Aquisition Of Syntax

Question 1

What are open class words?

Answer 1

Content words/ lexical categories

These consists of nouns adjectives verbs. They do most of the work in displaying the meaning of the sentence. They are called open class because you can invent new ones

Question 2

At what age do children start to combine words?

Answer 2

18-20 months

Question 3

What is the productivity of language?

Answer 3

That speakers and hearers have the capacity to produce and understand an infinite number of utterances

Question 4

What is the component of grammar that governs the ordering of words?

Answer 4

Syntax

Question 5

In terms of syntax what is the most widely accepted view

Answer 5

Syntactic and morphology knowledge consists of a system of rules that operate over abstract or symbolic representations

Question 6

What are closed class words?

Answer 6

Function words or functional categories
Auxiliaries, prepositions, complimentars, determiners
You can’t event new ones

Question 7

Morphology, what is it and what are the kinds of Morphemes?

Answer 7

Morphemes - smallest unit of meaning
Bound Morpheme - conveys meaning but doesn’t stand alone
Free Morpheme - words that stand alone

Question 8

What is an inflection Morpheme?

Answer 8

It adds grammatical information to the word

Question 9

What area are responsible for combining units of meaning?

Answer 9

Syntax words into sentences

Morphology building words

Question 10

What are vertical constructions and when does it occur?

Answer 10

This is a type of transitional for, it happens when children are moving from the one word speech to multiple words. It is successive multi word utterances that seem to be related to each other in meaning, as two word utterances would be, but they are still distinctive utterances

Question 11

What are the stages of transitioning into sentences?

Answer 11

Talk in single words for several months
These combinations lack function words and bound Morphemes that mark grammar and plurality.
Longer sentences are formed and the use of function words appear
Children’s first sentences are primarily imperatives and simple active declarative sentences
Last development stage is the presence of multi clause sentences

Question 12

When does the course of syntactical development usually happen?

Answer 12

The child’s second birthday through to their fourth

Question 13

What are unanalyzed word combinations and “word+jargon” combinations?

Answer 13

This is a transitional form. When children insert one clear word into a long sentence of what is otherwise jargon - this is typically seen in children who have used a lot of jargon since their babbling days

Question 14

What are the characteristics of two- word combinations?

Answer 14

The meaning is limited to relational meaning - the relation between the referents of the word in a word combination.

Question 15

How long could the two word stage last?

Answer 15

It could last for several months or happen so quickly it almost goes unnoticed

Question 16

What are the characteristics of three or more word speech?

Answer 16

Upper limit of utterance length changes
Still quite relational
Almost exclusively about the here and now
Early sentences tend to be imperative, declarative and affirmative
Certain types of word and bound Morphemes are missing

Question 17

What is considered telegraphic speech?

Answer 17

The speech of children in the early three/ more word stage because a lot of the function words are cut out so it seems very stream lined and not particularly grammatical

Question 18

What is the key to understanding grammar?

Answer 18

Understanding that meaning is carried out not just by words but by word combinations

Question 19

Briefly lay out the timeline of the development of sentence forms

Answer 19

1) simple structure involving a single verb
2) 22 months - imperatives, commands
3) 30 months - declaratively become frequent
4) questions don’t usually come until the child is older

Question 20

What are the last types of verbs that children learn and what do they give rise to?

Answer 20

Auxiliary verbs, allows children to express negation

Question 21

Why does negation not show up until later in a child’s development?

Answer 21

Because they have not acquired auxiliary verbs yet

Question 22

What is also effected by the late acquisition of auxiliary verbs?

Answer 22

Expression of questions

Question 23

What are the two types of common question forms?

Answer 23

1. Yes/no - usually marked by intonation - Chen children learn auxiliaries they are able to construct grammatical yes/ no sentences
2. Wh- to master these questions children must learn to invert the subject and the auxiliary, which they cannot do at first so the question comes out as “what that is?”

Question 24

When do children start producing passive forms?

Answer 24

By age three and a half they appear in spontaneous speech and continue to grow in uses even after age five

Question 25

What is a complex sentence and when do children start producing them?

Answer 25

Contains more than one verb, after they acquire grammatical Morphemes around 2-3 after the child is consistently producing 4 word speech.

Question 26

What effects individual differences in grammatical development?

Answer 26

1. Some children pay attention to syllables and phonemes - taking smaller units and combining them up - analytical “bottom up”
2. Cinder who pay attention to prosody or tune - holistic “top Down” unanalyzed chunks and therefore they can produce longer sentences

Question 27

How do we measure grammatical development?

Answer 27

MLU - mean length of utterance