Chapter 7

Question 1

What are “true words”?

Answer 1

• A child’s word must have a phonetic relationship to the adult word
• Child must use the word consistently
• Word must occur in the presence of a reference

Question 2

Stages of Development of Expressive Language (5 loose stages)

Answer 2

• Gestures →
• Phonetically Consistent Forms i.e. “wo wo” →
• True Words i.e. “doddie” →
• Word Combinations i.e. “dog there” (gesture + word)→
• Sentences i.e. “there is a dog.”

Question 3

Mutual Exclusivity

Answer 3

• if a word means X, it can’t mean Y or Z

- Nonlinguistic communication

Question 4

Fast (or initial) Mapping

Answer 4

• a tentative link is formed between a referent and a new name
• the more exposures, the stronger the concept of the word

Question 5

Holophrases

Answer 5

• children produce phrases as one word

- What’s that → “Wazzat”

Question 6

Social Sensitivity

Answer 6

Children use social cues (e.g. eye gaze, vocal cues) learn words based on the speaker’s intent

Question 7

Levels of Lexical Categories: An Example

Answer 7

LARGE CATEGORY: Animal →
MID-LEVEL: Dog →
SPECIFIC TYPES: Corgi →
SPECIFIC OBJECT: Family dog

Question 8

Early Lexicons: Nouns and Verbs

what develops first?

Answer 8

Nouns predominate in early lexicon
perceptually/conceptually distinct
Linguistic predictability
Concept of objects by children - play involves objects
Frequency of adult use
Vocab spurt after acquiring about 100 words - cognitive development
S + V + O - segmentation of words for verb acquisitions
Why do verbs come after nouns?

Question 9

Underextensions

Answer 9

-overly restricted meanings

Question 10

Overextensions (definition and 3 types)

Answer 10

-meaning is too broad compared to adult target
-3 types:
-Categorical overinclusions:
—Baby for all children
—Hot for all hot and cold
—Dada for both parents
-Analogical overextensions:
—Ball to refer to round objects
—Fork to refer to anything that pierces objects (spear)
-Predict extensions: notes the relationship between object and some absent person, object, property, or state
—Peepee for toilet
—Water for turned off hose
Adults provide implicit and explicit feedback about child’s over- and under- extension

Question 11

What is Intention-reading?

Answer 11

A social cognitive skill for understanding language behavior of others
Child must determine the intentions of others

Question 12

What Is Pattern-finding?

and 3 underlying rules for language

Answer 12

• A cognitive skill that enables use to find common threads in disparate information
• Seeking underlying rules for language
  1: Schematization and analogy: children hear same utterances repeated with systematic variation
  2: Entrenchment and preemption: when we do something the same way successfully several times, the manner becomes habitual
  3: Functionally based distributional analysis: concrete linguistic items are grouped together into a category

Question 13

Phonological Learning: fast mapping

Answer 13

• When a child hears a word and sees an object simultaneously, an association is formed
• If the initial association is not supported by repeat exposure, the word will be forgotten
• Frequency of use correlated with speed and accuracy of learning

Question 14

Neighborhood Density
(it's related to fast mapping and phonological learning)

Answer 14

• the number of possible words that differ by one phoneme

- Less dense neighborhoods lead to better learning

Question 15

Phonotactic Probability

Answer 15

• likelihood of a sound pattern occurring

- Used to help analyze the speech stream

Question 16

What are phonological processes?

Answer 16

systemic procedures used by children to make adult words easier to pronounce

Question 17

Reduplication

phonological process

Answer 17

• one syllable is reduplicated

- Daddy / dædæ/

Question 18

Diminutive

phonological process

Answer 18

• adding the /i/ in word-final position

- Dad → /dadi/

Question 19

Assimilation

phonological process

Answer 19

• consonant is affected by preceding or following phoneme

- Doggy → /dadi

Question 20

Cluster Reduction

phonological process

Answer 20

• clusters are reduced to singletons

- Stop → /tap/

Question 21

Factors that may influence early language acquisition

Answer 21

Overall health
Cognitive functioning
Home environment
Ear infections
Motor speech problems
Socioeconomic status
Exposure to TV
International adoption and L2 acquisition

Question 22

Social-cognitive skills: how they assist development of language learning skills

Answer 22

-to construct multiword utterances from the language they hear around them, kids must be able to:
—-Plan and create multiple-step procedures toward
a single goal
—-Form abstractions across individual items
-Find a pattern from the different experiences
involving the individual item
—-Create item-based constructions

Question 23

Types of Early Word Combinations

Answer 23

Gesture + Word
---Point to car + “go”
---“more” + sign milk
Inconsistent CV + word
---Ma baby
---Baby bu
Phonetically consistent form + word
---Beda cookie
---Beda doggi

Question 24

3 Theories of Semantic Formulation

Answer 24

Semantic-feature hypothesis
-Combining features that are present and perceivable in the environment: shape, sound, smell, taste, movement; i.e doggie: four legs, fur, barking, tail
Functional-core hypothesis
-Focus on motion features or function or use meaning (spoon for eating)
Associative complex hypothesis and prototypic complex hypothesis
-Each successive use of a word shares some feature or is associated with a core concept
-The child’s underlying concept includes a central reference or prototype, respectively