Linguistic deprivation
As linguistic deprivation (of Latin de-privare = rob) refers to the lack of linguistic stimulation to a complete isolation of linguistic input for an extended period in the development phase of a child.
development
From birth to toddler age, there is a massive increase in synapses in the human brain. This time is known as the critical period because it is a crucial phase in neural development. Under the influence of experience, the neural connections initially created in abundance to adaptive neural circuits establish themselves. The synapses that are not required are "deleted". If there is no linguistic stimulation at this crucial time, the systems that are important for the language cannot be built up and a later acquisition of the language is no longer completely possible.
Effects
Long-term linguistic deprivation during development has different effects on the various linguistic modules .
Phonology
Phonological categories soon emerge in the child's development , and sounds that are not required for the mother tongue are removed from the sound inventory. Establishing this inventory, which is specific for each language, is the first stage in the child's language acquisition. The utterances of sounds begin in the babbling phase , in which children try out the sounds and their articulation . The sounds are a prerequisite for further verbal language acquisition, which is why phonology acquisition is completed earlier in development than other linguistic modules. If there is no linguistic stimulation in this phase, successful phonology acquisition is impossible. The articulation apparatus and the vocal cords remain underdeveloped due to the lack of experience.
Semantics / lexicon
The human vocabulary is constantly evolving, even in adulthood. (Especially in the technical area there are constantly new developments that require new names.) That is why the lexicon and the associated semantics are more flexible and also not as age-related as phonology. Vocabulary is the area that develops best after linguistic deprivation and despite a higher age of employment.
Syntax / morphology
The syntax - and morphology acquisition will take several years, but the foundation is very laid early. Children grasp the basic principles of their mother tongue long before they begin to use them. For example, they recognize whether their mother tongue has a subject-verb-object position, such as in English, or a subject-object-verb position such as e.g. B. in Turkish, which can be seen in the first 2 and 3 word sentences of a child. If the linguistic input from caregivers is not available, these grammatical principles cannot be acquired.
Cases of linguistic deprivation
Extreme linguistic deprivation
An extreme example of linguistic deprivation are so-called wolf children who were abandoned by their parents or locked in a room and grew up isolated from the environment and thus from language. In such cases of abuse, it must be taken into account that these children have also suffered from social deprivation and, in addition to language underdevelopment, usually also have mental disorders and cognitive impairments . In two cases, the case of Genie and Isabelle , the linguistic development after the liberation was documented in detail.
Genie's vocalizations were initially only very soft or whispered at all. Even after a few years she showed an underdeveloped articulation and had difficulty controlling her voice. Syntax acquisition was slow. The 2-word phase, which usually lasts up to six weeks, lasted for five months. Even after years, Genie has deficits in simple grammatical tasks (e.g. using singular and plural ). In contrast, your vocabulary is developing quite well. In her 2-word phase she has a vocabulary of 200 words. With normal language acquisition, a child has a vocabulary of around 50 words in this phase.
Isabelle had been held in a darkened room with her deaf-mute mother. When she was discovered at the age of six, Isabelle could not speak, but had learned to communicate with her mother through gestures. Isabelle's language development was in the same order as a normal child, but faster. Two months after Isabelle spoke the first word, she learned to form sentences. Another nine months later she was able to tell a story. By the time she was eight and a half, she was as developed as a normal child her age.
Auditory deprivation
Children who are deaf from birth grow up in auditory deprivation, but on the visual-motor level they learn a language that is just as complex as hearing children, sign language . The capabilities of a cochlear implant have enabled deaf children who have lived in auditory deprivation for years to hear. In such cases, verbal language develops only extremely slowly and incompletely, similar to that of children who grew up in extreme linguistic deprivation. In addition, the children use the sign language they have already learned as support.
swell
- CURTISS, S., FROMKIN, V., KRASHEN, S., RIGLER, D. & RIGLER, M. (1974): The Linguistic Development of Genie . Language, Vol. 50, No. 3: 528-554. Linguistic Society of America.
- NEWPORT, EL, BAVELIER, D. & NEVILLE, HJ: Critical Thinking about Critical Periods: Perspectives on a Critical Period for Language Acquisition. (see left)