Chapter 8 Language Acquisition Flashcards
Innate
Determined by factors present from birth.
Innate hypothesis
A hypothesis that humans are genetically predisposed to learn and use language.
Imitation theory
Theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear.
Reinforcement theory
Theory of language acquisition that 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 language acquisition that says that children acquire a language by inventing rules of grammar based on the speech around them.
Connectionist theory
Theory of language acquisition that claims that children learn language through neural connections in the brain. A child develops such connections through exposure to language and by using language.
Social interaction theory
Theory of language acquisition that 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 universal
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. Also, the name of this set of shared characteristics.
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.
Homesign
A rudimentary visual-gestural communication system (not a language) that is developed and used by deaf children and their families when a signed language is not made available for their communication.
High amplitude sucking (HAS)
Experimental technique used to study sound discrimination in infants from birth to about six months. Infants are given a special pacifier that is connected to a sound-generated system. Each suck on the pacifier generates a noise, and infants’ sucking behavior is used to draw conclusions about discrimination abilities.
Conditioned head-turn procedure (HT)
Experimental technique usually used with infants between five and eighteen months with two phases: conditioning and testing. During the conditioning phase, the infant learns to associate a change in sound with the activation of visual reinforcers, first presented at the same time and then in succession, such that the infant begins to anticipate the appearance of the visual reinforcers and look at them before they are activated. During the testing phase, when the infant looks to the visual reinforcers immediately after a change in sound, it suggests that the infant has perceived the change in sound, thereby demonstrating the ability to discriminate between the two sounds involved.
Voice onset time (VOT)
The length of time between the release of a consonant and the onset of voicing, that is, when the vocal folds start vibrating.
Articulatory gesture
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.
