Chapter 8: Language Acquisition

Question 1

baby talk / motherese / child directed speech *

Answer 1

A certain style of speech that many adults use when speaking to children that includes among other things exaggerated intonation. See motherese, child-directed speech (CDS).

Question 2

impoverished data / poverty of the stimulus*

Answer 2

Refers to the incomplete, noisy, and unstructured utterances that children hear, including slips of the tongue, false starts, and ungrammatical and incomplete sentences, together with a lack of concrete evidence about abstract grammatical rules and structure.

Question 3

babbling*

Answer 3

Speech sounds produced in the first few months after birth that gradually come to include only sounds that occur in the language of the household. Deaf children babble with hand gestures.

Question 4

holophrastic*

Answer 4

The stage of child language acquisition in which one word conveys a complex message similar to that of a phrase or sentence.

Question 5

overgeneralization*

Answer 5

Children’s treatment of irregular verbs and nouns as if they were regular, e.g., bringed, goed, foots, mouses, for brought, went, feet, mice. This shows that the child has acquired the regular rules but has not yet learned that there are exceptions.

Question 6

telegraphic stage*

Answer 6

The period of child language acquisition that follows the two-word stage and consists primarily of telegraphic speech.

Question 7

second language acquisition*

Answer 7

The acquisition of another language or languages after first language acquisition is under way or completed. Also called L2 acquisition.

Question 8

innateness hypothesis*

Answer 8

The theory that the human species is genetically equipped with a Universal Grammar, which provides the basic design for all human languages.

Question 9

second language acquisition

Answer 9

The acquisition of another language or languages after first language acquisition is under way or completed. Also called L2 acquisition.

Question 10

fossilize

Answer 10

when a grammatical error in second language acquisition such that no amount of teaching or correction can undo them

Question 11

fundamental difference hypothesis

Answer 11

Second language acquisition (L2) differs fundamentally

from first language acquisition (L1).

Question 12

L1 transfer

Answer 12

second language learners apply the grammatical rules of their native language to the second language

Question 13

mean length of utterances (MLU)

Answer 13

The average number of words or morphemes in a

child’s utterance. It is a more accurate measure of the acquisition stage of language than chronological age.