Chapter 6 Language & Symbol Use Flashcards
Symbols
Systems for representing our thoughts, feelings, and knowledge and for communicating them to other people
Comprehension
With regard to language, understanding what other says (or sign or write)
Production
With regard to language, speaking (writing or signing) to others
Generativity
Refers to the idea that through the use of the finite set of words and morphemes in humans’ vocabulary, we can put together an infinite number of sentences and express an infinite number of ideas
Phonemes
The elementary units of meaningful sound used to produce languages
Ex: (‘lake and rake’ differ by the phoneme L/R)
Phonological Development
The acquisition of knowledge about the sound system of a language
Morphemes
The smallest units of meaning in language, composed of one or more morphemes
(Ex: dog)
Semantic Development
The learning of the system for expressing meaning in language, including word learning
Syntax
Rules in a language that specify how words from different categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives) can be combined
Syntactic Development
The learning of the syntax of a language
Pragmatic Development
The acquisition of knowledge about how language is used
What part of the brain is language localized?
The left hemisphere, evident for both spoken and signed languages
Critical Period for language
The time during which language develops readily and after which (sometime between age 5 and puberty)” language acquisition is much more difficult and ultimately less successful
Bilingualism
The ability to use two languages
Improved aspects of cognitive functioning
Categorical perception
The perception of speech sounds as belonging to discrete categories
Voice onset time (VOT)
The length of time between when air passes through the lips and when the vocal cords start vibrating
When do babies ‘lose’ their ability to perceive the speech sounds that are not part of native language?
12 months of age approx
Word Segmentation
The process of discovering where words begin and end in fluent speech
Distributional Properties
The phenomena that in any language, certain sounds are more likely to appear together than are others
Babbling
Repetitive consonant-vowel sequences (“bababab…”) or hand movements (for learners of sign language) produced during the early phases of language development
Reference
in language and speech, the associating of words and meanings
Holophrastic period
the period when children begin using the words in their small productive vocabulary one word at a time
Overextension
the use of a given word in a broader context than is appropriate
Fast mapping
the process of rapidly learning a new word simply from hearing the contrastive use of a familiar and the unfamiliar word.
Pragmatic cues
aspects of the social context used for word learning
Syntactic bootstrapping
the strategy of using the grammatical structure of whole sentences to figure out meaning
telegraphic speech
the term describing children’s first sentences that are usually two-three word utterances
Overregulation
speech errors in which children treat irregular forms of words as if they were regular
(ex: ‘mans’ ‘goed’ as oppose to ‘men’ ‘went’)
Collective monologue
conversation between children that involves a series of non sequiturs, the content of each child’s turn having little or nothing to do with what the other just said
Narratives
descriptions of past events (occurs around 5yrs)
The two prerequisites for language development
1) a human brain
2) experience with a human language
Universal Grammar
a proposed set of highly abstract, unconscious rules that are common to all language (Chomsky)
Modularity Hypothesis
the idea that the human brain contains an innate, self-contained language module that is separate from other aspects of cognitive functioning (Fodor)
Connectionism
a type of information-processing approach that emphasizes the simultaneous activity of numerous interconnected processing units
Dual Representation
the idea that a symbolic artifact must be represented mentally in two ways at the same time- both as a real object and as a symbol for something other than itself
