Chapter 8 Language Acquisition

Question 1

innate

Answer 1

determined by factors present from birth

Question 2

Innateness Hypothesis

Answer 2

hypothesis that humans are genetically predisposed to learn and use language

Question 3

Imitation Theory

Answer 3

theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear

Question 4

Reinforcement Theory

Answer 4

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

Question 5

Active Construction of a Grammar Theory

Answer 5

theory of language acquisition that says that children acquire a language by inventing rules of grammar based on the speech around them

Question 6

Connectionist Theory

Answer 6

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

Question 7

Social Interaction Theory

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Linguistic Universals

Answer 8

property believed to be held in common by all natural linguistics

Question 9

Universal Grammar

Answer 9

the theory that posits a set of grammatical characteristics shared by all natural languages. Also, the name of this set of shared characteristics

Question 10

Critical Period

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Neglected Child

Answer 11

child who is neglected by caretakers, often resulting in significantly lower exposure to language as a child

Question 12

Feral Child

Answer 12

child who grew up in the wild without care by human adults, often with animals

Question 13

Homesign

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Child-Directed Speech

Answer 14

speech used by parents or caregivers when communicating with young children or infants. In many western societies, child-directed speech is slow and high pitched and has many repetitions, simplified syntax, exaggerated intonation, and a simple and concrete vocabulary

Question 15

High Amplitude Sucking (HAS)

Answer 15

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-generating system.

Question 16

Conditioned Head Turn Procedure

Answer 16

experimental technique usually used with infants between five and eighteen months with two phases: conditioning and testing

Question 17

Voice Onset Time

Answer 17

the length of time between the release of a consonant and the onset of voicing, that is, when the vocal folds start vibrating

Question 18

Articulatory Gestures

Answer 18

a movement of a speech organ and the production of speech

Question 19

Babble

Answer 19

a phase in a child language acquisition during which the child produces meaningless sequences of consonants and vowels

Question 20

Canonical Babbling

Answer 20

the continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants like by infants

Question 21

Variegated Babbling

Answer 21

production of meaningless consonant vowel sequences by infants

Question 22

Holophrastic Stage

Answer 22

stage during which children can produce only one word at a time

Question 23

Telegraphic

Answer 23

phase during child language acquisition in which children use utterances composed primarily of context words

Question 24

Overgeneralization

Answer 24

in the study of child language acquisition, a relationship between child and adults application of rules relative to certain context

Question 25

Interrogative

Answer 25

produce questions only by using a rising intonation, rather than by using a particular syntactic

Question 26

Complexivie Concepts

Answer 26

when a child associates different characteristics with the meaning of a word on successive uses

Question 27

Overextensions

Answer 27

when a child extends the range of a word’s meaning beyond that typically used by aadults

Question 28

Underextension

Answer 28

application of a word to a smaller set of objects than is appropriate for mature adult speech

Question 29

Relation Term

Answer 29

like large or small constitutes are relatively complex concept

Question 30

Deictic Expressions

Answer 30

words referring to personal, temporal, or spacial aspects of an utterance and who’s meaning depends on the context in which the word is used

Question 31

Directed Speech

Answer 31

speech directed at children

Question 32

Attention Getters

Answer 32

word or phrase used to initiate and address to children

Question 33

Attention Holder

Answer 33

a tactic used to maintain children’s attention for extended amounts of time

Question 34

The “Here and Now”

Answer 34

running commentaries on what children do, either anticipating their actions

Question 35

Conversational Term

Answer 35

take their turns as speaker and listener in conversation

Question 36

Bilingual

Answer 36

speakers of two languages

Question 37

Multilingual

Answer 37

speakers of more than two languages

Question 38

Simultaneous Bilingualism

Answer 38

learn more than one language from birth

Question 39

Sequential Bilingualism

Answer 39

learning their second language as young children

Question 40

Second Language Acquisition

Answer 40

learn a second language not as a young child, but rather later in life