Chapter 8 Language Acquisition

Question 1

Innate

Answer 1

Determined by factors present from birth.

Question 2

Innateness hypothesis

Answer 2

A hypothesis that human 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, reward, 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 Theories

Answer 6

Theory of language acquisition that claims that children learn language through neutral connections in the brain. A child develops such connections through exposure to language and by using language.

Question 7

Linguistic universals

Answer 7

Property believed to be held in common by all natural languages.

Question 8

Universal Grammar

Answer 8

The theory that posits a set of grammatical characteristics shared by all natural languages.

Question 9

Critical period

Answer 9

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 10

Neglected child

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Feral child

Answer 11

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

Question 12

Homesign

Answer 12

A rudimentary visual-gestural communication system that is developed and used by deaf children and they families when a signed language is not made available for they communication.

Question 13

Child directed Speech

Answer 13

Speech used by parents or caregivers when communicating with young children or infants.

Question 14

High amplitude sucking

Answer 14

Experimental technique used to study sound discrimination in infants from birth to about six month.

Question 15

Conditioned Head Turn Procedure

Answer 15

Experimental technique usually used with infants between five and eighteen months with two phases.

Question 16

Voice Onset Time

Answer 16

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

Question 17

Articulatory Gestures

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

Babbling

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Canonical babling

Answer 19

The continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants like [mamama] by infants; also called repeated babbling.

Question 20

Variegated babbling

Answer 20

Production of meaningless consonant-vowel sequences by infants.

Question 21

Holophrastic Stage

Answer 21

Stage in first-language acquisition during which children can produce only one word at a time.

Question 22

Telegraphic Stage

Answer 22

A phase during child language acquisition in which children use utterances composed primarily of content words.

Question 23

Overgeneralization

Answer 23

In the study of child language acquisition, 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.

Question 24

Complexive Concept

Answer 24

A term used in the study of child language acquisition.

Question 25

Overextension

Answer 25

In the study of child language acquisition

Question 26

Underextension

Answer 26

Application of a word to a smaller set of objects that is appropriate for mature adult speech or the usual definition of the word.

Question 27

Relational term

Answer 27

Type of relationship between adjective and nun reference where the reference of the adjective is determined relative to the noun reference.

Question 28

Deictic expression

Answer 28

Word or expression that takes its meaning relative to the time, place, and speaker of the utterance.

Question 29

Infant-directed speech

Answer 29

Speech used by parents or caregivers when communicating with young children or infants.

Question 30

Attention getters

Answer 30

Word or phrase used to initiate an address to children.

Question 31

Attention holders

Answer 31

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

Question 32

Conversational turns

Answer 32

The contribution to a conversations made by one speaker from the time that she takes the floor from another speaker to the time that she passes the floor on to another speaker.

Question 33

Simultaneous bilingualism

Answer 33

Bilingualism in which which both languages are acquired from infancy.

Question 34

Sequential bilingualism

Answer 34

Bilingualism in which the second language is acquired as a young child.

Question 35

Second-language acquisition

Answer 35

Acquisition of a second language as a teenager or adult.

Question 36

Language mixing

Answer 36

Using words or structural elements from more than one language within the same conversation.

Question 37

Foreign accent

Answer 37

An accent that is marked by the phonology of another language or other languages that are more familiar to the speaker.

Question 38

Fossilization

Answer 38

Process through which forms from a speaker’s non-native language usage become fixed.

Question 39

Code Switching

Answer 39

Using words or structural elements from more than one language within the same conversation.

Question 40

Monolingual

Answer 40

The state of commanding three or more languages.