Chapter 8 Vocabulary Flashcards
Language acquisition
Is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate.
First Language Acquisition
Refers to children’s natural acquisitions of the language or languages they hear form birth.
Second Language Acquisition
The process in which people learn a second language.
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 production 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 used 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 Theory
Theory of language acquisition which 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 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. 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.
Neglected Children
A child who is neglected by caretakers, often resulting in significantly lower exposure to language a a child.
Feral Children
Child who grew up in the wild without care by human adults, often with animals.
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.
Rules
A former statement of an observed generalization about patterns in languages.
Child-Direct Speech
Speech used by parents or caregivers when communicating with young children or infants. In many Western societies, child-direct speech is slow and high-pitched and had many repetitions, simplified syntax, exaggerated intonation, and a simple and concrete vocabulary.
Identifying Sounds
The ability to understand different sounds.
High Amplitude Sucking
Experimental techniques used to study sound discrimination in infants from birth to six months.Infants are given a special pacifier that is connected to a sound-generating system. Each suck on the pacifier generates a noise, and infants sucking behavior is used to draw conclusions about discriminating abilities.
Condition Head-Turn Procedure
Experimental techniques 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. 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 ability to discriminate between the two sounds.
Producing Sounds
A child’s first vocalizations are present at the very beginning of life. within a few weeks after birth a child begins to coo, producing sequence of vowel like sounds.
Articulatory Gestures
A movement of a speech organ in the production of speech, for example,t he movement of the velum for the production of a nasal consonant.
babbling
A phase a child language acquisition during which the child produces meaningless sequences of consonants and vowels. Generally generally begins around the age of six months.
