2012 Language News Update - Part 1

It has been 13 months since the last Language News Update here. By most standards then, this post is no longer newsworthy. To start the new year, we present some of the most important news and research from the sundry fields of language sciences.

Most of the language news from 2012 has to do with children. Today's post thus serves as part 1 of this Language News Update, focusing on the non-adults. Let's take it from the start, beginning with babies and even before birth:

• Even babies still in the womb have started to recognize language. Yet another proof that abortion is taking a human life--murder, that is.
• Also in relation to how prenatal development, maternal depression is not helpful.
• If your baby has been born, you might have some fun trying to get him or her to mimic strange behavior by associating it with language.
• Babies apparently have more developed abilities than even adults to recognize relations between syllables (those whippersnappers!).
• Finally, and given their advanced if latent language ability, babies do not develop language any faster by using signing with their parents. The signing may be convenient and fun, but it does not have an effect on language development.

Moving on to toddlers and older children:

• "Toddlers language skills predict less anger by preschool" (!).
• Toddlers may not be listening to themselves when they speak, explaining why it can be maddeningly difficult to try to change my 3-year-old's pronunciation of a given word.
• Young children (4- and 5-year-olds) don't use language to categorize the way adults do, which has implications for both language acquisition and psycholinguistics--and poses some very interesting research questions in relation to mentalism.
• Language is still very important for young children, however, perhaps even more important as a social identifier than is skin color.
• Remain ambivalent about standardized testing, but there is now a Language Use Inventory (LUI) that is supposed to measure not only young children's current language ability but also potential problems.
• Read and point (to pictures, letters) to boost children's reading skills.
• And finally in the realm of children and language, being raised bilingual is, of course, advantageous.

And not to forget adolescents, and human beings in general:

• Sorry, teens, but not much has changed in spite of several decades now of solid descriptivist work and attempts to temper linguistic prescriptivism: you're still going to be pushed to speak "properly" (not to mention to write "properly"). Unfortunately, none of the people who bully you in that regard are likely going to tell you what that really means and why you should really do it, because they probably don't know themselves, even though they think they do. (Okay, that was a bit long and rather harsh, but true.)
• Anyone want a big brain? Learn language!