Ch. 11 - Development of Language and Communication Skills Flashcards
What is language?
A small number of individually meaningless symbols (sounds, letters, gestures) that can be combined according to agreed-on rules to produce an infinite number of messages
What is communication?
The process by which one organism transmits information to and influences another
What are vocables?
Unique patterns of sound that a prelinguistic infant uses to represent objects, actions, or events
What are psycholinguists?
Those who study the structure and development of children’s language
What is phonology?
The sound system of a language and the rules for combining these sounds to produce meaningful units of speech
What are phonemes?
The basic units of sound that are used in a spoken language
What is morphology?
The rules governing the formation of meaningful words from sounds
What are semantics?
The expressed meaning of words and sentences
What are morphemes?
Smallest meaningful language units
What are free morphemes?
Morphemes that can stand alone as a word (e.g. cat, go, yellow)
What are bound morphemes?
Morphemes that cannot stand alone but that modify the meaning of free morphemes (e.g. the -ed attached to English verbs to indicate past tense)
What is syntax?
The structure of a language; the rules specifying how words and grammatical markers are to be combined to produce meaningful sentences
What are pragmatics?
Principles that underlie the effective and appropriate use of language in social contexts
What is sociolinguistic knowledge?
Culturally specific rules specifying how language should be structured and used in particular social contexts
What is linguistic universal?
An aspect of language development that all children share
What is the language acquisition device (LAD)?
Chomsky’s term for the innate knowledge of grammar that humans were said to possess, which might enable young children to infer the rules governing others’ speech and to use these rules to produce language
What is universal grammar?
In nativist theories of language acquisition, the basic rules of grammar that characterize all language
What is language-making capacity (LMC)?
Hypothesized set of specialized linguistic processing skills that enable children to analyze speech and to detect phonological, semantic, and syntactical relationships
What is Broca’s area?
Structure located in the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex that controls language production
What is Wernicke’s area?
Structure located in the temporal lobe of the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex that is responsible for interpreting speech
What is the sensitive-period hypothesis (of language acquisition)?
The notion that human beings are most proficient at language learning before they reach puberty
What are pidgins?
Structurally simple communication systems that arise when people who share no common language come into constant contact
What are creoles?
Languages that develop when pidgins are transformed into grammatically complex ‘true’ languages
What is the interactionist theory?
The notion that biological factors and environmental influences interact to determine the course of language development
What is child-directed language, or motherese?
The short, simple, high-pitched (and often repetitive) sentences that adults use when talking with young children (also called child-directed speech)
What are expansions?
Responding to a child’s ungrammatical utterance with a grammatically improved form of that statement
What are recasts?
Responding to a child’s ungrammatical utterance with a non-repetitive statement that is grammatically correct
What is the prelinguistic phase?
The period before children utter their first meaningful words
A learning theorist would most likely claim all of the following events as central to language acquisition EXCEPT which one?
a. Children imitate what they hear.
b. Children are reinforced when they use proper language.
c. Children are corrected when they use incorrect language.
d. Children sift language they hear through a biological device in their brains.
d. Children sift language they hear through a biological device in their brains