{"id":106308,"date":"2015-12-14T09:02:48","date_gmt":"2015-12-14T14:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=106308"},"modified":"2015-12-28T10:44:23","modified_gmt":"2015-12-28T15:44:23","slug":"a-child-and-a-puppet-how-children-learn-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2015\/12\/a-child-and-a-puppet-how-children-learn-language\/","title":{"rendered":"A Child and a Puppet: How Children Learn Language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"A Child and a Puppet: How Children Learn Language\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9cTE86ZNs1c?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Children understand nearly everything about their language by the time they are 5 years old. Yet some things, like the passive voice, are a mystery to them for many more years. Linguistics researchers at UConn are now studying just how they learn to speak their native language by asking children themselves \u2013 with the help of a puppet named Gobu.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople have the idea that language is very simple, because they speak a language,\u201d says William Snyder, professor of linguistics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. \u201cHow hard could it be? I do it without even thinking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_106319\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-106319\" style=\"width: 340px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/LinguisticsVideo_Puppet.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-106319 img-responsive lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/LinguisticsVideo_Puppet-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Linguistics researchers at UConn are asking children \u2013 with the help of a puppet named Gobu \u2013 just how they learn to speak their native language. (Christine Buckley\/UConn Photo)\" width=\"340\" height=\"227\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/LinguisticsVideo_Puppet-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/LinguisticsVideo_Puppet-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/LinguisticsVideo_Puppet-630x420.jpg 630w, https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/LinguisticsVideo_Puppet-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/LinguisticsVideo_Puppet.jpg 2004w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 340px) 100vw, 340px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 340px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 340\/227;\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-106319\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Linguistics researchers at UConn are asking children \u2013 with the help of a puppet named Gobu \u2013 just how they learn to speak their native language. (Christine Buckley\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In this video, Snyder and graduate student Emma Nguyen describe an experiment in which children around 7 years old are asked to make judgments about the accuracy of sentences, including statements in the passive voice. Their responses help linguists understand exactly what stages children are going through at specific points in their lives.<\/p>\n<p>Linguists can then work with neuroscientists to understand what changes are happening in the brain that create the ability to understand these complex sentences.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a really good baseline, so when you have children with language delay or language impairment, we have something to compare it to,\u201d says Nguyen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs linguists, our goal is to understand: how does our brain interpret language, and how do we learn language? And I think that\u2019s really awesome,\u201d she says. \u201cIt makes me feel very fulfilled in the research that I do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UConn linguistics researchers are using puppets to study how children learn a native language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":106318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2459,2076,1875,2225,70],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1860],"class_list":["post-106308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-graduate-students","category-research","category-grad-school","category-uconn-storrs","category-video"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-12 14:27:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106308"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107089,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106308\/revisions\/107089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/106318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106308"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=106308"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=106308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}