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In summary, these early research efforts demonstrated that semantic and structural speech production takes place in different areas of the brain.
Fluency (also called volubility and eloquency) is the property of a person or of a system that delivers information quickly and with expertise.
Language fluency is one of a variety of terms used to characterize or measure a person's language ability, often used in conjunction with accuracy and complexity. Although there are no widely agreed-upon definitions or measures of language fluency, someone is typically said to be fluent if their use of the language appears "fluid", or natural, coherent, and easy as opposed to slow, halting use. In other words, fluency is often described as the ability to produce language on demand and be understood.
Language fluency is sometimes contrasted with accuracy (or correctness of language use, especially grammatical correctness) and complexity (or a more encompassing knowledge of vocabulary and discourse strategies). Fluency, accuracy, and complexity are distinct but interrelated components of language acquisition and proficiency.
There are four commonly discussed types of fluency: reading fluency, oral fluency, oral-reading fluency, and written or compositional fluency. These types of fluency are interrelated, but do not necessarily develop in tandem or linearly. One may develop fluency in certain type(s) and be less fluent or nonfluent in others.
In the sense of proficiency, "fluency" encompasses a number of related but separable skills:
So although it is often assumed that young children learn languages more easily than adolescents and adults, the reverse is in fact true; older learners are faster. The only exception to this rule is in pronunciation. Young children invariably learn to speak their second language with native-like pronunciation, whereas learners who start learning a language at an older age only rarely reach a native-like level.
Since childhood is a critical period, widespread opinion holds that it is easier for young children to learn a second language than it is for adults. Children can even acquire native fluency when exposed to the language on a consistent basis with rich interaction in a social setting. In addition to capacity, factors like; 1) motivation, 2) aptitude, 3) personality characteristics, 4) age of acquisition 5) first language typology 6) socio-economic status and 7) quality and context of L2 input play a role in L2 acquisitions rate and building fluency. Second language acquisition (SLA) has the ability to influence children’s cognitive growth and linguistic development.
Skill that consists of ability to produce words in target language develops until adolescence. Natural ability to acquire a new language with a deliberate effort may begin to diminish around puberty i.e. 12–14 years of age. Learning environment, comprehensible instructional materials, teacher, and the learner are indispensable elements in SLA and developing fluency in children. Extensive reading in L2 can offer twofold benefits in foreign language learning i.e. "reading to comprehend English and reading to learn English".
Paradis (2006) study on childhood language acquisition and building fluency examines how first and second language acquisition patterns are generally similar including vocabulary and morphosyntax. Phonology of first language is usually apparent in SLA and initial L1 influence can be lifelong, even for child L2 learners.
Children can acquire a second language simultaneously (learn L1 and L2 at the same time) or sequentially (learn L1 first and then L2). In the end, they develop fluency in both with one dominant language which is spoken largely by the community they live in.
According to one source, there are five stages of SLA and developing fluency:
The process of learning a second language or "L2," among older learners differs from younger learners because of their working memory. Working memory, also connected to fluency because it deals with automatic responses, is vital to language acquisition. This happens when information is stored and manipulated temporarily. During working memory, words are filtered, processed, and rehearsed, and information is stored while focusing on the next piece of interaction. These false starts, pauses or repetitions found in fluency assessments, can also be found within one's working memory as part of communication.
Those with education at or below a high school level are least likely to take language classes. It has also been found that women and young immigrants are more likely to take language classes. Further, highly educated immigrants who are searching for skilled jobs – which require interpersonal and intercultural skills that are difficult to learn – are the most affected by lower fluency in the L2.
Fluency is a speech language pathology term that means the smoothness or flow with which sounds, syllables, words and phrases are joined together when speaking quickly. "Fluency disorders" is used as a collective term for cluttering and stuttering. Both disorders have breaks in the fluidity of speech, and both have the fluency breakdown of repetition of parts of speech.
Studies in the assessment of creativity list fluency as one of the four primary elements in creative thinking, the others being flexibility, originality and elaboration. Fluency in creative thinking is seen as the ability to think of many diverse ideas quickly.
The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism (1923) is a book by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards. It is accompanied by two supplementary essays by Bronisław Malinowski and F. G. Crookshank. The conception of the book arose during a two-hour conversation between Ogden and Richards held on a staircase in a house next to the Cavendish Laboratories at 11 pm on Armistice Day, 1918.
The original text was published in 1923 and has been used as a textbook in many fields including linguistics, philosophy, language, cognitive science and most recently semantics and semiotics in general. The book has been in print continuously since 1982. The most recent edition is the critical edition prepared by W. Terrence Gordon as volume 3 of the 5-volume set "C. K. Ogden & Linguistics" (London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1995). The full publication history, including serialised publication in "The Cambridge Magazine" prior to the first edition of the book, is in W. Terrence Gordon's, "C. K. Ogden: a bio-bibliographical study".
Richards sets forth a contextual theory of Signs: that Words and Things are connected “through their occurrence together with things, their linkage with them in a ‘context’ that Symbols come to play that important part in our life [even] the source of all our power over the external world” (47). In this context system, Richards develops a tri-part semiotics—symbol, thought and referent with three relations between them (thought to symbol=correct, thought–referent=adequate, symbol–reference=true) (11). Symbols are “those signs which men use to communicate one with another and as instruments of thought, occupy a peculiar place” (23). “All discursive symbolization involves […] weaving together of contexts into higher contexts” (220). So for a word to be understood “requires that it form a context with further experiences” (210).
The book would later influence A. J. Ayer's "Language, Truth, and Logic", an introduction to logical positivism, and both the Richards–Ogden book and the Ayer book would, in turn, influence Alec King and Martin Ketley in the writing of their book "The Control of Language", which appeared in 1939, and which influenced C. S. Lewis in the writing of his defence of natural law and objective values, "The Abolition of Man" (1943).
TRACE is a connectionist model of speech perception, proposed by James McClelland and Jeffrey Elman in 1986. It is based on a structure called "the Trace," a dynamic processing structure made up of a network of units, which performs as the system's working memory as well as the perceptual processing mechanism. TRACE was made into a working computer program for running perceptual simulations. These simulations are predictions about how a human mind/brain processes speech sounds and words as they are heard in real time.
"TRACE was the first model that instantiated the activation of multiple word candidates that match any part of the speech input." A simulation of speech perception involves presenting the TRACE computer program with mock speech input, running the program, and generating a result. A successful simulation indicates that the result is found to be meaningfully similar to how people process speech.
It is generally accepted in psycholinguistics that (1) when the beginning of a word is heard, a set of words that share the same initial sound become activated in memory, (2) the words that are activated compete with each other while more and more of the word is heard, (3) at some point, due to both the auditory input and the lexical competition, one word is recognized.
For example, a listener hears the beginning of "bald", and the words bald, ball, bad, bill become active in memory. Then, soon after, only bald and ball remain in competition (bad, bill have been eliminated because the vowel sound doesn't match the input). Soon after, bald is recognized. TRACE simulates this process by representing the temporal dimension of speech, allowing words in the lexicon to vary in activation strength, and by having words compete during processing. Figure 1 shows a line graph of word activation in a simple TRACE simulation.
Speakers usually don't leave pauses in between words when speaking, yet listeners seem to have no difficulty hearing speech as a sequence of words. This is known as the segmentation problem, and is one of the oldest problems in the psychology of language. TRACE proposed the following solution, backed up by simulations. When words become activated and recognized, this reveals the location of word boundaries. Stronger word activation leads to greater confidence about word boundaries, which informs the hearer of where to expect the next word to begin.
The TRACE model is a connectionist network with an input layer and three processing layers: pseudo-spectra (feature), phoneme and word. Figure 2 shows a schematic diagram of TRACE. There are three types of connectivity: (1) feedforward excitatory connections from input to features, features to phonemes, and phonemes to words; (2) lateral (i.e., within layer) inhibitory connections at the feature, phoneme and word layers; and (3) top-down feedback excitatory connections from words to phonemes.
The input to TRACE works as follows. The user provides a phoneme sequence that is converted into a multi-dimensional feature vector. This is an approximation of acoustic spectra extended in time.
The input vector is revealed a little at a time to simulate the temporal nature of speech. As each new chunk of input is presented, this sends activity along the network connections, changing the activation values in the processing layers. Features activate phoneme units, and phonemes activate word units. Parameters govern the strength of the excitatory and inhibitory connections, as well as many other processing details.
There is no specific mechanism that determines when a word or a phoneme has been recognized. If simulations are being compared to reaction time data from a perceptual experiment (e.g. lexical decision), then typically an activation threshold is used. This allows for the model behavior to be interpreted as recognition, and a recognition time to be recorded as the number of processing cycles that have elapsed. For deeper understanding of TRACE processing dynamics, readers are referred to the original publication and to a TRACE software tool that runs simulations with a graphical user interface.
Models of language processing can be used to conceptualize the nature of impairment in persons with speech and language disorder. For example, it has been suggested that language deficits in expressive aphasia may be caused by excessive competition between lexical units, thus preventing any word from becoming sufficiently activated. Arguments for this hypothesis consider that mental dysfunction can be explained by slight perturbation of the network model's processing. This emerging line of research incorporates a wide range of theories and models, and TRACE represents just one piece of a growing puzzle.
Psycholinguistic models of speech perception, e.g. TRACE, must be distinguished from computer speech recognition tools. The former are psychological theories about how the human mind/brain processes information. The latter are engineered solutions for converting an acoustic signal into text. Historically, the two fields have had little contact, but this is beginning to change.
TRACE’s influence in the psychology literature can be assessed by the number of articles that cite it. There are 345 citations of McClelland and Elman (1986) in the PsycINFO database. Figure 3 shows the distribution of those citations over the years since publication. The figure suggests that interest in TRACE grew significantly in 2001, and has remained strong, with about 30 citations per year.
Baby talk is a type of speech associated with an older person speaking to a child. It is also called caretaker speech, infant-directed speech (IDS), child-directed speech (CDS), child-directed language (CDL), caregiver register, parentese, or motherese.
CDS is characterized by a "sing song" pattern of intonation that differentiates it from the more monotone style used with other adults e.g., CDS has higher and wider pitch, slower speech rate and shorter utterances. It can display vowel hyperarticulation (an increase in distance in the formant space of the peripheral vowels e.g., [i], [u], and [a]) and words tend to be shortened and simplified. There is evidence that the exaggerated pitch modifications are similar to the affectionate speech style employed when people speak to their pets (pet-directed speech). However, the hyperarticulation of vowels appears to be related to the propensity for the infant to learn language, as it is not exaggerated in speech to infants with hearing loss or to pets.
CDS is a clear and simplified strategy for communicating to younger children, used by adults and by older children. The vocabulary is limited, speech is slowed with a greater number of pauses, and the sentences are short and grammatically simplified, often repeated. Although CDS features marked auditory characteristics, other factors aid in development of language. Three types of modifications occur to adult-directed speech in the production of CDS —
The younger the child, the more exaggerated the adult's CDS is. The attention of infants is held more readily by CDS over normal speech, as with adults. The more expressive CDS is, the more likely infants are to respond to this method of communication by adults.
A key visual aspect of CDS is the movement of the lips. One characteristic is the wider opening of the mouth present in those using CDS versus adult-directed speech, particularly in vowels. Research suggests that with the larger opening of the lips during CDS, infants are better able to grasp the message being conveyed due to the heightened visual cues.
Through this interaction, infants are able to determine who positive and encouraging caregivers will be in their development. When infants use CDS as a determinant of acceptable caregivers, their cognitive development seems to thrive because they are being encouraged by adults who are invested in the development of the given infants. Because the process is interactive, caregivers are able to make significant progress through the use of CDS.
Studies have shown that from birth, infants prefer to listen to CDS, which is more effective than regular speech in getting and holding an infant's attention.
Some researchers believe that CDS is an important part of the emotional bonding process between the parents and their child, and helps the infants learn the language. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Wisconsin found that using basic “baby talk” may support babies in picking up words faster. Infants pay more attention when parents use CDS, which has a slower and more repetitive tone than used in regular conversation.
CDS has been observed in languages other than English.
Purposes and benefits of CDS include support the ability of infants to bond with their caregivers. In addition, infants begin the process of speech and language acquisition and development through CDS.
Children learn fastest who receive the most acknowledgement and encouragement of what they say, who are given time and attention to speak and share, and who are questioned. Infants are able to apply this to larger words and sentences as they learn to process language.
CDS aids infants in bonding to caregivers. Although infants have a range of social cues available to them regarding who will provide adequate care, CDS serves as an additional indicator as to which caregivers will provide developmental support. When adults engage in CDS with infants, they are providing positive emotion and attention, signaling to infants that they are valued.
CDS can also serve as a priming tool for infants to notice the faces of their caregivers. Infants are more sensitive to the pitch and emphasized qualities of this method. Therefore, when caregivers use CDS, they expand the possibility for their infants to observe and process facial expressions. This effect could in part be due to infants associating CDS with positive facial expressions such as smiling, being more likely to respond to CDS if they expect to receive a positive response from their caregiver.
CDS may promote processing of word forms, allowing infants to remember words when asked to recall them in the future. As words are repeated through CDS, infants begin to create mental representations of each word. As a result, infants who experience CDS are able to recall words more effectively than infants who do not.
Infants can pick up on the vocal cues of CDS and will often pattern their babbling after it.
The use of baby talk is not limited to interactions between adults and infants, as it may be used among adults, or by people to animals. In these instances, the outward style of the language may be that of baby talk, but is not considered actual "parentese", as it serves a different linguistic function (see pragmatics).
Baby talk and imitations of it may be used by one non-infant to another as a form of verbal abuse, in which the talk is intended to infantilize the victim. This can occur during bullying, when the aggressor uses baby talk to assert that the victim is weak, cowardly, overemotional, or otherwise inferior.
Baby talk may be used as a form of flirtation between sexual or romantic partners. In this instance, the baby talk may be an expression of tender intimacy, and may perhaps form part of affectionate sexual roleplaying in which one partner speaks and behaves childishly, while the other acts motherly or fatherly, responding in "parentese". One or both partners might perform the child role. Terms of endearment, such as "poppet" (or, indicatively, "baby"), may be used for the same purpose in communication between the partners.
A significant difference is that CDL contains many more sentences about specific bits of information, such as "This cup is red," because they are intended to teach children about language and the environment. Pet-speech contains perhaps half the sentences of this form, as rather than instructive, its primary purpose is as a social function for humans; whether the dog learns anything does not seem to be a concern.
As well as the raised vocal pitch, pet-speech strongly emphasizes intonations and emotional phrasing. There are diminutives such as "walkie" for walk and "bathie" for bath.
Researchers Bryant and Barrett (2007) have suggested (as have others before them, e.g., Fernald, 1992) that CDL exists universally across all cultures and is a species-specific adaptation. Other researchers contend that it is not universal among the world's cultures, and argue that its role in helping children learn grammar has been overestimated, pointing out that in some societies (such as certain Samoan tribes), adults do not speak to their children at all until the children reach a certain age. Furthermore, even where baby-talk is used, it has many complicated grammatical constructions, and mispronounced or non-standard words.
Other evidence suggests that baby talk is not a universal phenomenon: for example Schieffelin & Ochs (1983) describe the Kaluli tribe of Papua New Guinea who do not typically employ CDS. Language acquisition in Kaluli children was not found to be significantly impaired.
The extent to which caregivers rely on and use CDS differs based on cultural differences. Mothers in regions that display predominately introverted cultures are less likely to display a great deal of CDS, although it is still used. Further, the personality of each child experiencing CDS from a caregiver deeply impacts the extent to which a caregiver will use this method of communication.
As noted above, baby talk often involves shortening and simplifying words, with the possible addition of slurred words and nonverbal utterances, and can invoke a vocabulary of its own. Some utterances are invented by parents within a particular family unit, or are passed down from parent to parent over generations, while others are quite widely known and used within most families, such as "wawa" for water, "num-num" for a meal, "ba-ba" for bottle, or "beddy-bye" for bedtime, and are considered "standard" or "traditional" words, possibly differing in meaning from place to place.
Baby talk, language regardless, usually consists of a muddle of words, including names for family members, names for animals, eating and meals, bodily functions and genitals, sleeping, pain, possibly including important objects such as diaper, blanket, pacifier, bottle, etc., and may be sprinkled with nonverbal utterances, such as "goo goo ga ga". The vocabulary of made-up words, such as those listed below, may be quite long with terms for a large number of things, rarely or possibly never using proper language, other times quite short, dominated by real words, all nouns. Most words invented by parents have a logical meaning, although the nonverbal sounds are usually completely meaningless and just fit the speech together.
Sometimes baby talk words escape from the nursery and get into adult vocabulary, for example "nanny" for "children's nurse" or "nursery governess".
Moreover, many words can be derived into baby talk following certain rules of transformation. In English, adding a terminal /i/ sound at the end, usually written and spelled as ‹ie›, ‹y›, or ‹ey›, is a common way to form a diminutive which is often used as part of baby talk. Many languages have their own unique form of diminutive suffix (see list of diminutives by language for international examples).
Still other transformations, but not in all languages, include elongated vowels, such as "kitty" and "kiiiitty", (emphasized /i/) meaning the same thing. While this is understood by English speaking toddlers, it is not applicable with Dutch toddlers as they learn that elongated vowels reference different words.
Linguistic competence is the system of linguistic knowledge possessed by native speakers of a language. It is distinguished from linguistic performance, which is the way a language system is used in communication. Noam Chomsky introduced this concept in his elaboration of generative grammar, where it has been widely adopted and competence is the only level of language that is studied.
According to Chomsky, competence is the ideal language system that enables speakers to produce and understand an infinite number of sentences in their language, and to distinguish grammatical sentences from ungrammatical sentences. This is unaffected by "grammatically irrelevant conditions" such as speech errors. In Chomsky's view, competence can be studied independently of language use, which falls under "performance", for example through introspection and grammaticality judgments by native speakers.
Many other linguists – functionalists, cognitive linguists, psycholinguists, sociolinguists and others – have rejected this distinction, critiquing it as a concept that considers empirical work irrelevant, leaving out many important aspects of language use. Also, it has been argued that the distinction is often used to exclude real data that is, in the words of William Labov, "inconvenient to handle" within generativist theory.
Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its (the speech community's) language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of this language in actual performance. ~Chomsky,1965 (page 3)
Chomsky differentiates competence, which is an idealized capacity, from performance being the production of actual utterances. According to him, competence is the ideal speaker-hearer's knowledge of his or her language and it is the 'mental reality' which is responsible for all those aspects of language use which can be characterized as 'linguistic'. Chomsky argues that only under an idealized situation whereby the speaker-hearer is unaffected by grammatically irrelevant conditions such as memory limitations and distractions will performance be a direct reflection of competence. A sample of natural speech consisting of numerous false starts and other deviations will not provide such data. Therefore, he claims that a fundamental distinction has to be made between the competence and performance.
Chomsky dismissed criticisms of delimiting the study of performance in favor of the study of underlying competence, as unwarranted and completely misdirected. He claims that the descriptivist limitation-in-principle to classifying and organizing data, the practice of "extracting patterns" from a corpus of observed speech, and the describing of "speech habits" are core factors precluding the development of a theory of actual performance.
Linguistic competence is treated as a more comprehensive term for lexicalists, such as Jackendoff and Pustejovsky, within the generative school of thought. They assume a modular lexicon, a set of lexical entries containing semantic, syntactic and phonological information deemed necessary to parse a sentence. In the generative lexicalist view this information is intimately tied up with linguistic competence. Nevertheless, their models are still in line with the mainstream generative research in adhering to strong innateness, modularity and autonomy of syntax.
Ray S. Jackendoff's model deviates from the traditional generative grammar in that it does not treat syntax as the main generative component from which meaning and phonology is developed unlike Chomsky. According to him, a generative grammar consists of five major components: the lexicon, the base component, the transformational component, the phonological component and the semantic component.
Against the syntax-centered view of generative grammar(syntactocentrism), he specifically treats phonology, syntax and semantics as three parallel generative processes, coordinated through interface processes. He further subdivides each of those three processes into various "tiers", themselves coordinated by interfaces. Yet, he clarifies that those interfaces are not sensitive to every aspect of the processes they coordinate. For instance, phonology is affected by some aspects of syntax, but not vice versa.
In contrast to the static view of word meaning (where each word is characterized by a predetermined number of word senses) which imposes a tremendous bottleneck on the performance capability of any natural language processing system, Pustejovsky proposes that the lexicon becomes an active and central component in the linguistic description. The essence of his theory is that the lexicon functions generatively, first by providing a rich and expressive vocabulary for characterizing lexical information; then, by developing a framework for manipulating fine-grained distinctions in word descriptions; and finally, by formalizing a set of mechanisms for specialized composition of aspects of such descriptions of words, as they occur in context, extended and novel sense are generated.
Katz and Fodor suggests that a grammar should be thought of as a system of rules relating the externalized form of the sentences of a language to their meanings that are to be expressed in a universal semantic representation, just as sounds are expressed in a universal semantic representation. They hope that by making semantics an explicit part of generative grammar, more incisive studies of meaning would be possible. Since they assume that semantic representations are not formally similar to syntactic structure, they suggest a complete linguistic description must therefore include a new set of rules, a semantic component, to relate meanings to syntactic and/or phonological structure. Their theory can be reflected by their slogan "linguistic description minus grammar equals semantics".
A broad front of linguists have critiqued the notion of linguistic competence, often severely. Functionalists, who argue for a usage-based approach to linguistics, argue that linguistic competence is derived from and informed by language use, performance, taking the directly opposite view to the generative model. As a result, in functionalist theories emphasis is placed on experimental methods to understand the linguistic competence of individuals.
Sociolinguists have argued that the competence/performance distinction basically serves to privilege data from certain linguistic genres and socio-linguistic registers as used by the prestige group, while discounting evidence from low-prestige genres and registers as being simply mis-performance.
Noted linguist John Lyons, who works on semantics, has said:
Dell Hymes, quoting Lyons as above, says that "probably now there is widespread agreement" with the
Many linguists including M.A.K. Halliday and Labov have argued that the competence/performance distinction makes it difficult to explain language change and grammaticalization, which can be viewed as changes in performance rather than competence.
Another critique of the concept of linguistic competence is that it does not fit the data from actual usage where the felicity of an utterance often depends largely on the communicative context.
Neurolinguist Harold Goodglass has argued that performance and competence are intertwined in the mind, since, "like storage and retrieval, they are inextricably linked in brain damage."
Cognitive Linguistics is a loose collection of systems that gives more weightage to semantics, and considers all usage phenomenon including metaphor and language change. Here, a number of pioneers such as George Lakoff, Ronald Langacker, and Michael Tomasello have strongly opposed the competence-performance distinction. The text by Vyvyan Evans and Melanie Green write:
"In rejecting the distinction between competence and performance cognitive linguists argue that knowledge of language is derived from patterns of language use, and further, that knowledge of language is knowledge of how language is used." p. 110
Numerous experiments on infants in the last two decades have shown that they are able to segment words (frequently co-occurring sound sequences) from other sounds in a stream of meaningless syllables. This together with computational results that recurrent neural networks can learn syntax-like patterns, resulted in a wide questioning of nativist assumptions underlying psycholinguistic work up to the nineties.
According to experimental linguist N.S. Sutherland, the task of psycholinguistics is not to confirm Chomsky's account of linguistic competence by undertaking experiments. It is by doing experiments, to find out what are the mechanisms that underlie linguistic competence. Psycholinguistics generally reject the distinction between performance and competence.
Psycholinguists have also decried the competence-performance distinction on the ability to model dialogue:
The narrow definition of competence espoused by generativists resulted in the field of pragmatics where concerns other than language have become dominant. This has resulted in a more inclusive notion called communicative competence, to include social aspects – as proposed by Dell Hymes. This situation has had some unfortunate side effects:
The major criticism towards Chomsky's notion of linguistic competence by Hymes is the inadequate distinction of competence and performance. Furthermore, he commented that it is unreal and that no significant progress in linguistics is possible without studying forms along with the ways in which they are used. As such, linguistic competence should fall under the domain of communicative competence since it comprises four competence areas, namely, linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic.
Linguistic competence is commonly used and discussed in many language acquisition studies. Some of the more common ones are in the language acquisition of children, aphasics and multilinguals.
The Chomskyan view of language acquisition argues that humans have an innate ability – universal grammar – to acquire language. However, a list of universal aspects underlying all languages has been hard to identify.
Another view, held by scientists specializing in Language acquisition, such as Tomasello, argues that young children's early language is concrete and item-based which implies that their speech is based on the lexical items known to them from the environment and the language of their caretakers. In addition, children do not produce creative utterances about past experiences and future expectations because they have not had enough exposure to their target language to do so. Thus, this indicates that the exposure to language plays more of a role in a child's linguistic competence than just their innate abilities.
Aphasia refers to a family of clinically diverse disorders that affect the ability to communicate by oral or written language, or both, following brain damage. In aphasia, the inherent neurological damage is frequently assumed to be a loss of implicit linguistic competence that has damaged or wiped out neural centers or pathways that are necessary for maintenance of the language rules and representations needed to communicate. The measurement of implicit language competence, although apparently necessary and satisfying for theoretic linguistics, is complexly interwoven with performance factors. Transience, stimulability, and variability in aphasia language use provide evidence for an access deficit model that supports performance loss.
The definition of a multilingual is one that has not always been very clear-cut. In defining a multilingual, the pronunciation, morphology and syntax used by the speaker in the language are key criteria used in the assessment. Sometimes the mastery of the vocabulary is also taken into consideration but it is not the most important criteria as one can acquire the lexicon in the language without knowing the proper use of it.
When discussing the linguistic competence of a multilingual, both communicative competence and grammatical competence are often taken into consideration as it is imperative for a speaker to have the knowledge to use language correctly and accurately. To test for grammatical competence in a speaker, grammaticality judgments of utterances are often used. Communicative competence on the other hand, is assessed through the use of appropriate utterances in different setting.
Language is often implicated in humor. For example, the structural ambiguity of sentences is a key source for jokes. Take Groucho Marx's line from "Animal Crackers": "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas; how he got into my pajamas I'll never know." The joke is funny because the main sentence could theoretically mean either that (1) the speaker, while wearing pajamas, shot an elephant or (2) the speaker shot an elephant that was inside his pajamas.
The Hopi time controversy is the academic debate about how the Hopi language grammaticalizes the concept of time, and about whether the differences between the ways the English and Hopi languages describe time are an example of linguistic relativity or not. In popular discourse the debate is often framed as a question about whether the Hopi "had a concept of time", despite it now being well established that they do.
The Hopi language is a Native American language of the Uto-Aztecan language family, which is spoken by some 5,000 Hopi people in the Hopi Reservation in Northeastern Arizona, US.
In the large ' there is no word exactly corresponding to the English noun "time". Hopi employs different words to refer to "a duration of time" ("pàasa "for that long"), to a point in time ("pàasat" "at that time"), and time as measured by a clock ("pahàntawa"), as an occasion to do something ("hisat" or "qeni"), a turn or the appropriate time for doing something ("qeniptsi" (noun)), and to have time for something ("aw nánaptsiwta" (verb)).
Time reference can be marked on verbs using the suffix "-ni"
The -ni suffix is also used in the word "naatoniqa" which means "that which will happen yet" in reference to the future. This word is formed from the adverb "naato" "yet", the "-ni" suffix and the clitic -qa that forms a relative clause with the meaning "that which...".
The -"ni" suffix is also obligatory on the main verb in conditional clauses:
The suffix is also used in conditional clauses referring to a past context then often combined with the particle "as" that carries past tense or counterfactual meaning, or describes unachieved intent:
The suffix "-ngwu" describes actions taking place habitually or as a general rule.

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