Ch 8 Language Acquistion Module 8

Question 1

innate

Answer 1

determined by factors present from birth

Question 2

innateness hypothesis

Answer 2

a hypothesis that humans are generally predisposed to learn and use language

Question 3

Imitation theory

Answer 3

child language acquisitions theory that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them

Question 4

Reinforcement Theory

Answer 4

theory of child language acquisition which says that children learn to speak like adults because they are praised, rewarded or otherwise reinforced.

Question 5

Active Constructions of a Grammar Theory

Answer 5

theory of child language which says that children acquire a language by inventing rules of grammar based on the speech around them.

Question 6

Connectionist Theory

Answer 6

theory of language acquisitions which claims that children learn language through neural connections in the brain.

Question 7

linguistic universals

Answer 7

property believed to be held in common by all natural languages

Question 8

universal grammar

Answer 8

the theory that posits a set of grammatical characteristics shared by all natural languages.

Question 9

critical period

Answer 9

age span, usually described as lasting from birth to the onset of puberty, during which children must have exposure to language and must build the critical brain structures necessary in order to gain native speaker competence

Question 10

neglected children

Answer 10

a child who is neglected by caretakers, often resulting in significantly lower exposure to language

Question 11

feral children

Answer 11

child who grew up in the wild without care by a human adult, often with animals.

Question 12

Homesign

Answer 12

a rudimentary, visual gestural communication system that is developed and used by deaf children and their families when signed language is not made available.

Question 13

rules

Answer 13

a formal statement of an observed generalization about patterns in language

Question 14

Social Interaction Theory

Answer 14

theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language through social interaction

Question 15

High Amplitude Sucking

Answer 15

experiment technique used to study sound discrimination in infants from birth to about six months

Question 16

Conditioned Head-Turn Procedure

Answer 16

experimental technique usually used with infants between five and eighteen months with two phases: conditioning and testing

Question 17

voice onset time

Answer 17

the length of time between the release of a consonant and the onset of voicing, that is, when the vocal folds start vibrating

Question 18

articulatory gestures

Answer 18

a movement of a speech organ in the production of speech.

Question 19

babble

Answer 19

a phase in child language acquisition during which the child produces meaningless sequences of consonants and vowels

Question 20

canonical babbling

Answer 20

the continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants like mamama by infants

Question 21

variegated babbling

Answer 21

production of meaningless consonant-vowel sequences by infants

Question 22

holophrastic stage

Answer 22

stage in first language acquisition during which children can produce only one word at a time.

Question 23

telegraphic stage

Answer 23

a phase during child language acquisition on which children use utterances composed primarily of content words

Question 24

overgeneralization

Answer 24

in the study of child language acquisition, a relationship between child and adult application of rules relative to certain contexts

Question 25

complexive concept

Answer 25

a term used in the study of child language acquisition, a group of times that a child refers to with a single word for which it is not possible to single out any one unifying property

Question 26

overextension

Answer 26

a relationship between child and adult perception of word meaning. a childs application of a word as a larger meaning than the adult .

Question 27

underextension

Answer 27

application of a word to a smaller set of objects than is appropriate for mature adult speech

Question 28

relational term

Answer 28

type of relationship between adjective and noun reference where the reference of the adjective is determined relative to the noun reference

Question 29

deictic expressions

Answer 29

word or expression that takes its meaning relative to the time, place and speaker of the utterance

Question 30

infant directed speech

Answer 30

speech used by parents or caregivers when communicating with young children or infants

Question 31

attention getters

Answer 31

word or phrase used to initiate an address to children

Question 32

attention holders

Answer 32

a tactic used to maintain childrens attention for extended amounts of time

Question 33

conversational turns

Answer 33

the contribution to a conversation by one speaker from that time that she takes the floor from another speaker to the time that she passes the floor on the another speaker

Question 34

bilingual

Answer 34

state of commanding two language

Question 35

multilingual

Answer 35

the state of commanding three or more languages

Question 36

simultaneious bilingualism

Answer 36

in which both languages are acquired form infancy

Question 37

sequential bilingualism

Answer 37

in which the second language is acquired as a young child

Question 38

second language acquisition

Answer 38

acquisition of a second language as a teenager or adult

Question 39

language mixing

Answer 39

using words or structural elements form more than on language with the same conversation.

Question 40

foreign accent

Answer 40

an accent that is marked by the phonology of another language or other languages.

Question 41

fossilization

Answer 41

process through which forms from a speakers non native language usage become fixed and do not change