Chapter 8 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 a 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
claims that children acquire language through social interaction - in particular with older children and adults- and prompt their caregivers to supply them with the appropriate language experience they need.
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 from 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.
neglected children
a child who is neglected by caretakers, often resulting in significantly lower exposure to language as a child
feral children
child who grew up in the wild without care by humans adults, often with animals
homesign
a rudimentary visual-gestural communication system that is developed and used by deaf children and their families when a signed language is not made available for their communication
language mixing (code switching)
using words or structural elements from more than one language within the same conversation
child-directed speech
speech used by parents or caregivers when communicating with young children or infants.
identifying sounds
the first step is perceiving sounds
high amplitude sucking
experimental technique used to study sound discrimination in infants from birth to about six months
conditioned head-turn procedure
experimental technique suually used with infants between five and eighteen months with two phases: conditioning and testing
voice onset time
the length of time between the release of a consonant and the onset of voicing, that is, when the vocal folds start vibrating
producing sounds
vocalizations are present at the very beginning of life
articulatory gestures
a movement of a speech organ in the production of speech, for example, the movement of the velum for the production of a nasal consonant
babble
a phase in child language acquisition during which the child produces meaningless sequences of consonants and vowels
repeated (canonical babbling)
the continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants like mamama by infants
variegated babbling
production of meaningless consonant-vowel sequences by infants
holophrastic stage
stage which children can produce only one word at a time
telegraphic
because of omission of function words, the speech of young children is often telegraphic
plurals
morpheme -s
negatives
putting no in front of a sentence
interrogatives
producing questions
complexive concept
associating a wrong or incomplete set of unifying characteristics with a word
overextension
a relationship between child and adult application of rules relative to certain contexts: a process in which children extend the application of linguistic rules to contexts beyond those in the adult language
underextension
application of a word to a smaller set of objects than is appropriate for mature adult speech or the usual definition of the word
relational term
type of relationship between adjective and noun reference where the reference of the adjective is determined relative to the noun reference
deictic expressions
word or expression that takes its meaning relative to the time, place, and speaker of the utterance
attention getters
word or phrase used to initiate an address to children
attention holders
a tactic used to maintain children’s attention for extended amounts of time
conversational turns
the contribution to a conversation made by one speaker from the time that she takes the floor from another speaker tot he time that she passes the floor on to another speaker
simultaneous bilingualism
bilingualism in which both languages are acquired from infancy
sequential bilingualism
bilingualism in which a linguistic unit is moved from one location to another
second-language acquisition
acquisition of a second language as a teenager or adult
