Language Mapping
ØAcquisition
of our First Language(s).
Babies: “These tiny linguists are true citizens of the
world.”
(Kuhl, 1996)
§Born with an ability to distinguish among
different language sounds.
§“Language magnets” are developed that attract their ears to the
sounds of their
native languages.
§For example, similar sounds are chunked together into one
single category: A baby that listens to Swedish (16 vowel sounds) will have different language magnets than a baby
who hears English (8-9
vowel sounds) or who hears Japanese (5 vowel sounds).
§The Swedish baby retains all the distinctions, but the American
and Japanese
babies lose the ability to distinguish those vowels because their languages do not contain/utilize them.
§Infants perceptual systems are established by 6 months of
age and are configured to acquire their native languages.
§This wiring or perceptual map accounts for the accents that
signal our national and regional origins.
