yeah, look at those so frail things.
Moira also uses words like "I", "me", "mine"; proving that she is now aware that she is a separate person from
everyone else.
Gotcha! Who's that?
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You and me.
You?
And me!
And me!
Yeah!
Yes!
Unfortunately, there's a dark side to self-awareness too.
Liam, Liam, Liam, bring the shark back please, Liam.
Liam, bring the shark back, please.
Liam, bring the shark back, please. No, no, look the shark is going through the sand; it's coming back.
Thank you very much.
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Moira sometimes uses tantrums to get her way.
This is the terrible twos, that she has the self-awareness to recognize her needs...
...and the language to express them all too clearly.
That tiny little thing there is a granule...
All the changes in Moira's view of the world are taking place because of alterations inside her maturing brain.
Different skills such as language and self-awareness are clamoring for space in particular parts of the brain.
But there is still something missing, it's a series of developments that will take two years to perfect.
And it's all about getting on with other people.
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