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How do babies learn language?

NEW PARENTS—Purchase a LENA device! Please read below to find out how CRITICAL it is to communicate with your babies so they learn language! The device can help you analyze your conversations! Speech comprehension and visual recognition influence how quickly one learns to read (p. 9).

Check out this neat brain development site: Vroom

Part 1—I will summarize my learning from Sousa (2014) How the Brain Learns to Read.

Part 2—I will provide you with the actual page numbers from the text where key information was located.

Part 1

🔤 1. How Language Learning Starts

Babies are born with the ability to hear and distinguish every sound used in all 7,000 languages worldwide.
As they grow, they focus only on the sounds (phonemes) they hear most often.
This early sound recognition helps the brain build networks for understanding tone, grammar, word meaning, and sentence structure.

🧠 2. The Brain’s Role in Language

Broca’s area (left frontal lobe) produces speech, grammar, and syntax.
Wernicke’s area, located in the left temporal lobe, is responsible for understanding meaning and word sense.
These two areas work together with other networks to produce and comprehend language.
The right hemisphere handles emotion in speech (e.g., sarcasm, tone).

🧬 3. Genes & Language

Some genes influence how easily people learn language.
Mutations in these genes can cause language disorders.
Girls tend to acquire language faster, possibly because their brains process language across both hemispheres.

👶 4. Language Development Timeline

Babies start recognizing voices, pitch, and rhythm from birth.
Around 6 months: Babbling begins.
By 8–12 months, they recognize word boundaries and ignore foreign sounds.
By age 3, most spoken sentences are grammatically correct due to internal “rules” the brain builds from hearing language.

📚 5. Language and Reading

Early speech skills play a crucial role in developing reading ability later on.
The brain links sounds to the alphabet (abstract symbols) to read.
Visual tracking (recognizing faces and objects) also supports reading.

🗣️ 6. Vocabulary and Socioeconomic Impact

Children from high-income families hear many more words per hour than those from low-income families.
This leads to a “vocabulary gap” that affects reading and school success.
Talking with children is much better than TV for language growth.
TV before age 2 can delay language development.

🧩 7. How the Brain Understands Words and Sentences

The brain stores:
- Phonemes (sounds)
- Morphemes (word parts like “-ed,” “-s”)
- Words
- Sentence structure (syntax)
- Meaning (semantics)
Sentences with different word orders but the same meaning activate Broca’s area.
Sentences with the same syntax but different words (car vs. automobile) activate Wernicke’s area.

🧠💬 8. Brain and Memory in Language

Words are quickly broken down into sounds, matched to their meanings, and then understood through sentence structure.
This takes less than a second.
If something doesn’t make sense, the brain may “ask” to hear it again.

🧠➡️📖 9. From Spoken to Written Language

Reading uses the same brain areas as listening but starts with visual input.
Children learn best when instruction connects spoken language with visual symbols (like letters or pictures).

🎯 Key Takeaways for Educators and Parents

Talk to kids A LOT—the more language exposure, the better.
Use concrete images to explain abstract ideas.
Avoid screens before age 2.
Teach grammar naturally through speech and story.
Kids need to understand both the literal and inferred meanings of language.
Early language ability is associated with better reading comprehension later.

Part 2 Learning Language

Quotes are taken from Sousa (2014), How the Brain Learns to Read.

By recognizing and trying out speech sounds, the brain establishes neural networks needed to manipulate sounds, acquire and comprehend vocabulary, detect language accents, tone, and stress, and map out visual sentence structure (p. 9).
A few years later, the brain will utilize its visual recognition system to link the sounds with abstract optical systems, such as the alphabet, to learn how to read (p. 9).
To be successful readers, children need a broad vocabulary, minimal grammatical errors in speech, sophisticated sentence structure, and an understanding of variations in sentence structure (p. 9).
See pages 10 and 11 for the typical development of language and visual recognition systems from birth to 3 years. (Visual ~ tracking objects, recognizing faces)
We are born with an innate capacity to distinguish the distinct sounds (phonemes) of all of the languages (nearly 7,000) on the planet (p. 12).
The voice becomes so fine-tuned that it makes only one sound error per million sounds and one-word error per million words (Pinker, 1994) (p. 12).
Broca’s area: Paul Broca identified injured brains in 1861. The area near the left temple understood language but had difficulty speaking. This condition is referred to as aphasia (p. 12). In addition, Broca discovered that the left hemisphere of the brain is specialized for language (p. 13).
Broca’s area is a region of the left frontal lobe responsible for processing vocabulary, syntax (the way word order affects meaning), and grammar rules; it is also involved in understanding the meaning of sentences (p. 13).
Wernicke’s area is a part of the left temporal lobe that is believed to process the sense and meaning of language. This area collaborates closely with Broca’s area (p. 13).
Wernicke described a different type of aphasia in 1881—patients could not understand what they heard. This is due to damage in the left temporal lobe. They could speak fluently but meaninglessly (p. 13).
The right hemisphere governs the emotional content of language (p. 13).
An infant’s ability to perceive and discriminate sounds begins after a few months and develops rapidly (p. 13).
When preparing to say a sentence, the brain calls on Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas and several other neural networks scattered throughout the left hemisphere. (p. 13).
Nouns are processed through 1 set of patterns and verbs by separate neural networks (p. 13).
The more complex the sentence structure, the more activated areas, including some in the right hemisphere (p. 13).
Brain imaging of 4-month-olds confirms that the brain processes neural networks that specialize in responding to the auditory components of language (p. 13).
Dehaene-Lambertz (2000) used an EEG on sixteen 4-month-olds as they listened to syllables and tones. Syllables and tones were processed primarily in different areas of the left hemisphere (p. 13).
Separate neural networks encode a syllable’s voice and phonetic category into sensory memory. This shows that the brain is organized into functional networks that distinguish between language fragments and other sounds (p. 13).
Graham and Fisher (2013) found that the ability to acquire spoken language is encoded in our genes. Thus, people with mutated genes may have severe speech and language disorders (p. 13).
The genetic predisposition of the brain to the sounds of language explains why normal young children respond to and acquire spoken language so quickly (p. 13).
After the 1^st year, the child can differentiate sounds heard in the native language and lose the ability to perceive other sounds (p. 14).
When children learn two languages, all language activity is found in the same brain area. However, how long the brain retains the responsiveness to language sounds is still open to question (p. 14).
The window for acquiring language within the language-specific brain area diminishes during the middle years of adolescence (p. 14).
A new language in the brain will be spatially separated from the native language (p. 14).
Functional imaging shows that males and females process language differently (p. 14).
Males process language in the left hemisphere, while females process it in both hemispheres (p. 14).
The same areas are activated during reading (p. 14).
The corpus callosum—the larger number of neurons connecting the right and left hemispheres that allow them to communicate—is larger and thicker in a female than in a male. As a result, information travels more efficiently in females than in males (p. 14).
Girls acquire spoken language more quickly due to dual-hemisphere language processing and more efficient communication between the hemispheres (p. 14). This is a topic up for debate—some argue that the gender difference is minimal and declines with age, while others contend that it persists and affects us as adults (p. 14).
There are approximately 7,000 languages globally, but only 170 phonemes comprise the world’s languages (p. 15).
Although the infant’s brain can perceive the entire range of phonemes, only those repeated get attention, as the neurons reacting to the unique sound patterns are continually stimulated and reinforced (p. 15).
At birth or even before, the infant responds to the prosody—rhythm, cadence, and pitch—of the caregiver’s voice, not the words. (p. 15).
At six months, babbling is a sign of early language acquisition. Infants’ production of phonemes results from genetically determined neural programs; however, language exposure is environmental (p. 15).
A baby’s brain develops phonemic awareness, pruning phonemes that occur less frequently. At one year of age, the neural networks begin to concentrate on the spoken language sounds in the environment (p. 15).
The next step is for the brain to detect words within sound streams. Parents tend to speak in a simplified language, known as parentese, to their children. This is instinctive (p. 16).
By eight months, children can detect word boundaries. They acquire 7-10 new words per day. This is the mental lexicon (p. 16).
Toddlers ignore foreign sounds by 10-12 months (p. 16).
Morphemes are added to speaking vocabulary (e.g., “s,” “ed,” and “ing”). Morphemes are the smallest units of language that carry some meaning, such as prefixes and suffixes (p. 16).
Working memory and Wernicke’s area become more functional as the child can attach meaning to words; however, combining words to make sense is another, more complex skill (p. 16).
Swaab used EEGs to measure the brain’s responses to concrete and abstract words in a dozen young adults. EEGs measure changes in brainwave activity called event-related potential, or ERP, when the brain experiences a stimulus. The image-loaded words produced more ERPs in the frontal lobe—the part associated with imagery—while abstract words had more ERPs in the top central and rear areas (parietal and occipital lobes). When processing words, these areas had little interaction (p. 17).
Therefore, we believe the brain may hold two separate stores for semantics (meaning)—one for verbal-based information and the other for image-based information. Therefore, teachers should use concrete images when presenting abstract concepts (p. 17).
Adult-toddler conversations are critical. (p. 17).
After analyzing and recording 1,300 hours of conversations between parents and children aged nine months to three years from various socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds, Hart and Risley found that families in the upper SES category spoke an average of 2,153 words per hour. The 3-year-old child produced 1,116 words, while the low-SES family reported 616 words per hour, and the child produced 525 words. Even in third grade, the children from low-SES families still struggled (p. 18). ***BUY A LENA DEVICE!***
Early vocabulary learning strongly predicts test scores at ages 9 or 10 on vocabulary, listening, speaking, syntax, and semantics (p. 18).
An enormous vocabulary gap persists between children from different socioeconomic backgrounds, continuing to widen (p. 18).
Preschool programs can save money, with fewer children retained, fewer in special ed., and less remedial education (p. 18).
Lower SES groups spend more time in front of the TV. This delays language as the parent is not interacting with the child (p. 19).
A study by Tomopoulos et al. in 2010 showed that the more time spent watching TV from 9 months to 14 months, the lower the cognitive development and language scores at 14 months. The type of programming did not matter (p. 19).
Other studies have shown that TV watching before the age of 3 has adverse cognitive outcomes in 6-year-olds (p. 19).
Infant language learning requires additional cues to attach meaning to spoken words. They need facial cues, intonation, intensity, and rhythm—this is why TV is not good. No TV before the age of 2 (p. 19).
Phonemes can be combined into morphemes, and morphemes can be combined into words. These words may accept prefixes, suffixes, and insertions (infixes), and may change consonants or vowels (p. 19).
Words can be put together according to the rules of syntax, or word order, to form phrases and sentences with meaning (p. 19).
Toddlers demonstrate their progression through syntactic (word order) and semantic (meaning) structures by transitioning from “candy” to “give me candy.” They recognize that shifting words in sentences can change their meaning (p. 20).
English follows the SVO format—or subject, verb, object (p. 20).
The front of the temporal lobe establishes meaning when words are combined into sentences (p. 20).
Over time, the child hears patterns of word combinations and discerns tense. By age 3, 90% of the sentences they utter are grammatically correct because the child has constructed a syntactic network that stores perceived grammar rules (p. 21).
The toddler has to learn that over 150 of the most commonly used English verbs are irregular. For example, you don’t always add ed to the past tense, but the “always add ed rule” becomes part of the toddler’s syntactic network and operates without conscious thought (p. 21).
The child requires adult guidance and other environmental exposures (repetition is essential for memory). The syntactic network is modified to block the past tense ed on certain words. A new word is added to their lexicon (p. 21) (for example, held instead of holded).
The principle of blocking is an essential component of accurate language and, eventually, reading fluency (p. 22).
Long-term memory is crucial in helping children remember the correct past tense of irregular verbs (p. 22).
No one knows how much grammar a child learns by listening or how much is prewired. Still, the more children are exposed to spoken language in the early years, the more quickly they can distinguish between phonemes, recognize word boundaries, and detect emerging grammatical rules that contribute to meaning (p. 23).
Topic-prominent languages downplay the role of the passive voice and avoid “dummy subjects” such as “it,” as in “It is raining.” ELLs need to learn how English syntax differs from their native tongue (p. 23).
Semantics is the study of meaning. Meaning occurs at three different levels of language: morphology (word parts), vocabulary, and sentence level (p. 23).
Morphology helps children learn and create new words, and it can also aid them in spelling and pronouncing words correctly. They should learn that words with common roots often share similar meanings, such as “nation” and “national” (p. 23).
People can learn vocabulary based on context, but most words must be understood (p. 23).
The mental lexicon is organized according to the meaningful relationships between words (p. 23).
A study with a prime paired with a target word, such as swan/goose and tulip/goose, showed that subjects were faster and more accurate in making decisions about target words being actual words rather than nonsense words if the target word was related to the prime. Researchers believe that the reduced time for identifying related pairs results from these words being physically closer to each other among the neurons that comprise the semantic network, and that associated words may be stored together in specific cerebral regions (p. 24).
Another study showed that naming items in the same category activated the same brain area (p. 24).
Activating words between networks takes longer (p. 24).
Grammar rules of the order of words, so speakers understand each other (p. 25).
The girl ate the candy. The candy was eaten by the girl. It means the same but with different syntax (word order) (p. 25).
Context helps. A man ate a hot dog at the fair. We know it is a frankfurter and not a barking dog (p. 25).
Pinker (1999) states that the young brain processes the structure of sentences by identifying a noun phrase and a verb phrase. (A verb can be combined with its direct object to form a verb phrase, “eat the hay.”) (p. 26).
By grouping or chunking words into phrases, the processing time is decreased (p. 26).
The young adult brain can determine the meaning of a spoken word in one-fifth of a second, and it takes one-quarter of a second to name an object and one-quarter of a second to pronounce it. For readers, the meaning of the printed word is registered at 1/8 of a second (p. 27).
The brain’s ability to recognize different meanings in sentence structure is possible because Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas and other smaller cerebral regions establish linked networks (p. 27).
In an fMRI study (functional magnetic resonance imaging), Dapretto and Bookheimer (1999) found that Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas work together to determine whether changes in syntax or semantics result in changes in meaning (p. 27).
Broca’s area was highly activated with sentences of different syntax but the same meaning, such as The policeman arrested the thief. The thief was arrested by the policeman (p. 28).
Wernicke’s area was activated by semantically but not syntactically different sentences. The car is in the garage. The automobile is in the garage (p. 28).
Neurons in Wernicke’s area are spaced about 20% farther apart and are cabled together with longer interconnecting axons than the corresponding area to the right of the brain. The implication is that language practice during early human development led to longer and more interconnected neurons in the Wernicke region, allowing for greater sensitivity to meaning (p. 28).
Wernicke’s area can also recognize predictable events. An MRI study found that Wernicke’s area was activated when subjects were shown colored symbols in various patterns. The capacity of the Wernicke area to detect predictability suggests that our ability to make sense of language is rooted in our ability to recognize syntax. Language is predictable because it is constrained by the rules of grammar and syntax (p. 28).
Memory systems develop to store and recall. There are several different types of memory banks (p. 28).
Dog enters the ear canal, and the listener decodes the sound pattern. The acoustic analysis separates the word sounds from background noise, decodes the phonemes in the word, and translates them into a code recognized by the mental lexicon. The lexicon selects the best representation from memory and then activates the syntactic and semantic networks, which work together to form the mental image. This occurs in a fraction of a second, thanks to the extensive neural pathways and memory sites that are established during the early years (p. 29).
If the semantic network fails to find meaning, it may signal a repetition of the original spoken word to restart the process (p. 29).
Reading words shares several steps with the model of spoken language processing (p. 29).
The most basic type of language comprehension is explicit. For example, I need a haircut (p. 30).
Inferred comprehension requires inferences. Vegetables are good for you. The child must assume the parent is requesting they be eaten (p. 30).
Context clues can help with inferred comprehension (p. 30).
Children need to develop an awareness that language comprehension exists on several levels: different speech styles that reflect the formality of conversation, the context in which it occurs, and the explicit and underlying intent of the speaker. When children understand speech, they will better comprehend what they read (p. 31).

Further Resources