Ch. 8 Vocabulary Flashcards
Innate
Determined by factors present from birth.
Innateness hypothesis
A hypothesis that humans are generally predisposed to learn and use language.
Imitation theory
Child language acquisition theory that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear.
Reinforcement theory
Theory of child language acquisition which says that children learn to speak like adults because they are praised, rewarded, or otherwise reinforced when they use the right forms and are corrected when they use the wrong ones.
Active construction of a grammar theory
Theory of child language which says that children acquire language by inventing rules of grammar based on the speech around them.
Connectionist theories
Theory of language acquisition which claims that children learn language through neural connections in the brain.
Social interaction theory
Theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language through social interaction.
Linguistic universals
Property believed to be held in common by all natural languages.
Universal grammar
The theory that posits a set of grammatical characteristics shared by all natural languages.
Critical period
Age span, usually described as lasting rom 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 in a language.
Homesign
A rudimentary visual-gestural communication system (not a language) that is developed and used by deaf children and their families when a sign language is not made available for their communication.
Rules
A formal statement of an observed generalization about patterns in language.
Identifying sounds
In order to produce spoken language, infants first need to be able to perceive it. In fact, they are able to perceive many distinctions in language much earlier than they are bale to produce them.
High amplitude sucking
Experimental technique used to study sound discrimination in infants from birth to about six months.
Conditioned head turned procedure
Experimental technique usually used with infants between five and eighteen months with two phases: conditioning and testing. During the conditions phase, the infant learns to associate the change in sound with the activation of visual reinforcers, first presented at the same time then in succession, such that the infant begins to anticipate the appearance of the visual reinforcers and look at them before they are activated. During the testing phase when the infant looks to the visual reinforcers after the change in sound, it suggests that the infant has perceived the change in sound, thereby demonstrating the ability to discriminate between the two sounds involved.
Voice onset time
The length of time between the release of a constant and the onset of voicing that is, when the vocal folds start vibrating.
Producing sounds
A child’s first vocalization are present at the very beginning of life. within a few weeks after birth, the child begins to coo, producing sequences of vowel like sounds.
Articulatory gestures
A movement of speech organ in the production pf speech, for example, the movement of the velum for the production of the nasal consonant.
Babble
A phase in child language acquisition during which the child produces meaningless sequences of consonants and vowels. Generally within the first six months after birth.
Repeated babbling
The continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants like mamama by infants; also called repeated babbling.
Canonical babbling
The continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants like mamama by infants; also called repeated babbling.
Variegated babbling
Production of meaningless consonant vowel sequence by infants.
Holophrastic stage
Stage in first language acquisition during which children can produce only one word at a time.
Telegraphic stage
A phase during child language acquisition in which children use utterances composed primarily of content words.
