1 - prelinguistic and lexical development

Question 1

what are Hockett’s Design Features of Language?

Answer 1

describe the ways in which human communication differs from other animals

Question 2

give 4 examples of Hockett’s design features of language

Answer 2

Arbitrariness - no necessary connection between sounds and messages

displacement - communicate about things not currently present

productivity - create new utterances from previously existing sounds

duality of patterning - meaningless phonemes combined to make meaningful words and sentences

Question 3

what are the types of language functions?

Answer 3

semantic and pragmatic

Question 4

what is the semantic function of language?

Answer 4

saying something about the world

e.g. saying something about dogs

Question 5

what is the pragmatic function of language?

Answer 5

managing communicative exchange in relation to your audience and context

e.g. can you pass me that (gesturing at a pen)

Question 6

what are the forms of language?

Answer 6

phonological
prosodic
lexical
morphological
syntactic

Question 7

what is a phonological language form?

Answer 7

the sound ‘b’

Question 8

what is prosodic language form?

Answer 8

the rising intonation of a question

Question 9

what is lexical language form?

Answer 9

the sound of the word ‘dog’ which we understand to mean dog

Question 10

what is morphological language form?

Answer 10

the plural inflection ‘-s’ in ‘dogs’

Question 11

what is syntactic language form?

Answer 11

the structured combination of words ‘my dog chased the cat’ the order provides information different meaning to ‘the cat chased my dog’

Question 12

what are infants early comprehension of language from birth?

Answer 12

• prefer to listen to speech rather than music, prefer their own mother’s voice
• speech predominantly processed with left side of the brain
• able to distinguish some foreign language from their own native language based on prosody

Question 13

what is prosody?

Answer 13

the rhythm or melody of language

Question 14

when to infants develop categorical perception?

Answer 14

from one month they demonstrate categorical perception of sound /b/ and /p/

Question 15

how was infants categorical perception researched?

Answer 15

pacifier hooked up to recorder that measures how hard they are sucking, a peak in interest is indicated by harder sucking
when the sound changed from /ba/ to /pa/ they sucked harder

Question 16

what are phones?

Answer 16

the different sounds in language
the p in ‘pin’ and ‘spin’ are different phones (but if they are interchanged, it wouldn’t change the meaning)

Question 17

what are phonemes?

Answer 17

phones that change the meanings of words /p/ and /b/ are phonemes in English
they are the smallest segmental units of sound that form meaningful contrasts between words

Question 17

what is an example of tonal phonemes?

Answer 17

in cantonese the same word [fan[ can have many different meanings, depending on different intonations

Question 18

how does phonological development occur in infants?

Answer 18

infants are born being able to perceive all the sounds used in all languages

experience with a language over first year of life allows them to tune into phonemic contrasts used in their language and tune out those that are not

we lose abilities to perceive sounds and language as we develop

Question 19

what limits the range of infant vocalisations?

Answer 19

size and placement of tongue in relation to vocal cavity

neuromuscular limits on the movements of the tongue which is not able to produce fine articulatory movements

Question 20

when do children develop joint attention?

Answer 20

from around 9 months

weave together dyadic communication and knowledge about the world from early infancy

Question 21

what is joint attention?

Answer 21

when two or more people are attending to somethings and they are mutually aware that they are attending to it together

Question 22

when do infants begin to point?

Answer 22

between 9 and 14 months

Question 23

why do infants point?

Answer 23

imperatively - to tell someone to do something

declaratively - to inform someone else about something

interrogatively - to request information about something

Question 24

what are Volterra’s 3 stage?

Answer 24

perlocutionary stage - child has effect on listener without intentional control

illocutionary stage - child intentionally uses non-verbal signals to convey requests

locutionary stage - child utters speech sounds in same way previously expressed non-verbally

Question 25

how can children’s intentions to communicate be measured?

Answer 25

gaze co-ordination

11-months-old above chance in gaze-coordination suggests intentional control over use of vocalisation and gesture for communication

gaze coordinated acts more likely to elicit response from caregiver

Question 26

when do babies tend to produce first words?

Answer 26

12 months

Question 27

what is most important predictor of children’s language development?

Answer 27

intentional vocalisations that were responded to by a caregiver

Question 28

how many words do children have in their lexicon at 6 years old?

Answer 28

10-14,000 words

Question 29

when do children become faster at recognising spoken words?

Answer 29

during 2nd year of life

Question 30

errors in word learning: phonology

Answer 30

children make errors in production of target word (e.g. efelant)

children may be able to perceive but not produce certain speech sounds (e.g. wabbit)

Question 31

errors in word learning: semantics

Answer 31

children make ‘errors of scope’

under extensions (e.g. ‘car’ only to mean family car)

overextensions (e.g. ‘daddy’ to mean any adult male)

Question 32

how do children learn words through simple association?

Answer 32

children learn labels through statistical learning - adjusting the probability of the word-referent mapping as they get more information

Question 33

how do children learn words through social-pragmatic cues?

Answer 33

their world is very routine
they engage in joint attention and intention reading

Question 34

how do children learn words through intention reading?

Answer 34

children learn how words function by figuring out what the other person is intending to communicate e.g. perceiving joint attention

Question 35

how do children learn words through mutual exclusivity?

Answer 35

when presented with two objects, if they can label one, they assume that the other one is the novel word

Question 36

what are word learning mechanisms?

Answer 36

simple associations
social-pragmatic cues
mutual exclusivity
syntactic bootstrapping

Question 37

how do children learn words though syntactic bootstrapping?

Answer 37

linguistic context can help us guess the meanings of words
using language structure to identify what a word means