Acquisition

Question 1

Methods: Naturalistic

Answer 1

observe + record children’s spontaneous utterances

Question 2

Methods: Diary study

Answer 2

keeps daily notes on child’s linguistic progress

Regular taping sessions at biweekly intervals, samples of child interacting with caregivers

Question 3

Methods

Answer 3

• Tend to be longitudinal: examine language development over extended period of time, take a long time, advantage of permitting researchers to observe development as an ongoing process in individual children
• Particular structures + phenomena may occur rarely in children’s everyday speech
• Speech samples capture only small portion of their utterances at any given point in development

Question 4

Methods: Experimental

Answer 4

specially designed tasks to elicit linguistic activity relevant to phenomenon that they wish to study
•Performance is used to formulate hypotheses about type of grammatical system acquired at that point

Question 5

Methods: Cross sectional

Answer 5

investigates + compares linguistic knowledge of diff children at particular point in development

Question 6

Experimental Studies

Answer 6

• Judge truth statements that are made about particular pics/situations presented
• Act out meaning of sentence with toys
• Present child with situation that calls for particular type of statement/question
• Determine if they can make yes-no questions by asking them to ask a puppet for his opinion

Question 7

Experimental Studies

Answer 7

• Children’s ability to comprehend language is often more advanced than their ability to produce senrences of their own
• production tasks provide conservative view of linguistic development
• children’s ability to repeat particular structure provides good indication of how well they have mastered it

Question 8

Phonological Development

Answer 8

• from 1 month ability to distinguish among certain speech sounds
• change in children’s sucking rate indicated that they perceived diff betw 2 syllables

Question 9

Babbling

Answer 9

• 6 months – babbling
• experiment with + begin to gain control over vocal apparatus
• early babbling partly independent of language they are exposed

Question 10

Developmental Order

Answer 10

• 1 year – intelligible words
• 18 months of age – 50 words
• vowels before consonant – 3
• stops tend to be acquired first
• labials, alveolars, velars, alveopalatals. Interdentals last

Question 11

Developmental Order

Answer 11

• new phonemic contrasts minafest themselves first in word initial position
• by 2, inventory of consonant phonemes of p,b,t,d,k,g,n,m,f,s,w
• by 4, includes v,z, sh, tsh,dz, j, l, r
• still to be acquired are interdental fricatives + voicd alveopalatal fricative

Question 12

Syllable Deletion

Answer 12

• primary/secondary stress more salient to children in early stages of language acquisition
• more likely to be retained in pronunciation than unstressed
• unstressed syllables in final position tend to be retained

Question 13

Syllable Simplication

Answer 13

• systematic deletion of certain sounds to simplify syllable structure
• reduction of consonant clusters
• elimination of final consonants

Question 14

Substitution

Answer 14

• systematic replacement of one sound by an alternative that child finds easier to articulate
• stopping: replacement of a fricative by a corresponding stop
• fronting: forward a sound’s place of articulation
• gliding: replacement of liquid by glide
• denasalization: replacement of nasal stop by non nasal counterpart

Question 15

Assimilation

Answer 15

• modification of 1/more features of segment under influence of neighbouring sounds
• maintain same place of articulation for all of consonants/vowels in a word

Question 16

Vocabulary Development

Answer 16

• nounlike words make up largest class in child’s early vocab
• verb + adjective like words next most frequent
• most frequent: expression for displeasure/rejection (no) + various types of social interaction (please + bye)
• by 6 – 13/14 thousand words
• children differ somewhat in types of words they focus on
• diff in number of nouns in early vocab

Question 17

Morphological Development

Answer 17

•lack internal morphological structure: affixes systematically absent + most words consist of single root morpheme

Question 18

Overgeneralization

Answer 18

• may initially use irregular forms correctly
• sometimes use suffixes for the irregular forms
• overgeneralizations/overregularizations: overly broad application of a rule
• development of affixes

Question 19

Overgeneralization

Answer 19

• 1) case by case learning
• 2) overuse of general rule
• 3) mastery of exceptions to general rule
• ability to apply it informs they have not heard before indicates mastery
• overregularize less than 25% of the time
• overgeneralization errors reflect relapse in accessing appropriate irregular form from lexicon

Question 20

A Developmental Sequence

Answer 20

• development of bound morphemes + functional categories takes place in orderly fashion
• partly independent of the frequency with which various morphemes occur in adult speech

Question 21

Some Determining Factors

Answer 21

• 1. Frequent occurrence, especially in utterance-final position: tendency to notice + remember elements at end of utterance
• 2. Syllabicity: choice of morphemes (-ing) which can constitute syllables on their own
• 3. Absence of homophony: complication in relationship betw form + meaning may impede acquisition

Question 22

Some Determining Factors

Answer 22

• 4. Few/no exceptions in way it is used
• 5. Allomorphic invariance: allomorphic variation slows morphological development
• 6. Clearly discernible semantic function

Question 23

Word Formation Processes

Answer 23

• major word formation process in english – derivation + compounding – emerge ealy in acquisition
• derivational suffixes in child speech are most common in adult language
• propensity for forming compounds (N-N type) in expiremental setting + spontaneous speech
• some don’t follow usual pattern at ¾
• by 5 right structure, but english already has words for it

Question 24

One Word Stage

Answer 24

• holphrases: choose most informative word that applies to situation at hand
• comprehension advance, understand many multiword utterances

Question 25

The 2 Word Stage

Answer 25

• shortness of utterances means positional differences associated with category ditinctions often not manifested
• unclear if they possess syntactic categories
• always exhibit proper word order
• may have separate rule for each verb
• 4 learned general subject-ver-object word order

Question 26

Telegraphic Stage

Answer 26

• frequent absence of bound morphemes + non-lexical categories
• resemblance to clipped style of language found in telegraphs
• 17 months can infer from presence/absence of determiner whether novel word refers to type of object/particular object

Question 27

Telegraphic Stage

Answer 27

• 18 months pay more attention to passage containing an is+V-ing pattern
• emergence of quite elaborate types of phrase structure
• from this point language development rapid

Question 28

Yes-No Questions

Answer 28

• signal with rising intonation alone
• aux verb occurs twice
• error in inversion – leaving copy of moved aux behind in original position

Question 29

Wh Questions

Answer 29

• 2-4 gradually emerge
• some find inversion easier in yes-no question
• move wh word but not aux verb

Question 30

Passives

Answer 30

• can produce passives at 3
• still difficult responding appropriately to passive constructions in comprehension tests
• Canonical Sentence Strategy: expect first NP in sentence to refer to agent
• Applied less consistently by grade 1

Question 31

Pronominals + Reflexives

Answer 31

•Appear not to have trouble distinguishing betw pronominals + reflective pronouns in their own speech

Question 32

Universal Grammar

Answer 32

existence of innate knowledge simplifies acquisition