Ch 2 Language Acquisition: A Theoretical Journey

Question 0

Nature vs. Nurture

Answer 0

Nature: The view that human language develops from biological components in the brain that we are born with, with out the necessity of being taught language.
Nurture: The view that human language is taught through imitation, listening, and learning in general.

Question 1

Mirror Neurons

Answer 1

When a neuron fires when the person is doing some activity, and the same neuron fires when the person is watching someone else do the same activity

Question 2

Plasticity

Answer 2

The dynamic ability of the human brain to change constantly as individuals learn. Also called the self-organizing neural network.

Question 3

Naming deficit

Answer 3

A period between 18 & 20 months where a child has a vocabulary spurt, but suddenly finds that they are having confusion naming known objects, people, & events. This is thought to happen for two reasons. Either the dense growth of vocabulary produces competition in word selection, or the or because words are going through reorganization, causing confusion about words with strong semantic relationships.

Question 4

Age of acquisition effect

Answer 4

Words that are learned early show faster retrieval during naming and reading tasks than words learned later.

Question 5

Interactional Environment

Answer 5

The most current view of language development, which combines the nature and the nurture view.

Question 6

Cross-linguistic studies

Answer 6

A study of one or more aspects of language concerning language development in children, such as comparing how one child learns English to how another child learns Chinese.

Question 7

Telegraphic Speech

Answer 7

How english children use primary content words to produce words that are initially uninflected, but gradually the child learns to use inflection across the first 5-6 years of life.

Question 8

The Three Proposed Routes of Acquisition of Grammatical Morphology that Occur in Relation to the Native Language

Answer 8

1) Productive use of inflection from the beginning
2) Rigidly ordered telegrams without grammatical morphology
3) Uninflected word combinations that occur in a range of different orders

Question 9

Saliency

Answer 9

The perceptual relevance

Question 10

Children focus on the salient aspects of?

Answer 10

Their language.

Question 11

Animate Nouns

Answer 11

Living things

Question 12

Inanimate Nouns

Answer 12

Non-living things

Question 13

The Major Theories of Language Acquisition

Answer 13

Behaviorist Perspective, Nativist Perspective, & Interactionist Perspective

Question 14

Behaviorist Interpretation

Answer 14

This view focuses on observable behaviors to explain language development. Behaviorists do not emphasize mental activities, such as attention and memory, although they do acknowledge their existence and their important connection to language development. BEHAVIORISTS ARGUE THAT LANGUAGE IS SOMETHING THAT HUMANS DO, NOT SOMETHING THEY HAVE. This statement puts language in the same context of learning as other behaviors, such as brushing your teeth or tying your shoe.

Question 15

Operant

Answer 15

Any behavior whose frequency can be affected by the responses that follow it.

Question 16

Reinforcement

Answer 16

If a target behavior’s frequency of occurrence increases as a consequence of the response that follow it, reinforcement has occurred.

Question 17

Punishment

Answer 17

If the target behavior frequency decreases as a consequence of the response that follows it, the target behavior has been punished. (Punishment in this context is not a negative thing)

Question 18

Shaping

Answer 18

A way of teaching a behavior which involves approximating the target behavior in small steps.

Question 19

Chaining

Answer 19

When behaviors are learned in sequences, with the previous behavior complementing the next behavior in a positive or negative way.

Question 20

Tact

Answer 20

A verbal behavior used to name or label something, typically in response to things or events the speaker is discussing.

Question 21

Mand

Answer 21

A verbal behavior used to request, command, or make a demand, and it identifies its own reinforcer.

Question 22

Intraverbal

Answer 22

A production that often seems to have no direct connection to the utterance that precipitated it.

Question 23

Autoclitic

Answer 23

The responses influence and are influenced by the the speaker’s behaviors. They also account for the linking of words into sentences.

Question 24

Classical Conditioning

Answer 24

When an originally neutral stimulus is paired with an unconditioned stimulus that elicits and unconditioned response.

Question 35

Nativist Interpretation

Answer 35

This view is the extreme end of the nature end of the nature-nurture contimuum. CHOMSKY STATED THAT “ANYONE CONCERNED WITH THE STUDY OF HUMAN NAURE AND CAPABILITIES MUST SOMEHOW COME TO GRIPS WITH THE FACT THAT ALL HUMANS ACQUIRE LANGUAGE”. The foundation of the nativist interpretation is the idea that language is universal among humans and unique to the human species. The nativist interpretation states that because language is acquired so quickly and so early in the child’s life, learning alone cannot adequately account for acquisition. Nativists stress that language is essentially the same experience for all human beings no matter what language they speak, where they live, or how they interact with their language models.

Question 36

Interactionist Interpretation

Answer 36

This view takes the view that biology and nature play important roles in language acquisition.

Question 37

Two views of the interactionist interpretation

Answer 37

1) Semantic Cognitive View

2) Case Grammar Theory

Question 38

Transformational Generative Grammar

Answer 38

This grammar suggests that language is processed at two levels, and two kinds of rules describe what is occurring at each level. Phase structure rules and transformations.

Question 39

Phase Structure Rules

Answer 39

Describe the underlying relationships of words and phrases, the level of structure referred to as deep.

Question 40

Transformations

Answer 40

The rules that describe the rearrangement of deep structures as they are moved to the next level of structure, known as surface.

Question 41

Passive transformation

Answer 41

The transformation used to change the first sentence into the second.

Question 42

Agentive

Answer 42

The initiator of an action

Question 43

Dative

Answer 43

A being affected by the action or state of being ascribed by the verb.

Question 44

Experiencer

Answer 44

A being who experiences an action or a mental or emotional state.

Question 45

Factitive

Answer 45

An object or being that is the product of an action or state ascribed by the verb.

Question 46

Instrumental

Answer 46

An inanimate object that is the means by which an action occurs.

Question 47

Locative

Answer 47

The place where the action or state ascribed by the verb occurs.

Question 48

Objective

Answer 48

A noun phrase whose role in the action or state ascribed by the verb is determined by the specific meaning of the verb.

Question 49

Modality

Answer 49

Concerned with sentence characteristics such as verb tense or the expression of negation or interrogation.

Question 50

Proposition

Answer 50

Concerned with the relationship between nouns and verbs in sentences.

Question 51

Semantic Cognitive View

Answer 51

If we are to understand the acquisition of language, we must account for the expression of meaning.

Question 52

Case Grammar Theory

Answer 52

The view that explains the importance and influence of semantics on the form of language, such as noun-verb agreement.

Question 53

Piaget’s Cognitive Theory

Answer 53

A view that compared language acquisition to cognitive development, finding many correlations, with emphasis on Piaget’s sensorimotor period (Birth to two years). This period of cognitive development is crucial for speech and language development.

Question 54

Information Processing Theory/Competition Model

Answer 54

This theory shares with the behaviorist perspective a greater emphasis on how language is learned than on the abstract rule system that presumably underlies language, but it goes a step further by making a concerted effort to relate structure and function. According to this system, children are not born with an internally wired system for language. Rather, they are born with a potential for all kinds of connections between symbols and the things and ideas symbols can represent.

Question 55

Parallel Distributed Processing

Answer 55

The idea that children process language information at a number of levels at the same time.

Question 56

Social Interactionist View

Answer 56

This view combines nature and nurture, with a focus on the interaction of biological abilities with environmental influences, such as the parent or care-giver.

Question 57

Speech Act Theory

Answer 57

A view that takesa focus on pragmatics. This view states that every speech act has three separate acts in it: 1) the locutionary act, 2) the illocutionary act, & 3) the perlocutionary act.

Question 58

Locutionary act

Answer 58

The expression of the words.

Question 59

Illocutionary act

Answer 59

the motive or purpose underlying an utterance.

Question 60

Perlocutionary act

Answer 60

The effect the locutionary act has on the listener.