Learn About Language with the MACAW Lab!
At the MACAW Lab, we love learning about language, and we want to spread the love to parents and families! Stay tuned for fun, educational articles, findings from current research, and a new Word of the Week every Wednesday. We look forward to learning with you!
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Word of the Week: Phonemic Narrowing
Phonemic narrowing is the process by which infants gather information about the sounds of the language they are exposed to. Every language has unique sounds and patterns of sounds. At about six months, infants begin learning these sounds and patterns, as well as the rules for these sounds. This knowledge is a very important step
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Word of the Week: Augmentative and Alternative Communication
Augmentative and alternative communication, or AAC, are the ways people can communicate without talking. People of all ages who have difficulty with speech or language use AAC, and it can be used short-term or long-term. There are many diverse AAC methods. Low- and no-tech options include sign language, gestures, facial expressions, communication boards, writing, drawing
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Read: Raising Bilingual Children
There are many reasons to raise a child to be bilingual or multilingual. Some parents do so because their native language, or that of their family, is not the mainstream language spoken where they live. Other parents want their children to be connected to their culture. Others still simply want their child to have more
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Word of the Week: Idiolect
An idiolect is an individual’s variation of speech and language. Every person has a distinctive combination of word choice, grammar, pronunciation, and style that makes up their idiolect. As opposed to a dialect, which encompasses the language of a group of people, an idiolect is much more narrow—is unique to the individual. It is influenced
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Word of the Week: The Gavagai Problem
The Gavagai problem describes the enormous task of word learning. To learn a word’s meaning, we begin by matching words to referents, or the thing to which a word refers. The word “gavagai” originates from a thought experiment proposed by the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine in 1960. It goes along the lines of this:
accessibility bilingualism communication culture development events feeding language late talker linguistics literacy phonetics speech therapy theory verbs
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