4: Constructivist Approach to Early Multi-Word Speech Flashcards
What is the other common phrase used to describe the constructivist approach?
usage-based
define: syntax
The ways in which a language allows words to be combined to be understood
How does syntax allow for productivity?
with a finite set of words we can produce an infinite number of possible sentences.
Is language species specific?
yes, there is little evidence other primates can acquire syntax even with intensive training.
is language species universal?
yes, virtually all children have acquired the majority of the grammar of their language by 5yrs
what are early word combinations like?
Mainly content words, easily understood in context, creative, and observe adult word-order
define: schema
patterns of thinking and behaviour that people use to interpret the world
In what way is early speech productive?
children say multi-word combinations they have never heard before in that order
What are the 3 ain ways children learn words in the constructivist approach?
Communicative intention-reading
Drawing analogies/ seeing similarities
Distributional learning/ pattern finding
What is the role of routines in the constructivist approach to word learning?
Routines allow children to predict what happens next and therefore what the language they are hearing might refer to.
what is the verb-island hypothesis?
Knowledge of grammar tied to individual verbs until 2½- 3yrs.
Child initially unable to generalise between verbs with similar meanings or used in similar sentence types.
what is structure combining?
How children’s utterances build on what they have previously said
what are the 3 ways children change past utterances to form new ones
substitution, addition or drop (removal) of words
define: semantic analogy
Children need to learn a number of verbs before they can recognise similarities between them and begin to build more general schemas.
How do overlap in meaning help with word construction?
similarity helps children link new phrases to old ones so the know how to use new words
define: distributional learning
The ability to learn the co-occurrence characteristics of the input, i.e. which words occur together or in similar contexts (eg noun and verb endings)
What role do pronouns have in distributional learning?
Pronouns helped children extract a more abstract representation of the Subject Verb-Object sentence structure for use with novel (unfamiliar) verbs
At what age do children start to combine words together?
18-24 month
