ch. 9 languages Flashcards
statistical learning
recognizing patterns in speech stream
phoneme
sounds of a language
- th r z ah
ex: Japanese has different sounds for each letter
morpheme
smallest units of meaning in a language. re -ish -ed
ex: scrabble
syntax
rules for how words should be put together
ex: the cat chased the dog vs the dog chased the cat
plural is
‘s
past tense is
-ed
extra linguistic information
other clues to meaning -tone gestures sarcasm ex: text a friend sarcasticly, she doesn’t know and gets mad
when do infants learn aspects of language
they learn it before birth, they learn the flow of their native language
2 months
cooing and vowel sounds “aaaaaahhhhhh” “eeeeeee”
3-4 months
syllables and consonant sounds “gah” “bah”
6 months
reduplicative babbling “gagagagag”
10 months
conversational babbling “bagado voota?”
10-12 months
first words “dada” “cookie”
1-1.5 years
20-100 words -holophrases are one word sentences “milk”
2 years
several hundred words
two-word phrases “more juice”
telegraphic speech
where my apple?
daddy go work?
how do we learn the right stuff?
babies are born with the ability to discriminate any phoneme in any language, we lose this after the first year
when do accents arise?
accents arise b/c 2nd language learners no longer hear all phonemes clearly.
is there a critical period for 1st language learning?
yes late deaf learners of sign
genie
she was hidden and never able to form a language fully
is there a critical period for 2nd language learning?
no but it gets harder, after age 7 it becomes increasingly difficult to acquire native levels of a 2nd language
