Chapter 7: Language Development

Question 1

_____ and thinking are 2 abilities that make us uniquely human.

Answer 1

language

Question 2

A spoken language requires the use of signs and _____ with grammar.

Answer 2

symbols

Question 3

_____ determines how the various signs and symbols are arranged and is a set of rules for combining the symbols, or words, into sentences.

Answer 3

grammar

Question 4

Language also allows us to use the signs and symbols within our grammar to create ______.

Answer 4

novel constructions

Question 5

______ are the smallest unit of sound that affects the meaning of speech. The English language consists of 53 ______. By changing the beginning ____, the word hat becomes cat.

Answer 5

phonemes

Question 6

____ is the smallest unit of language that has meaning. A word can be one ____ but ______ are also roots, stems and prefixes, and suffixes. When speaking of more than one bat, we add the _____ “s”

Answer 6

Morepheme
morepheme
morephemes

Question 7

____ is the study of meaning in language.

Answer 7

semantics

Question 8

_____ or grammar is the set of rules that determine how words are combined to make phrases and sentences.

Answer 8

syntax

Question 9

_____ is the study of how sounds are put together to make words.

Answer 9

phonetics

Question 10

______ includes the social aspects of language, including politeness, conversational interactions, and conversational rules.

Answer 10

pragmatics

Question 11

____ is the study of the psychological mechanisms related to the acquisition and use of language.

Answer 11

psycholinguistics

Question 12

_____ distinguished between a sentence’s surface structure (the words actually spoken) and its deep structure (underlying meaning).

Answer 12

Noam Chomsky

Question 13

When we hear a spoken sentence, we do not retain the surface structure, but instead transform it into its ____. Chomsky referred to this theory as ______ grammar theory.

Answer 13

deep structure

tranformational

Question 14

____ is guided by both bottom-up and to-down perception.

Answer 14

speech perception

Question 15

_____ processing in perception depends on the information from the sentences at the most basic level, with sensory info flowing from this low level upward to the higher, more cognitive levels.

Answer 15

Bottom-up

i.e. the word cat

Question 16

_____ processing emphasizes the kind of information stored at the highest level of perception and includes concepts, knowledge, and prior knowledge.

Answer 16

Top down processing

i.e. hear a missing phoneme –fill in the blanks

Question 17

The first vocalizations that infants make include _______ and ______.

Answer 17

cooing and crying

Question 18

At about 4 months of age, infants begin to ____. Their _____ are comprised of a repetition of syllables.

Answer 18

babble

babblings

Question 19

By six months of age an infants is more likely to ______ when an adult is talking to the infants.

Answer 19

babble

Question 20

Babbling appears to be an innate ability because even ____ infants usually babble.

Answer 20

deaf

Question 21

Infants usually begin to understand several individual words that caregivers are saying by ____ to ___ months of age.

Answer 21

5-8

Question 22

A child’s first words are ordinarily spoken between ___ and ___ months of age. This is referred to as the one word stage because usually they can only use one word at a time.

Answer 22

10-12

Question 23

Children often underextend and overextend the _____ of their first words.

Answer 23

meanings

Question 24

_______ occurs when a child only uses a word in a specific context (only says duck when in the bathtub with a toy duck but never refers to this toy by name outside the bathtub)

Answer 24

Underextension

Question 25

________ or overgenarilization occurs when a child uses a word to mean more than an adult speaker would. ilel a child who calls all four legged furry animals (cats, dogs, rabbits, etc) doggie is overextending.

Answer 25

Semantic overextension

Question 26

Some researchers have referred to children’s one word utterances as _____, that is, this one word could be interpreted to mean an entire phrase.

Answer 26

holophrases
i.e. a child points to an object and says cookie. This one word could possibly mean, depending on context, “I want a cookie,” “there is a cookie”, or “is that a cookie?”

Question 27

Children from ___ to ___ months of age are in the 2 word stage of language development because they are now making short, two word sentences. i.e. (more milk, where ball)

Answer 27

18-20

Question 28

During the two word stage their vocabulary is expanding rapidly and they may learn several new words _____.

Answer 28

each day

Question 29

Carey has suggested that this vocabulary growth spurt (during the two word stage) is explained by a process she called _____.

Answer 29

fast mapping

Question 30

Carey argues that children assign a _____ to a word very rapidly after only a brief encounter during this phase of language development.

Answer 30

meaning

Question 31

______ quickly follows the two word stage and consists of sentences that do not contain any morphemes, conjunctions, prepositions, or any other function words.

Answer 31

telegraphic speech

Question 32

Telegraphic speech only contains the ___ words necessary to convey meaning, similar to a telegram (Doggie kiss Jeff)

Answer 32

content

Question 33

Children’s first sentences follow the subject verb object sequence, and children often rely on this word order to make their ______. Eventually, children ad verb endings, adjectives, auxiliary verbs, and morphemes to their utterances.

Answer 33

meaning clear

Question 34

Initially children tend to use the ____ verb tenses, even the exceptions (i.e. went, ran).

Answer 34

correct

Question 35

By age ___ or ____ children often use incorrect verb forms (goed, runned). These errors are called ______ seem to indicate that children are acquiring general rules about their language and for a period of time they overgeneralize these rules to the exceptions.

Answer 35

4 or 5

Question 36

By the age of ____, children have acquired most of the syntax of their native language.

Answer 36

5

Question 37

When speaking to infants and older language learning children, older children and adults typically use _______, which is speech that contains short sentences that are often repeated.

Answer 37

motherese

Question 38

______ tends to consist of concrete nouns and active verbs only. These sentences are enunciated clearly, often in a high pitched voice.

Answer 38

motherese

Question 39

Many researchers believe that _____ helps children learn language. However, recent research has shown that mothers typically use two techniques called expansions and ______ that have a positive effect on children’s language development.

Answer 39

motherese

recasts

Question 40

_____ is when a mother repeats a child’s verbalization after making it more complex.

Answer 40

An expansion

i.e. if a child says mommy up, the mother might reply, Oh you want me to pick you up?

Question 41

A ____ is repeating a child’s utterance after correcting grammatical mistakes.

Answer 41

recast

i.e. if a child says, He goed, the mother might reply, Yes, he went home.

Question 42

School age children continue to improve their _____ of language and both school age children and adolescents continue to increase their ______.

Answer 42

pronunciation

vocabulary

Question 43

While there is a tremendous vocabulary spurt during the ______ period, school-age children and adolescents continue to increase their vocabulary by many words a day.

Answer 43

preschool

Question 44

Children, show an improved understanding of the ______ rules of language as they age.

Answer 44

pragmatic

Question 45

The understanding of word meanings expands in adulthood and older adults continue to have _____ in vocabulary. Older adults may have more difficulty retrieving words, that may be due to a memory processing deficit, not a _____ deficit.

Answer 45

gains

language

Question 46

Language skills are remarkably maintained through ______.

Answer 46

late adulthood

Question 47

An ongoing nature vs nurture debate has been whether language is basically ______, biological process or a ______ phenomenon.

Answer 47

innate

learned

Question 48

many researchers hold the view of the _______ that children are somehow biologically programmed to learn language.

Answer 48

nativist theory

Question 49

According to Chomsky, a _________ gives children an innate ability to process speech and to understand both the fundamental relationships among words and the regularities of speech.

Answer 49

language acquisition device

Question 50

Researchers have also proposed a _____ for language learning during childhood. If exposed to language during this ______, language learning will take place. After this time has passed, language learning will be more difficult.

Answer 50

sensitive period

sensitive period

Question 51

The _____ theory of language development argues that humans are born with a mind that is a tabula rasa and that all aspects of language are learned.

Answer 51

empiricist

Question 52

BF Skinner and other _____ theorists proposed that language learning takes place similar to other forms of learning. That is, parents selectively ______ and shape babbling sounds into words. When parents speak to their children, the children receive attention and affection. As a result children then try to make these reinforcing word sounds ____ and try to imitate their parents because it is reinforcing to do so.

Answer 52

learning
reinforce
themselves

Question 53

A sensitive period for language development would support the ____ view.

Answer 53

nativist

Question 54

There is some evidence for a _____ from studies of feral children, abused children or children raised by animals, who were not exposed to language until after their discovery. These children can acquire some use of language but do not reach the level of language development found in the normal adult.

Answer 54

sensitive period

Question 55

The sensitive period for language is said to end at or around ____.

Answer 55

puberty

Question 56

Additional support for the nativist position comes from studies of infants’ sound ______. Young infants have the capacity to _____ all of the phonemes used in all of the world’s languages, and they lose this ability over time as they are only exposed of the phonemes of their native language.

Answer 56

discrimination

discriminate

Question 57

Infants can also make all of the sounds used in all of the _____ languages during the babbling phase. This ability also declines with age. The consistent pattern of errors in children’s speech, like overregularization, ____ the nativitist view.

Answer 57

world’s

supports

Question 58

The ____ theory is also helpful in explaining the language development.

Answer 58

learning

Question 59

Children’s speech clearly undergoes a _____ process as their pronunciation of words improves. The learning mechanisms of imitation and _____ likely explain these changes.

Answer 59

reinforcement

Question 60

There is also ample evidence that how parents talk to their children affects their _____, as well as socioecon0mic status and gender differences in language use.

Answer 60

language development

Question 61

Both ____ and _____ interact in language development.

Answer 61

nature and nutrue

Question 62

______ is having some degree of fluency in more than one language.

Answer 62

bilingualism

Question 63

___ to ____ % of children in the US are bilingual and many other countries of the world have significantly higher bilingualism rates.

Answer 63

10-15%

Question 64

Some bilingual children, called ______ bilinguals, are equally fluent in both languages, but many others are not.

Answer 64

balanced

Question 65

Early research on the cognitive development and academic achievement of bilingual children in the US showed they had ______ compared to their monolingual peers.

Answer 65

deficits

Question 66

Bilinguals, particularly, balanced bilinguals, have cognitive advantages over _____ peers. They have better linguistic awareness and greater cognitive flexibility.

Answer 66

monolingual